By Mike Heller


I'll take a look at how modern day audio transmission systems that are employed in current wireless speakers operate in real-world environments with a large amount of interference from other wireless gadgets.

The most popular frequency bands which can be utilized by wireless gadgets are the 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz frequency band. Usually the 900 MHz as well as 2.4 Gigahertz frequency bands have started to become crowded by the ever increasing quantity of gizmos like wireless speakers, cordless telephones and so forth.

Merely changing channels, nonetheless, is no dependable remedy for avoiding certain transmitters that use frequency hopping. Frequency hoppers like Bluetooth systems or a lot of wireless phones will hop throughout the whole frequency spectrum. Thereby transmission on channels is going to be disrupted for brief bursts of time. Real-time audio has fairly strict requirements relating to reliability and minimal latency. To be able to provide these, other means are needed.

Frequency hopping devices, nonetheless, are going to continue to create problems as they are going to affect even transmitters employing transmit channels. Real-time audio has pretty rigid demands pertaining to dependability and minimal latency. In order to provide those, other means will be required.

One strategy is known as FEC or forward error correction. This technique will allow the receiver to repair a damaged signal. For this purpose, supplemental data is transmitted from the transmitter. The receiver makes use of an algorithm which uses the extra information. If the signal is corrupted during the transmission resulting from interference, the receiver can easily filter out the invalid data and recover the original signal. This method works if the amount of interference doesn't go above a specific limit. Transmitters utilizing FEC on its own generally may broadcast to any amount of cordless receivers. This mechanism is typically used for systems in which the receiver is not able to resend information to the transmitter or where the quantity of receivers is rather big, like digital stereos, satellite receivers and so on. In situations where there's just a few receivers, often a different mechanism is used. The wireless receiver sends data packets back to the transmitter in order to confirm good receipt of information. The information that is broadcast has a checksum. From this checksum the receiver can easily detect whether any particular packet was received properly and acknowledge. Since dropped packets must be resent, the transmitter and receivers must hold data packets in a buffer. Employing buffers leads to a delay or latency in the transmission. The amount of the delay is directly related to the buffer size. A larger buffer size increases the stability of the transmission. Video applications, nevertheless, require the audio to be in sync with the movie. In such cases a large latency is difficult. Wireless systems which use this method, however, can only broadcast to a small number of cordless receivers. Generally the receivers have to be paired to the transmitter. As each receiver also requires broadcast functionality, the receivers cost more to make and also consume more energy.

In order to steer clear of crowded frequency channels, a few wireless speakers watch clear channels and can change to a clear channel once the current channel gets occupied by another transmitter. This method is also known as adaptive frequency hopping.




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