The electromagnetic spectrum is a crowded space, what with a world full of wireless signals bumping up against each other. And the sliver of spectrum left open for unlicensed use (meaning it can be used by any gadget, including Wi-Fi routers and cordless phones) is tiny. That’s why technology companies are celebrating one side effect of the 2009 switch from analog to digital TV—the FCC ruled last September that the spectrum space once used by TV broadcasters will now be unlicensed. Even better, these so-called white-space wireless bands use short wavelengths that make them better than a typical Wi-Fi signal at traveling long distances and passing through obstacles such as walls and trees. Microsoft’s corporate campus already has a wireless network using the technology, and Google is working with white-space equipment maker Spectrum Bridge on a pilot project at a hospital in Ohio, as well as a “smart grid” system for wirelessly managing electricity consumption in some California communities.
Complex-Event Processing
Corporations and governments routinely comb through enormous databases of information and images (such as those pulled from surveillance cameras) in search of patterns. But in today’s data-rich world, an unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio can make it time-consuming and expensive to find anything relevant. A new generation of software is shifting the focus from “data” (a record of what’s happened) to “events” (what’s happening right now). Companies like StreamBase Systems and Tibco offer complex-event processing systems that analyze enormous flows of data in real time using new database and pattern-recognition approaches. This allows them to make instant decisions about whether to make a stock trade, initiate surveillance on a potential terrorist or halt a suspicious credit-card transaction. As the technology matures, we can expect these capabilities to trickle down to consumer devices. This would allow, for example, a GPS-enabled cellphone to sift through a constant stream of location-aware offers and alert users only to ones they would actually be interested in—such as deals on coffee along their morning commute route during the hours when they make the trek.
