Friday 28 February 2014

An In-Depth Examination Of Today's Wireless Speaker Technologies

By Mike Heller


An ever increasing number of wireless gadgets which include wireless speakers causes increasing competition for the precious frequency space. I am going to investigate a few systems that are used by modern digital sound products in order to determine how well these systems can operate in a real-world situation. The most popular frequency bands that can be utilized by wireless gizmos include the 900 MHz, 2.4 Gigahertz and 5.8 GHz frequency band. Usually the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands have started to become crowded by the ever increasing quantity of gadgets like wireless speakers, cordless telephones and so on.

FM type audio transmitters are typically the least reliable when it comes to tolerating interference since the transmission does not have any mechanism to deal with competing transmitters. Nonetheless, those transmitters have a fairly restricted bandwidth and switching channels can often avoid interference. Digital audio transmission is frequently used by more sophisticated sound systems. Digital transmitters normally operate at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 Gigahertz. The signal bandwidth is higher than 900 MHz transmitters and thus competition in these frequency bands is high.

The least expensive transmitters usually broadcast at 900 MHz. They work similar to FM stereos. Since the FM transmission uses a small bandwidth and thus just occupies a small fraction of the available frequency space, interference is usually eliminated simply by changing to another channel. Digital sound transmission is frequently employed by more contemporary audio systems. Digital transmitters typically work at 2.4 Gigahertz or 5.8 GHz. The signal bandwidth is higher than 900 MHz transmitters and thus competition in these frequency bands is high. Only changing channels, on the other hand, is no dependable remedy for steering clear of certain transmitters which use frequency hopping. Frequency hoppers like Bluetooth products as well as several cordless phones will hop through the entire frequency spectrum. Thus transmission on channels is going to be disrupted for short bursts of time. Audio can be considered a real-time protocol. Therefore it has stringent demands with regards to stability. Furthermore, small latency is critical in numerous applications. Therefore more advanced strategies are required to guarantee reliability.

Simply switching channels, nonetheless, is no dependable remedy for avoiding specific transmitters that use frequency hopping. Frequency hoppers like Bluetooth gadgets or numerous cordless telephones are going to hop through the entire frequency spectrum. Thereby transmission over channels will likely be disrupted for short bursts of time. Consequently today's sound transmitters incorporate special mechanisms to cope with interfering transmitters to assure continuous interruption-free audio transmission.

A different technique uses receivers that transmit information packets to the transmitter. The transmitters contains a checksum with every information packet. Every receiver can determine whether a certain packet was acquired correctly or damaged due to interference. Subsequently, every cordless receiver sends an acknowledgement to the transmitter. If a packet was corrupted, the receiver is going to alert the transmitter and request retransmission of the packet. Consequently, the transmitter needs to store a great amount of packets in a buffer. Similarly, the receiver will have to maintain a data buffer. Employing buffers will cause a delay or latency in the transmission. The amount of the delay is proportional to the buffer size. A larger buffer size increases the dependability of the transmission. A big latency can be a problem for many applications nonetheless. In particular when video exists, the sound ought to be synchronized with the video. Additionally, in multichannel applications in which a few loudspeakers are cordless, the wireless loudspeakers ought to be in sync with the corded loudspeakers. Cordless systems that use this technique, nonetheless, are only able to broadcast to a small quantity of wireless receivers. Commonly the receivers have to be paired to the transmitter. Because each receiver also requires transmit functionality, the receivers cost more to make and in addition use up more energy.

In an effort to better overcome interference, a number of wireless speakers will monitor the accessible frequency band so as to determine which channels are clear at any time. If any particular channel gets congested by a competing transmitter, these systems may switch transmission to a clean channel without interruption of the audio. This approach is also called adaptive frequency hopping.




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