[SML] New wireless: analog or digital?

[Ray Gibson]

On May 18, 2016 5:35 PM, "Steven Hood" <shood_td at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> For my money, honestly, I'm seeing so much congestion in the 2.4 band in
my facilities that we avoid it as well. The trick with 5.8 is the shortened
range. We're having better luck with the narrower band digital stuff
fitting between TV channels out here near LA.

Much of which will be illegal to operate in 3-5 years, simply because it's
capable of sitting in the 600MHz band, even if you plan to use it in the
legal range. So buying anything new in this range would be ludicrous today.
Used, maybe, knowing it will entirely lose its resale value in a very short
time period and will need to be replaced. The stuff in the lower UHF will
be around/legal longer (470-560ish) but that's such a small area and very
full of high power television transmitters.

I dislike the congestion in 2.4 as well but it can be manageable.  It would
depend on how many channels are desired and how large the church campus is;
if only a small handful of channels are needed, like 5 or 6, and the
neighboring WiFi is just trace amounts, one could probably effectively use
appropriately sized directional panels to achieve a high enough signal to
noise ratio to render the interference negligible. Trying to fit 12+ could
be a challenge here for sure.

There will be space in the UHF spectrum dedicated for licensed and
unlicensed wireless microphones (see Howard and Henry's posts in the prior
link) but until the FCC makes more progress in the auction, those values
are not set in stone. Once they are, I'm sure there will be new offerings
from all the manufacturers, likely all digital only, so that they can
actually fit multiple channels in the itty bitty slices of pie.

Ray
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