Abstract

Low power, licence exempt radiocommunication devices are widely used in products ranging from garage door openers and pagers to cordless phones and heart monitors.  In most cases, such devices operate over extremely short ranges and it is entirely feasible for them to co-exist with higher power licensed equipment operating in the same band. 

In recent years, the desire to simplify deployment of computing infrastructure has led to development of low power, licence exempt wireless access devices which operate in the 2400 - 2483.5 MHz and 5725 - 5850 MHz bands.  Industry organizations have produced Wireless LAN standards such as IEEE 802.11 and HiperLAN 1 to ensure interoperability.  However, a desire to use licence exempt equipment in outdoor environments and over longer ranges has led to requests for higher power exemptions.  This has raised concerns for interference between systems and the effect on system reliability in the long term.

In this talk, we will explain Industry Canada rules concerning licence exempt equipment, present an overview of the various licence exempt equipment currently on the market, and survey the on-going industry effort to establish new standards and improve reliability.  Industry Canada is interested in gauging the level of deployment of such licence exempt equipment in Canada, and learning about the concerns, expectations, and experiences of the user community.   Interested parties are encouraged to share their thoughts on these issues with us, so that we can make informed decisions when making rules/policies for licence exempt equipment.

About the Speaker:

Angela Choi is a communications engineer with Industry Canada (Pacific Region) - Spectrum and Telecommunications.  She received her B.A.Sc. and her M.A.Sc. from the University of British Columbia, and joined Communications Canada (subsequently Industry Canada) in 1990.  Her responsibilities include broadcasting technical rules and operation, and regulatory aspects of outdoor use of licence exempt devices in the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands.

No-Host Dinner

You can meet Angela Choi at a no-host dinner before the talk. Please join us at 6:00 PM at Earl's, 4361 Kingsway (one block west of Willingdon) in Burnaby. All are welcome, although advance notice by e-mail to Dave Michelson <dmichelson@ieee.org> would be appreciated so that we can ask for a table of appropriate size.