Increasingly, companies are transmitting sophisticated, timely information to employees outside traditional office settings. For example, manufacturers are bringing complex information to the shop floor, either to line workers or to intelligent machines. Employees who have work requiring movement over hundreds of square feet, in clipboard jobs such as bedside health care or shipping and receiving, also demand timely information access. Worker mobility, environmental hardships and a desire for shop-floor configuration flexibility all create an incentive for wireless networks. By employing spread spectrum technology and limiting radio output to less than 1 watt of power, vendors can transmit wireless communications without FCC broadcast licenses.
Many vendors sell equipment that uses the lower bandwidth, according to industry observers.
Unfortunately, this frequency range offers the least amount of bandwidth, and wireless system performance is a function of the bandwidth available for transmission, according to Dave Micciche, vice president, Windata, Incorporated, Littleton, Massachusetts. Micciche adds that using the available bandwidth at the higher frequencies involves overcoming some technological challenges not present at lower frequencies. Windata manufactures a suite of wireless products for local area network, or LAN, bridging that uses the higher two FCC-sanctioned bands. The products use a spread spectrum technique that simultaneously disperses the signal over the two bands. Micciche contends that, in addition to providing more bandwidth, these higher bands usually are free from the interference caused by product cohabitation.