The US economy, juiced by the national popular culture, is about to commit another major telecommunications blunder!  The title of this piece gives a clue to it.  Since there is no way to stop or to prevent the developing blunder, it might be of some use at least to understand what we are doing.

American consumers, [...]]]> The US economy, juiced by the national popular culture, is about to commit another major telecommunications blunder!  The title of this piece gives a clue to it.  Since there is no way to stop or to prevent the developing blunder, it might be of some use at least to understand what we are doing.

American consumers, gleefully aided and abetted by the commercial carriers, have become besotted by the concept of “wireless.”  Thus the public now demands that its communications and entertainment pastimes must become “untethered!”  They want to take everything they do (voice, text, movies, e-mail, games, television, search, music, navigation, Web browsing, photographs, home video, and perhaps even remote control over their kitchen coffee pots) along with them on their persons—– everywhere and forever.  They want “permanently-connected Web-direct to the belly-button!”  They want it twenty-four hours a day and even more if they could just fit the time in!  They want it all, even though they don’t have either the background or the interest to understand the future ramifications of this wish.

Would it shock you, Gentle Reader, to discover that the Curmudgeon has a slightly different “take” on this?  That his fifty years as a radioman provides a perspective that a frenetic teenager or a (formerly) upwardly-mobile “Twenty Something” doesn’t have?  That all the narcotic-like addictiveness of the latest “Belt Toyz” looks somewhat different when viewed in the context of the history and the engineering realities of telecommunications?  (And just to settle a point, yes the Curmudgeon has used most of the Toyz in his business life, and found them more of a distraction than a benefit.)

Certainly, as a society we have the technical skill to take every existing telecommunications service and application and to port them all onto wireless platforms.  Or, at least we could try to do so.  Whipped up by consumer hysteria and a hype-driven feeding frenzy, we can gloriously “burn” the radio frequency spectrum and continue to do so until the N^th+1 “must have” mobile application collides with an empty resource locker.  And that is precisely our looming public policy crisis: there just isn’t enough radio spectrum to give every person in America unlimited “mobility” for every possible application that he or she might ever want.

Let’s say it again, just to be sure that everybody gets it: “WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH RADIO SPECTRUM TO PROVIDE THE PUBLIC WITH EVERY FUNCTION THAT IT THINKS IT WANTS TO USE VIA A MOBILE PLATFORM”  Well, we might possibly have enough spectrum if we zeroed out all the existing licensed radio users: Public Safety, Maritime Mobile, Business, Aeronautical Mobile, Military, Amateur, Broadcasting, fixed microwave and satellite, all levels of government, and more.  Does anyone want to propose doing that to facilitate “universal texting?”

Some rationality, in the guise of humble common sense, is desperately needed to sort matters out here.  Which of the myriad of telecommunications systems now in use or coming along absolutely requires “wireless?”  And which ones can be beneficially entrusted to the humble fixed land line circuit (which includes both metallic and glass transmission media)?

The Curmudgeon spent much of his career working in various aspects of the art and science of what was then called “radio” and now is known as “wireless.”  He has always stood in awe of the wonder of the transmission of information through free space by electromagnetic waves!  But that doesn’t mean that he is in any way ignorant or dismissive of the virtues of the land line telecommunications channel!  He would be one of the first to admit that there are many practical circumstances under which the use of a wired telecommunications channel would be preferable to a wireless channel.  For, in the final analysis, the limited amount of available “wireless” capacity should be reserved primarily for those specific applications where “you just can’t get it done any other way.”

Fixed land line communications channels have a number of inherent advantages over wireless channels, of which only two of their pluses can be highlighted in the available space.  The first advantage is their very high path availability, which is defined as the percentage of a channel’s total operating time during which the channel is fully functional and available for its designated use.  In a properly engineered land line circuit, path availability asymptotically approaches 100%.  In the very best wireless circuits, path availability approaches “five nines,” or 99.999%.  That figure translates into a wireless channel maximum outage time of about five minutes per year.  Do you think that “only five minutes” is a trivial amount of unavailable channel time?  Ask a stock broker what five minutes of outage would mean to his operations!  And in the Public Safety mobile radio world, which is a fairly good model for the emerging “consumer mobile device” environment, the path availability is at best only 95%, and even reaching that figure requires some expensive engineering designs.

The public’s expectations for electronic communications have been conditioned by almost a century of its use of wired channels or, in the special case of wireless broadcasting, signals which are generally always tens of decibels above the ambient noise level.  Consumers expect 100% path availability; they don’t know how to deal with lower-quality channels.  And if they don’t like “dropped” cellular telephone calls now, how well will they do with dropped mobile Web pages, dropped music streams or movies, etc.?

A second advantage of wired channels is their spectral bandwidth availability.  We can see that there isn’t a nearly sufficient amount of available RF spectrum to handle the total job of “broadbanding America.”  (And led by the politicized FCC, the “broadbanding job” is being pushed onto the RF spectrum largely because doing it in RF is “cheap and quick” compared to hanging cable!  RF capital investments are smaller, and the profits begin rolling in more rapidly.)  But “wires” always have abundant internal spectrum available, limited only by the ingenuity of engineers to use it.  Each copper pair in a cable, each glass fiber in a bundle, has available for use within itself the entire radio frequency domain, or the equivalent capacity in the time domain.  And the adjacent wire pair or fiber contains another complete and independent universe that adds to the available resources!

The end uses that the public makes of communications channels are not a legitimate topic for an engineering discussion; ethically as engineers “we can’t go there.”  But careful thought should be given before a consumer application that could be satisfied “on the wires” is instead dumped onto the RF spectrum.  Do we really need to do this?  Do we really want to burn up our very limited public resources for just a “nice to have” application?  Are we about to create the radio spectrum equivalent of a deep-water blowout?

Of course this discussion will have absolutely zero effect on the forthcoming public policy decisions; the Curmudgeon well understood this even as he wrote it.  In the marketplace, “popular” always trumps “thoughtful,” and the United States is, above everything else, a vast market!  We as a country will blithely squander our resources and then, looking back in time, we will wonder why we did it.  But to the Curmudgeon, destroying the RF spectrum solely in the name of chicness and a quick profit makes as much sense as slaughtering panda bears for their meat!  “Wireless” is not a toy: it’s a very limited resource and a tool!  And this fundamental view will never change.

Please consider for a moment, when you reach for your wireless iTrinket, that the terms “conservation” and “conservative” derive from the same language root, which root means “to protect from harm or destruction!”

What do you think?

“Let’s save the universe for RF”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

Apparently believing the old Brylcreem advertising slogan “A Little Dab’ll Do Ya,” Canadian proponents of the digital audio broadcasting (DAB) technology relied on a few stations in major markets across the country to spread the word. It didn’t work.

The Canadian Broadcast Corp. has announced it is shutting down DAB digital transmitters in Montreal, a possible [...]]]> Apparently believing the old Brylcreem advertising slogan “A Little Dab’ll Do Ya,” Canadian proponents of the digital audio broadcasting (DAB) technology relied on a few stations in major markets across the country to spread the word. It didn’t work.

The Canadian Broadcast Corp. has announced it is shutting down DAB digital transmitters in Montreal, a possible prelude to elimination of the Eureka-147 DAB signal from the mix of radio signals available to listeners in our neighbor to the north.

That’s probably a good thing.

DAB is the 30-year-old European technology that first aired as a BBC broadcast in the mid-1990s. It was the first to use the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing modulation technique that has become something of a standard option for wideband digital systems. Rather than tuning to an AM or FM frequency, a listener can access stations on both frequencies through DAB.

But the technology has problems.

Compressing audio streams onto a relatively narrow band can reduce the quality of the streams. Reception often is poor. Furthermore, DAB’s signal delay of 2 seconds can be discombobulating to a listener who also is watching an event on a TV.

A new version of the technology, named DAB+, was introduced five years ago. It upgrades the technology, but it is not compatible with DAB receivers so listeners are relatively few at this point.

Canada’s DAB experiment ran into other difficulties. Because the 73 DAB radio stations in the country are located in major markets, rural areas in between – and there are lots of rural areas in Canada – were under-served. This also roiled automakers whose vehicles could not pick up strong digital signals between metropolitan areas. Carmakers opted for satellite radio instead.

Additionally, most Canadian digital radio uses L-band for broadcasting, but dominant European programming on DAB is on Band III at the opposite end of the MHz dial. Finally, because dual-language Canada requires digital receivers to accommodate both French and English, radio manufacturers had to produce units just for a Canadian market, which was not a profitable business plan.

The apparent failure of DAB to take hold in Canada probably opens the door for an in-band, on-channel (IBOC) digital takeover. IBOC is the system adopted in this country by the Federal Communications Commission, currently in the form of HD Radio, the iBiquity Digital Corporation’s leading entry in the digital sweepstakes.

IBOC’s big edge is that digital and analog radio signals can be broadcast simultaneously on the same frequency. This means radio listeners can get by with their existing receivers. In Canada, this means cars traveling between cities will be able to receive digital programming. IBOC is being informally introduced in Canada at this time, without the official imprimatur of the Canadian Broadcast Corp., to see how it develops there.

But IBOC isn’t a perfect system either. Because it pushes a little beyond the edge of a channel’s authorized frequency, interference with nearby station broadcasts sometimes occurs. A clean stream is still not a reality in some applications.

So, stay tuned, especially if you are in Canada. Your broadcast options are evolving right before your ears.

LBA Technology is a leading manufacturer and integrator of radio frequency systems, components and test equipment for broadcast, industrial and government users worldwide.

Within the developing utility Smart Grid universe, this time we’ll look at some special concerns about the customer-centric Advanced Metering Initiative area.  Here the deck is stacked entirely against the consumer.  First, the consumer will have to pay the costs for implementing the Initiative; in California alone, the costs just for replacing a significant portion [...]]]> Within the developing utility Smart Grid universe, this time we’ll look at some special concerns about the customer-centric Advanced Metering Initiative area.  Here the deck is stacked entirely against the consumer.  First, the consumer will have to pay the costs for implementing the Initiative; in California alone, the costs just for replacing a significant portion of all of the state’s existing customer power meters will be in the billions of dollars (“Yep, son, that’s billion with a ‘B’ ”).  Electronic meters are inherently more expensive to purchase than the (still fully functional!) mechanical meters that they replace, and the mass replacement program also has huge up-front labor costs.  These costs will be (eventually) paid in full by the ratepayers.

After paying for the mandatory investment the consumer will then be hit with “Time of Use” power pricing, and the general expectation is that the overall cost of electricity will rise, even at a constant consumption level.  For example, the Curmudgeon saw a presentation by one southeastern utility, which had a nominal off-peak power cost of about 8 cents per kwh, in which presentation they proposed a “critical peak load” hourly pricing figure of 50 cents per kilowatt-hour!  While consumers and businesses can shift some of their loads to off-peak hours, much cannot be shifted.  Utility bills will increase.

One of the virtues of AMI is touted to be “providing the customer with his previous-day’s consumption and billing information,” and doing so every day.  This is done as an inducement to get him to conserve, especially at critical peak load hours.  But is the huge investment in new technology needed to potentiate this “feature” really cost justified?   Right now the consumer can change out appliances and lighting in his home or business for more efficient units without any utility intrusion, and sometimes with the aid of utility “energy-efficiency improvement program” cash rebates!  Currently the consumer has (and has always had) all the “technology” he needs to push his home (or business) thermostat up a bit on summer afternoons and down a bit on winter nights.  Those who willingly want to conserve will do so already; those who have no use for conservation will further enrich the utility companies.  But everyone will pay more.

Turning to AMI telecommunications matters, utilities have no precedent or demonstrated skill at successfully building and operating telecommunications networks comprised of vast numbers of nodes, which networks are required to provide high-accuracy and -reliability daily transport of meter-derived power consumption data.  A metropolitan utility can easily have several million customer meters installed, and each one will be an untended individual communications node/”cash register” for the company!

All of the millions of meters, located in every imaginable physical setting and environment, have to function and to communicate properly every single day if the projected AMI efficiency benefits are to be achieved!  According to the AMI concept, each of the millions of meters is to be interrogated at least once a day (though there are fail-safe provisions for after-the-fact meter data collection as well).  No agency, except perhaps for a few large cellular telephone companies, has experience in running two-way wireless telecommunications networks with this number of nodes and this extent of geographical dispersion!

Smart Grid Electric Meter

It is a very safe bet that senior utility managers and executives have no grasp of the difficulties inherent in keeping their newly-established meter reading networks reliably operational over long time frames, including EMI and RFI problems, “missing data” retrieval, error correction of retrieved data, huge daily instantaneous data flows into central billing computers, unscheduled meter maintenance/replacement, etc.  Past electric utility efforts at moving into the provision of public telecommunications services have rarely succeeded. This is another major potential failure point!

Then there is the matter of the use or misuse of personal consumer data collected by the utilities.  Using the new AMI systems, utilities will be collecting “load profiles” of each customer, i.e., detailed information about their individual power consumption patterns.  Such information is commercially valuable, both to the utilities themselves and to third-party businesses.  Access to these records would provide to a sales organization an advantage in marketing and selling power-related products and services to individual consumers.  What protections have utilities taken to ensure complete privacy of their customers’ data, which were gathered without specific customer authorizations?  Do the customers own and control their individual load profiles?  Do they have established privacy rights?  This could be a huge area of uncertainty.

Installation of the Smart Meter will in many cases automatically establish a “Home Area Network,” an RF-based network within each customer’s premise, with two rather unfortunate potential consequences.  First, the proliferation of these little meter-based RF-emitters across the entire metropolitan landscape will inherently raise the RF noise floor on the unlicensed radio bands on which they operate, thus affecting the operation of other customer-owned personal wireless networks.  Utility management, of course, won’t care; they “use” the spectrum freely but its maintenance is not their responsibility!  Second, the existence of a utility-controlled wireless network within a customer’s premise, specifically designed to control customer-owned hardware and to override (if necessary) customer decisions, provides the utility with some rather “Big Brother-ish” capabilities!  Is this something that consumers want, or even understand?

Lastly, the advent of (unrelated) new technology and shifting customer energy usage patterns needs to be considered.  Just two of the many current technology trends cast considerable uncertainty into the future structure of the industry: the (expected) increasing number of adoptions of both all-electric (battery) powered automobiles and of photo-voltaic “off the grid” local power generation systems.  The former, if large adoption numbers develop, threatens to overwhelm the existing distribution grids and to shift peak grid loads to very unusual hours, while the latter will slowly reduce overall load demand over time.  But is the Smart Grid actually being designed for use in a future utility world that may be considerably different from today’s industry?

Again, the Curmudgeon affirms that the issue is not at all whether the Smart Grid concept is worthy of being implemented.  In his opinion, it is.  From a technological viewpoint it is necessary, it will promote future energy efficiencies and, in the long term, it could perhaps foster a measure of national energy independence.  Rather the issue is whether the present utility industry structure (both municipal and investor-owned companies) and especially its management can do the implementation on a technologically sound and a fiscally conservative basis.  The present utility world is a commodity-based industry (“potatoes: 5 pounds for $1.99″), not a technological one, and these people are not “rocket scientists.”

This series has provided, admittedly, only a high-level “snapshot” of the utility world as it presently exists.  “Terms and conditions” in the industry will indeed change in the future, perhaps some of the problems described above will be satisfactorily solved, and newer and better technology may arise.  But the major decisions need to be made now, and those decisions have huge consequences!

“Doing this deal” is a fractional $(trillion) proposition, and the out-of-pocket costs accruing for the rate payers from bad choices and failures by the utilities can be potentially tremendous.  So it’s a crap shoot!   How do we ratepayers maximize our chances for success?  We wish we knew!

What do you think?

“Let’s keep the universe safe for RF”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

LBA provides RF engineering services, integration resources, compliance services and test equipment to support Smart Grid deployment.

Last time we introduced the new buzzword term, the utility Smart Grid, provided a quick overview of the concept-undergoing-creation, and noted that doubts exist whether the utility industry can successfully implement it.  Now let’s spend a little time examining those doubts as they relate to the utility-centric side of the Smart Grid effort.

The first concern [...]]]> Last time we introduced the new buzzword term, the utility Smart Grid, provided a quick overview of the concept-undergoing-creation, and noted that doubts exist whether the utility industry can successfully implement it.  Now let’s spend a little time examining those doubts as they relate to the utility-centric side of the Smart Grid effort.

The first concern has to do with definitions and standards.  The problem here is that, despite much previously sunk effort, the work on both sets of items has not yet been completed.  Nevertheless, utilities are under pressure to begin the implementation anyway; it represents an expansion area for their investments and returns within an industry in which life and corporate business is pretty much “same-o, same-o” from year to year.

In that small grids inevitably connect to larger grids, small incompatibilities or deficiencies in automation systems installed today in one utility member of a regional or national grid can lead to inabilities to fully complete the mission and to gain all the benefits on the larger network.  It’s as though one utility member of, say, a southeastern regional grid brought 250 kV, 60 Hz power to the regional transmission grid operator, a second member brought 138 kV, 50 Hz power to the regional grid, and a third member brought 500 kV, d.c. power!  Yes, this mess could be accommodated with sufficient investment in additional hardware and control systems, but all the efficiency “savings” would have long evaporated!

It is true that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is drafting a proposed set of nationwide Smart Grid standards, but these are still at least a number of months away from adoption.  Wouldn’t it make sense to wait until everyone had a chance to don the same baseball uniform before sending the team onto the field?

The second concern centers on the nature of the utilities themselves and their people who have to make choices, to design new network operating methods and protocols, and to make significant purchasing decisions.  And the problem here is: this sort of “new technology” development area is not what these companies have been set up to do.  They typically do not do it well.

Designing and implementing a Smart Grid necessarily involves research and development, i.e., pressing forth into the unknown.  However, in a word, utilities do not do any R&D as part of their corporate world; they have little skill in this area.  Utilities are operations companies:  “Get the electricity, gas, water, out to the customers and collect for the delivery!”  That’s the day-to-day company business.

Prior to joining the utility world, the Curmudgeon spent the previous thirty years of his career in several different R&D science and technology environments.  It became abundantly clear to him that utilities perform miserably, frankly, whenever they attempt to do R&D!  Sorry, but that’s the way it lays out in practice.

It’s not that the utility companies are lacking in skilled engineers; they do have some on staff.  But even these engineers are focused on improving current operations, not on perfecting new technology.  They can well design and construct new transmission lines, new pipelines, new fixed assets.  But they do not typically have experience in systems engineering, principles of new technology (especially in telecommunications), methods of structured investigation and exploration, and other standard fixtures of the contemporary R&D world.

The larger problem, however, resides in the utility management ranks.  While experienced engineers may be available within the corporate structure, seldom do they become management and executive-level decision-makers.  These corporate top-level individuals tend to be successful operations and/or business people, and often (especially in the critical telecommunications arena), they have no technical understanding at all of what they are managing!  “Ted, you’ve successfully led our revenue fraud business unit.  That’s great, so now we are promoting you to be our new telecommunications group manager!”  The managerial-level “technical expertise in depth” that is so ubiquitous and so indispensable in the R&D world is largely missing in the utility operations world.  And with the Smart Grid so critically dependent upon the massive use of (often yet undesigned and built) telecommunications networks, this might prove to be a fatal flaw.

The third concern centers upon Smart Grid security.  Since every node in the grid has to communicate with at least several other nodes, large amounts of operational data are perpetually flowing.  But data-in-motion are a relatively easy target for those who would seek to bring down a Smart Grid.  Data has to be accurate and secure if reliable real-time operation of the grid is to be successful.  And the data networks themselves have to be exceptionally well-hardened against intrusion and attack.  Bringing down a transmission tower is a relatively cheap and simple way to cripple a geographical region.  But paralyzing a Smart Grid operational data network, done remotely and surreptitiously, is easier and more attractive to a terrorist.  Overall Smart Grid data transmission and physical network security have to be “massive and impenetrable,” but this too is an area in which utilities do not have a strong demonstrated skill level.

There are some strong concerns here about whether the present utilities can handle the design and construction of a Smart Grid, and whether they can do so without squandering the rate payers’ money!

Next time we’ll look at the customer-centric areas of the Smart Grid.

What do you think?

“Let’s keep the universe safe for RF”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

LBA provides RF engineering services, integration resources, compliance services and test equipment to support Smart Grid deployment.

This is Part 2 in a 3 part series on the Smart Grid. Check out RF Blog again next week for Part 3.

The FCC requires that all 2600 MHz band BRS and EBS broadband licensees who would must demonstrate that they provide “substantial service” to actual customers no later than May 1, 2011. Failure to meet this requirement will result in forfeiture of the license and the licensee will be ineligible to regain it. Various “safe harbors” [...]]]> The FCC requires that all 2600 MHz band BRS and EBS broadband licensees who would must demonstrate that they provide “substantial service” to actual customers no later than May 1, 2011. Failure to meet this requirement will result in forfeiture of the license and the licensee will be ineligible to regain it. Various “safe harbors” are available to licensees wishing to demonstrate substantial service. The BRS and EBS bands are currently being developed by ClearWire and other operators to provide 4G WiMax services.

The FCC Rules and tactical approaches to achieving substantial service were discussed during a recent WCAI webinar, President Fred Campbell, formerly an FCC Wireless Bureau Chief, talked about legal requirements to satisfy FCC substantial service and license protection. Lawrence Behr, CEO of LBA Group, discussed engineering design and hardware solutions to achieve safe harbor compliance that meets or exceeds the threshold of FCC acceptance. He emphasized the short time remaining for compliance, and the “Use It or Loose It!”  penalty for non-compliance.

You can view Lawrence Behr’s key points for reaching BRS / EBS substantial service safe harbors in the video above.

LBA Group, through its Lawrence Behr Associates consulting group, counsels licensees on their substantial service compliance. LBA can also furnish complete engineering planning, turnkey deployment services, and FCC documentation for safe harbor facilities.

There is a new “next great thing” concept now moving through the land, undergoing promotion in the popular press and probably destined to be a future concern (and cost burden) to the citizens of the United States.  That term is “Smart Grid.”  And it’s a term that would be much easier to deal [...]]]> There is a new “next great thing” concept now moving through the land, undergoing promotion in the popular press and probably destined to be a future concern (and cost burden) to the citizens of the United States.  That term is “Smart Grid.”  And it’s a term that would be much easier to deal with if, in fact, it had a firm, well-understood definition.  But it doesn’t yet, and it probably won’t for some time.

In a general sense, the term “Smart Grid” seems to denote a public utility transmission and distribution network (it’s almost always electrical)  which a] contains an expanded number of distributed and automated monitoring and control nodes, b] is capable of instantaneous communication between nodes, leading to self-discovery of (developing and existing) problems and automatic implementation of network action to repair and to correct the problems, and c] extends utility monitoring and control directly into its customers’ premises.

Who could quibble with such a concept, which offers greater service reliability and potentially lower service costs than that which is available now on the manually-operated utility networks?  Certainly not the Curmudgeon.  But he does have a large caveat about it: “The devil, Young Grasshopper, is in the details!”

It should be noted that the Curmudgeon has received exposure to the utility industry, having worked during his long career for two different utility operating companies.  His service in the industry overlapped in time period the beginning of the Smart Grid movement.  It should also be stipulated that this is a very big and expanding technological field, only the surface of which can be touched in a blog post.

The Smart Grid initiative involves at least two separate major areas, with perhaps more yet to be defined: utility-centric transmission/distribution network automation and customer-centric automation with the major activity currently described as the Advanced Metering Initiative (AMI).

Within the electrical utility world, network (“grid”) automation essentially involves more sophisticated monitoring and control of major fixed assets as well as extension of new automatic monitoring and control capabilities to smaller, remotely located fixed assets.

Currently electrical sub-stations (large, fixed locations where high voltage transmission lines from power generation sources terminate and power is transformed to lower voltages for distribution to end users via other networks) are generally well instrumented.  Typically, however, sub-station monitoring and control data are sent over low-bandwidth communications channels (often leased telephone lines) to a central control point, where they are reviewed and acted upon by humans.  Grid automation would increase the amount of sub-station monitoring (and probably also their communications channel bandwidths) and would introduce computer-based decision making for rapid problem avoidance and resolution.  In most cases communications channel bandwidths into sub-stations could be expanded without great difficulty and/or cost.

The remote assets automation problem is a larger one, however.  Even a modest-sized electrical utility will have thousands of pole, pad-mounted, and underground transformers, plus line switches, line voltage regulators, service restorers, capacitor banks (for power factor correction), etc.  Ideally, all of these need to be monitored and controlled, and thus they need to be made a part of a large decision-making loop.  This is not a trivial communications problem.

On the AMI side, the stated intent is to meter customers’ electricity usage in small time increments (ranging from fifteen minute to one hour periods), to inform the customer of the currently posted “time-of-day-based” cost of the power that is being distributed within that time interval, and then to issue bills priced accordingly.  This is known within the industry as Time Of Use (TOU) pricing.

The utilities’ primary AMI goal is to “peak shave,” to induce their customers to restrict their consumption of expensive-to-generate power during peak periods of very high demand.  This would minimize the utilities’ need for investment in the new generating stations and transmission lines that would be necessary to handle higher future peak loads.  Secondarily, it may also induce customers to improve the power-usage efficiency of their homes and businesses in response to increasing costs.

There is a second consumer-centric area, known as customer load-shedding, which also seeks to peak shave by automatically disconnecting some customer load (such as summer air conditioning) whenever necessary.  It’s relatively small in the overall scope of things, and space limitations preclude treating it here.

But the central concern with the Smart Grid concept is not whether it is worth pursuing.  It is, since there is a need for more technology leading to more efficiency in this field.  Rather, in the Curmudgeon’s opinion, it is whether the utility industry as it presently exists can design and build it successfully and economically.  There are some strong limitations and pitfalls, both within and without the industry, any one of which might result in a defective or crippled implementation.  And ultimately, since the utility world is regulated by the various states’ Public Utility or Public Service Commissions under what amounts to a “cost-plus” earnings basis, the utility’s customers would be on-the-hook for most of the failures, cost over-runs, etc.

We, the “rate payers,” are going to have to pay for all the new Smart Grid systems, all the new engineering, all the new hardware, all the new software.  This is certainly true for municipal utilities, and even the investor-owned utilities aren’t playing entirely with their own capital.  And that’s why we need to be completely assured that the Smart Grid as currently being designed and implemented will be a success and an efficient use of the rate payers’ contributions.

Next time we’ll look at some potential weak links and problem areas in the development and implementation of the Smart Grid.

What do you think?

“Let’s keep the universe safe for RF”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

LBA provides RF engineering services, integration resources, compliance services and test equipment to support Smart Grid deployment.

This is Part 1 in a 3 part series on the Smart Grid.  Check out RF Blog again next week for Part 2.

Transmitters are the target of copper thieves once again, this time the target was a high-voltage television transmitter at KMBC in Kansas City.  The copper thieves managed to temporarily knock KMBC off the air for some Kansas City viewers, but within an hour KMBC had switched to an auxiliary transmitter with less [...]]]> Transmitters are the target of copper thieves once again, this time the target was a high-voltage television transmitter at KMBC in Kansas City.  The copper thieves managed to temporarily knock KMBC off the air for some Kansas City viewers, but within an hour KMBC had switched to an auxiliary transmitter with less power than the one that’s sidelined.

The thieves hit the transmitter on Sunday night, cutting through a large section of a 2-inch conduit copper pipe before running away, leaving green coolant everywhere. They almost made it through another copper pipe before running off. KMBC general manager Wayne Godsey says the theft involved less than $10,000 in damage, although pointed out the thieves could have been seriously injured by 35,000 volts of electricity or scalding hot liquid that flows through the pipes. “The risk they took was not just getting caught by the authorities. They risked serious-and perhaps fatal-injuries. It was incredibly dangerous,” he said.

A gauge that detected the sudden loss in water pressure shut down the transmitter. If not, the damage to the site could have been up to $100,000.

One thing Agresti is sure of: Either the robbers knew exactly what they were doing or were incredibly brazen.

KMBC’s transmitter thievery was previously reported in the Kansas City Star, which says the crooks may be looking at federal charges. “If it’s maliciously done with the intent of damaging the tower, that is a federal criminal offense,” said communications lawyer Erwin G. Krasnow of the Washington, D.C., firm Garvey Schubert Barer.

Over the years LBA has reported on several major copper thefts from transmitters and towers such as:

Copper Theft on the Rise – Threatening Situation for an Alabama Engineer

Not Just the Copper – They Stole the Whole Tower!

Defeating AM Ground System Copper Thieves

LBA Technology can supply a large selection of copper strap and tubing for the installation or renovation of RF systems.

The rogue Galaxy 15 satellite

The Galaxy 15 satellite that was knocked out by a solar storm on April 5th (but is somehow still transmitting) has been slowly drifting towards the AMC 11 satellite and was expected to drift into the orbit of AMC 11 around May 23rd.  Since these 2 satellites operate on the [...]]]>

The rogue Galaxy 15 satellite

The Galaxy 15 satellite that was knocked out by a solar storm on April 5th (but is somehow still transmitting) has been slowly drifting towards the AMC 11 satellite and was expected to drift into the orbit of AMC 11 around May 23rd.  Since these 2 satellites operate on the same frequencies, there was expected to be interference with  satellite and cable programming across the United States, Canada, Caribbean and Mexico. AMC 11 also relays HDTV programming for NBC, Discovery, Scripps, Comcast, MTV and iNDemand networks.

SES World Skies plans to maneuver its satellite, AMC 11, to match the drift of zombie satellite Galaxy 15, effectively running from the interference. That should maintain a minimum distance of separation between the two satellites.

The company will also move a new satellite, SES-1, to the opposite side of Galaxy 15, effectively flanking the zombie. This will enable customers, including several cable television networks, to leapfrog their broadcasts over any potential interruption in service. Customers will either be able to maintain services on AMC-11 during its repositioned drift, or re-point antennas to the new SES-1 in order to maintain the quality of their services.

The interference is now likely minimum, but hopefully companies are monitoring the signals for interference with their cable and satellite test equipment so they can make any adjustments needed.

Some wildlife conservationists and communications industry members have reached an understanding about how to start giving migrating birds safer flights when they take wing in the vicinity of wireless and broadcast towers.

In a memorandum submitted this month (May) to the Federal Communications Commission, the ad hoc group recommended the FCC develop interim standards on the [...]]]> Some wildlife conservationists and communications industry members have reached an understanding about how to start giving migrating birds safer flights when they take wing in the vicinity of wireless and broadcast towers.

In a memorandum submitted this month (May) to the Federal Communications Commission, the ad hoc group recommended the FCC develop interim standards on the issue and suggested a framework for the standards.

The agreement seems like a good first step in protecting the interests of both the communications industry and the birds. LBA Group Inc. has followed the issue closely because of the company’s ongoing commitment to services that mitigate tower hazards (for man and bird alike) and to full utilization of existing towers through antenna tower colocation.

The FCC sought the agreement because it is being forced to change the Antenna Structure Registration program. A federal appeals court ruled two years ago that the ASR program did not adequately factor in concerns of conservationists about the hazards of towers to birds. The commission was told to reevaluate the tower approval process and to increase the public’s involvement in it.

Antenna Tower

The memorandum of understanding essentially concedes that tower guidelines should be developed to mitigate the bird problem. However, it recommends that the tighter regulations be reserved for towers for which an ASR is required, thus exempting many shorter and replacement towers. It also recommends that not every tower be required to undergo an environmental assessment, which industry observers believe could turn a tower application into a year-long process.

Finally, the group recommended the FCC work up a preferred lighting scheme for towers.

“We urge the FCC to adopt the interim standards in the memorandum as it addresses the delicate balance between the migratory birds issue with the wireless industry’s ability to deploy and expand ubiquitous, innovative wireless broadband and voice services for all Americans,” said Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association®. “We look forward to proceeding with these mutually beneficial proposals so we can thoughtfully construct and place wireless towers throughout the country.”

Other industry spokesmen echoed Largent’s remarks, as did conservationist members of the group. Robert Irvin, a senior vice president at Defenders of Wildlife, urged the FCC to move ahead. “The recommendations will conserve migratory birds while furthering growth in communications technology. By adopting these standards, the FCC will demonstrate that progress in technology can go hand in hand with the protection of our treasured wildlife.”

The agreement masks an underlying dispute about just how much danger the towers and their guy wires pose to migrating flocks. While there is no question that at least thousands of birds are killed and injured annually when their flights intersect the towers, the magnitude of the threat is unclear.

Wildlife conservation groups themselves can only broadly estimate the loss of fowl life, conjecturing that between 5 million and 50 million birds die from tower encounters. However, if the 80,000 or so towers around the country are bringing down even 1 million birds a year – an average of 13 birds per tower – that probably is enough to warrant a look at new lighting and other fowl safeguards.

Through its suite of FCC and NEPA compliance services, LBA can help tower owners and users reduce their exposure to these kinds of regulatory dilemmas. LBA Technology lets some tower users entirely avoid the new-tower problem through its expert AM antenna colocation program and colocation intermodulation studies. LBA also is a national leader in AM detuning, RF hazard auditing, remediation, and RF safety training – all part of its trademarked RFGreen environmental safety services.

The groups authoring the memorandum to the FCC were the Infrastructure Coalition (comprised of CTIA-The Wireless Association®, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Association of Tower Erectors and PCIA-The Wireless Infrastructure Association) and the Conservation Group (comprised of the American Bird Conservancy, the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Audubon Society).

Engineering consultant Richard Arsenault says the biggest problem for AM reception during the daytime “is no longer interference between stations”, as it was when the AM service was established decades ago. The former station owner and consulting engineer says the threat is now “interference from electronic devices and power lines”, [...]]]> Engineering consultant Richard Arsenault says the biggest problem for AM reception during the daytime “is no longer interference between stations”, as it was when the AM service was established decades ago. The former station owner and consulting engineer says the threat is now “interference from electronic devices and power lines”, and it’s steadily getting worse.  Arsenault suggests at least a four-fold increase in power, and possibly as much as a 10-times hike for some stations.

Power line transmission towers may affect AM station coverage

This is separate from his earlier petition, addressing pre-sunrise authorization rules, on which the commission is taking comment.

Arsenault argues that AM service has suffered serious degradation of coverage from interference caused by new technologies. He cites broadband over power lines, computers, appliances like microwave ovens, energy efficient fluorescent lighting with integrated solid-state switching circuitry “and virtually all other electronic devices and services.”

Arsenault said: “The commission established service contours and interference protection ratios at an earlier time when interference from existing electrical equipment was minimal and interference from digital electronics did not exist. At that time, the protected contours and the interference ratios made sense. Unfortunately, they were calculated without available foresight of the future digital technological revolution.”

“What we currently have are AM broadcast stations adequately protecting each other in the AM radio band, but these same stations are not receiving protection from the intense electromagnetic interference from unintentional sources.” LBA offers a lineup of electromagnetic shielding solutions and RF shielding services.  He wants the FCC to rethink its protected service contours: “The sources of electromagnetic interference are part of our current lifestyle and will only get worse.”

Increasing power during daytime hours would solidify daytime coverage of participating stations without altering the interference ratios between them. “I recommend that a ten-fold (10 dB) power increase be adopted. If this can not be achieved, alternately, power increases of four-fold (6 dB) could be adopted and still be significant. Ultimately, anything less than a doubling of power (3 dB) would be almost insignificant.”

Arsenault’s proposal would limit the power hike to daytime hours, at least at first, until nighttime interference concerns could be worked out. See our FAQs on RF Interference.

He concludes: “AM radio service will further decline without serious intervention to remedy the interference issue as the ratio of the unintentional interference to AM radio will only increase further with the addition of each new technology. The time to get the static out of AM radio is past due.”

Lawrence Behr Associates can also provide intermodulation studies / interference analysis solutions. Contact Mike Britner for more information.

Cisco recently performed an on-line survey about RF interference and Wi-Fi network usage with 600 participants from industries such as  agriculture, education, arts, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and many others.

78% of companies now consider all or part of their wireless network to be mission critical.

54% of companies indicated that RF interference causes wireless network [...]]]> Cisco recently performed an on-line survey about RF interference and Wi-Fi network usage with 600 participants from industries such as  agriculture, education, arts, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and many others.

78% of companies now consider all or part of their wireless network to be mission critical.

54% of companies indicated that RF interference causes wireless network performance problems (and another 18% don’t know if RF interference is impacting their Wi-Fi network).

RF interference is an important problem impacting wireless network performance. These findings show that maintaining wireless network performance while also minimizing RF interference is vital for today’s organizations.

Many of Cisco’s customers  indicated that they did not know what to do about RF interference. Some were having trouble finding the source of the interference where others simply did not know how to correct the RF interference.  There are many Wi-Fi and non Wi-FI devices that can cause RF interference. These devices include microwave ovens, cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, wireless video cameras, outdoor microwave links, wireless game controllers, Zigbee devices, fluorescent lights, WiMAX, and so on. LBA offers some RF interference FAQs as well as a line of RF shielding products.  Of particular interest to those in the medical field is our technical note relating to RF interference of medical equipment.  Those in the educational field may want to check out our technical note relating to RF containment in lab environments.

If you have any interesting interference stories, we want to hear from you!

For more information on LBA’s interference solutions, contact Mike Britner.

It is our experience that RF safety accountability and hazard avoidance is well established in the wireless communications sector. However, hazardous industrial RF is widely encountered in a wide variety of industry settings through all manner of process equipment and non-radio systems. Many of these systems are benign just out of the [...]]]>

It is our experience that RF safety accountability and hazard avoidance is well established in the wireless communications sector. However, hazardous industrial RF is widely encountered in a wide variety of industry settings through all manner of process equipment and non-radio systems. Many of these systems are benign just out of the manufacturer’s shops, but through poor maintenance, improper RF shielding, or integration modification can engender all manner of shock and burn problems, not to mention the capability of actually starting fires in surrounding work areas. Often, there is no formal RF safety training provided to workers as OSHA requires. An emerging area of concern is the impact of stray RF on other processes and electronic systems. We have encountered some scary cases.

One case involved a large computer controlled cutting table where the knife would periodically take off on uncommanded excursions, imperiling attendants and ruining feedstock. The problem was a high power plastic welder two rooms over that was improperly shielded, interacting with the cutter controller. Although there were numerous other potentially hazardous systems, the quite conscientious safety director had no idea that he had RF exposures that should be included in his plan. We see this time after time in industry.

In another, we investigated the RF sensitivity of the braking controller on a popular theme park terror ride that plunged visitors a hundred feet before safely stopping them! The park proposed to place a trunking radio base station and antennas next to the ride control room. The much greater liability was found when LBA was called on to audit FCC RF hazard (OET-65) compliance for the antenna. The ride turned out to be safe when the controller cabinet doors were placarded against opening while the base station was in operation.

LBA comes out of the radio transmission industry where this is a normal part of safety planning. We are really puzzled why the industrial safety community seems often to not take RF safety into account. How might we improve the general situation? We would appreciate you sharing your insights here.

For assistance with RF safety services, please contact Mike Britner.

It has become increasingly popular to install bi-directional amplifiers (BDA’s) and distributed antenna systems (DAS’s) to overcome problems of cellular and other wireless coverage within buildings. Properly engineered, and coordinated with the cell cos being retransmitted these can greatly help in overcoming building problems.

However, these systems are readily available, and are increasingly being installed without [...]]]> It has become increasingly popular to install bi-directional amplifiers (BDA’s) and distributed antenna systems (DAS’s) to overcome problems of cellular and other wireless coverage within buildings. Properly engineered, and coordinated with the cell cos being retransmitted these can greatly help in overcoming building problems.

However, these systems are readily available, and are increasingly being installed without the needed planning and coordination. This can cause real interference problems to wireless licensees – and bring FCC wrath upon the user!

In this case, a movie studio found itself in the FCC cross hairs for installing an unauthorized BDA that ran amok.

On January 29, 2010, in response to an interference complaint from   T-Mobile on the frequency 1892.0 MHz in Culver City, California, agents from the Los Angeles FCC Office located the interfering signal to a bi-directional amplifier (”BDA”) installed on the roof of Sony Studios – Stage-6 – in Culver City. Sony subsequently acknowledged operation of the BDA in question.

T-Mobile has a license to provide PCS services on 1892.0 MHz in the Culver City area. The FCC concluded that operation of the Sony transmitter (BDA) was subject to the licensing requirements under Section 24.11 of the Commission’s Rules, which applies to PCS licensees like T-Mobile. In addition, they notified Sony that transmitters in the PCS radio service must have received an equipment authorization prior to use. Furthermore, a licensee’s authority to install a BDA does not, without further authorization from the licensee, permit a subscriber to install a BDA. In response to an inquiry from a Los Angeles agent, T-Mobile reported that it did not provide Sony authorization to install a BDA.

The FCC ordered Sony to cease use of the system immediately, and to provide the Commission evidence of FCC Rules conformance before turning it back on, under penalty of prospective fines if not done.

Unintended radio frequency interference is an increasing problem in our world that is becoming more and more dependent on wireless systems. LBA has considerable expertise available for troubleshooting and correcting communication system interference. If you need assistance, please contact Mike Britner for an immediate assessment of your problem.