Suggesting a new "use case" of potential value to regulators

Greetings from Prague! - or did you already know my location? :-)

I am working on a report for the European Commission which asks -
among other things - how close license-free bands are to saturation,
so regulators can consider whether additional bandwidth needs to
be allocated, and how soon.  

2.4 GHz is of particular interest because it is attractive to so
many equipment vendors, so popular with users, so many Wi-Fi- 
and Bluetooth-enabled devices are sold each year, offloading from 
celcos is rapidly increasing, etc.  

Because it takes at least 5 years to authorize and implement a 
globally or regionally harmonized re-allocation of spectrum, 
regulators need VERY early warning that congestion in a specific 
band is spreading, and how fast the spreading is.  Unfortunately, 
detecting congestion by monitoring is quite labor-intensive, 
invasive of privacy and technically difficult because spread
spectrum is relatively "stealthy".

So it occurred to me that the growing number of publicly 
accessible Wi-Fi location databases could provide just the 
sort of early clues that regulators need.  They don't care 
who's AP is where, they just need to know where the density 
of deployed devices is greatest (and what that density is), how 
quickly areas of high density are growing, and what 
percentage of the public lives and works in those high density 
areas.

So may I suggest that the W3C Geolocation API Specification 
drafting project take this use case into account?  Please think 
about standardizing access to the databases for the purpose 
of mapping WiFi device density changes over time (months or 
years).  To open a discussion on this topic, I suggest adding 
this new use case to Section 6.1:

"6.1.8 Mapping the changing density of Wi-Fi device 
deployments for early discovery of band congestion

"Agencies which regulate the use of radio frequencies need to 
know if and when interference between Wi-Fi enabled devices 
is likely to become enough of a problem that an additional 
allocation of spectrum should be considered to prevent band 
congestion and degradation of service.  Since Wi-Fi is license 
exempt in most countries, regulators have only a vague idea 
how many devices are operating in their jurisdiction and no 
idea where they are or how densely deployed.  Being able to 
see on a map the areas of greatest Wi-Fi density, and how 
fast these areas are expanding, could indicate when to 
start the long process of allocating more spectrum for use by
Wi-Fi before congestion reaches critical levels.  In addition to 
visualizations, it is important to provide access to numerical 
data about how many devices are within potentially interfering
range of each WiFi device.  Not all devices can be located 
with high accuracy, of course, but when the uncertainty is 
known to be less than a certain amount, an imaginary circle 
could be drawn around the best-estimate location of each 
device and the host computer could count how many other 
devices are within a radius of, say, 30m.  The center of each 
circle could then be assigned a color to indicate 
approximately how many other Wi-Fi devices are within the 
radius of the circle.  Contour lines might be used to group 
and generalize the local device density if it is relatively 
consistent.  Comparing the total area of a certain high
density contour on a certain date with the total area found 
a year or so later, would allow one to calculate the rate of
change and estimate the percentage of the population
likely to encounter congestion at future dates."

Sorry if my wording is pretentious, but I'm trying to be
ultra clear.  Thanks in advance for considering these 
ideas.


-- 
Robert Horvitz
Stichting Open Spectrum
Slavikova 11, 120 00 Prague 2, Czech Republic
Gelderlandplein 75 L, 1082 LV Amsterdam, Nederland
mailto:bob@openspectrum.info
http://www.openspectrum.info/
mob: +420 775024705
tel/fax: +420 222967456

Received on Tuesday, 2 August 2011 09:06:52 UTC