17.3.14

A Quick Look At How Modern Wireless Speakers Function In Real-World Conditions

By Mike Heller


A constantly expanding amount of cordless products which include wireless speakers produces increasing competition for the precious frequency space. Let me examine a number of technologies that are used by modern digital audio gadgets in order to discover how well these systems may operate in a real-world situation.

The most common frequency bands which can be employed by wireless gizmos include the 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 Gigahertz frequency band. Mostly the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands have begun to become clogged by the ever increasing quantity of devices such as wireless speakers, cordless telephones etc.

FM type audio transmitters are typically the least reliable relating to tolerating interference since the transmission does not have any procedure to deal with competing transmitters. However, those transmitters possess a relatively limited bandwidth and changing channels may often eliminate interference. Digital sound transmission is frequently employed by modern-day sound products. Digital transmitters generally work at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. The signal bandwidth is higher than 900 MHz transmitters and thus competition in these frequency bands is high.

A regularly employed strategy is forward error correction where the transmitter transmits supplemental data combined with the sound. The receiver uses a formula which utilizes the additional information. In the event the signal is damaged during the transmission resulting from interference, the receiver can remove the erroneous data and restore the original signal. This approach will work if the amount of interference does not go above a certain threshold. Transmitters utilizing FEC on its own generally can broadcast to any number of cordless receivers. This mechanism is usually used by products where the receiver can't resend information to the transmitter or in which the quantity of receivers is fairly big, just like digital radios, satellite receivers and so on.

One of these strategies is known as forward error correction or FEC for short. The transmitter is going to broadcast additional information in addition to the sound data. Making use of a number of innovative algorithms, the receiver can then repair the data that may partially be damaged by interfering transmitters. Because of this, these products can transmit 100% error-free even when there's interference. Transmitters employing FEC may transmit to a large number of wireless devices and doesn't need any kind of feedback from the receiver. An additional approach uses bidirectional transmission, i.e. each receiver sends data back to the transmitter. This approach is only practical if the number of receivers is small. Additionally, it needs a back channel to the transmitter. The data which is transmit includes a checksum. Because of this checksum the receiver can decide if any particular packet was received correctly and acknowledge. If a packet was corrupted, the receiver will inform the transmitter and ask for retransmission of the packet. Consequently, the transmitter must store a great amount of packets in a buffer. Equally, the receiver will need to have a data buffer. Using buffers causes a delay or latency in the transmission. The amount of the delay is directly related to the buffer size. A larger buffer size improves the stability of the transmission. A large latency can be a problem for several applications however. In particular when video is present, the sound ought to be in sync with the video. Also, in surround sound applications in which a number of speakers are wireless, the wireless speakers ought to be in sync with the corded speakers. Products that integrate this kind of mechanism, however, are restricted to transmitting to a small number of receivers and the receivers use up more energy.

Often a frequency channel may become occupied by a different transmitter. Preferably the transmitter can realize this fact and change to a different channel. To achieve this, a number of wireless speakers continuously watch which channels are available so that they can immediately change to a clear channel. Considering that the transmitter lists clean channels, there is no delay in trying to find a clean channel. It's simply selected from the list. This strategy is usually termed adaptive frequency hopping spread spectrum.




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