Talk:Very minimum shift keying

message: Someone removed the "disputed science" infobox summarizing the contradiction with the Shannon coding theorem.  Why?  Is there some kind of edit war going on here between proponents of crank claims to have broken this theorem and information theorists?  ---CH 16:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: CH are you sure it was there? I can't seem to find it in the edit history. There were several redirects done on this topic, perhaps it was lost by accident during one of them. Anyway I agree it should have one. Do you want to do the honors? --DV8 2XL 17:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Disputed science infobox?

message: These two paragraphs were added by User:Hyperspace1, evidently supportive of VMSK:
:First I must tell you that the sceptics are just that. You sound like the gas men that told Edison the light bulb would never work and the stable men who told Ford his machine would only work if the devil blessed it.
:Yes Dr. Howe did exist. An easy bit of research finds George William Osborne Howe, DSc, LLD. Dr Howe became a professor in 1921 and in 1938 dean of Engineering at the University of Glascow. This information can be verified at www.glascow.ac.uk
At least the anon contributor provided some extra info on that Howe guy...hope anyone can put it to good use. EpiVictor 22:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply in support of VMSK

message: Somebody has been adding comments supportive of VMSK, but I can't tell who or when because they are unsigned. You can use a pseudonym if
you want to remain anonymous, but it would be nice to delimit what's written by each person, and to know when it was written.
I say again, this is math and science, not religion or philosophy. The only opinions that count are those backed up by facts, logic
and empirical evidence. Those not so backed up are useless. You don't have to take my personal word for it that VMSK is flawed.
In fact I encourage you not to take my personal word for it. Take the time to learn the math and science and verify my analysis for yourself.
As for the large amount of money supposedly flowing into companies developing VMSK and UNB, this proves nothing except that humans can be
ignorant, greedy and foolish, and they often move in mindless herds. Just witness the 1999-2000 dot-com bubble.
You can fool people, maybe even many people, but you can't fool nature. This is exactly why I've spent a
considerable amount of my own personal time for the past 7 years debunking
and speaking out against VMSK/UNB. This has nothing to do with my job at Qualcomm; it's just that Qualcomm
employs a lot of communication engineers like me who understand comm theory. Because I understand this stuff a lot better
than the man in the street, I feel a moral obligation to speak out when
I see something like VMSK/UNB taking real money from real people.
It'll all be worthwhile if I can help some investor somewhere avoid losing his money. My more cynical friends have
asked me why I don't just keep quiet and heavily short-sell companies like CTLG, but my conscience won't let me to do that. It would
make me complicit in fleecing people who just don't know any better. Debunking can be a thankless task. You get a lot of ad-hominem
attacks and the occasional legal threat. And not just from the companies promoting it -- some of the strongest defenders of
Nigerian scam artists have been their own victims who cannot admit to having been fooled. But it's something I just feel I have to do.
Karn 21:30, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The history shows that the edits originated from IP address 71.52.105.197.  According to , this address belongs to EMBARQ Corporation, who are some sort of ISP.  I don't know if there's any underlying connection here...  Oli Filth 22:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope not. It would hurt the company's reputation if one of its employees or even worse, a key executive had invested in this technology. What next, Megabit internet over POTS thanks to VMSK? EpiVictor 21:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: As an interesting addendum, this IP address appears to be located in Gainesville, FL, which is just down the road from where CTLG are based (Tampa, FL).  Coincidence?  Possibly.  Oli Filth 18:31, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who is the VMSK supporter here? 

message: into the anonymous nature of my posts, you're making a mistake. It's just that I've spoken to some of you before on these things (on the phone and e-mail exchanges) and I would just like to keep things from getting personal. Here's the latest from 2 days ago (4/30). xG's press release announced the first commercial base stations have been sent, and that they are preparing to offer mobile broadband services. http://www.xgtechnology.com/news_pr_4-30-07.asp. Soon enough, they will either be offering the service to customers in Daytona Beach (close to my house), or they will be confessing this all is a huge ruse. Or you might argue that they will actually offer service, but not be using the technology they say they are using. If you are correct, of course you will be remembered well as the first whistleblower on some massive deception involving a company with a market cap of around $2 billion. 
However, if you are wrong, it has been a serious error, of many years standing. I think you deserve a footnote in history either way:) I have no certainty as to who's right or wrong. I say once again, as an investor, that I hope I am right for financial reasons and because I know some of these people and believe them to be good people. If you're right, I lose my money. But as time goes on, it appears you are the one being backed into the corner, not VMSK. They are the ones that have announced successful third party testing after weeks of trials. That third party, in spite of what you have said about them, should certainly have the ability to perform tests that you yourself have said are simple. They've been in their business for 32 years.
If you are wrong, it will be a story that has been repeated throughout time when new technologies knock on the world's door. "It can't be done" is a well-worn phrase that has been heard from the telescope to nanotechnolgy. The naysayers may have had mathematical reasoning, the "latest thinking" in physics or whatever, but it turned out that other scientists were reasoning out issues from a different perspective. I ask again, is there any way you're missing something? As far as I know, the patent office doesn't have the reputation for being a bunch of wild and crazy naked people with a rubber stamp. xG and Walker both have plenty of patents purportedly representing advances in their field. I wouldn't want a single dollar risked because of my views. I am up here because the comments had just gotten too one-sided, and there seem to be important developments weekly that no one here ever mentions.....I am here in the interest of balance. This should be a very fascinating place to stay tuned for anyone who understands what these technologies could mean.....
:At risk of turning this page into a discussion forum (which it isn't), here are some replies to your points.  (Oh, and please at least sign your posts (using ~~~~), so that people can tell where your comments finished and the next person's began).
:There is nothing to suggest that "Eagle Comtronics" has any pedigree in this sort of due diligence process, or in the design of physical-layer communiation standards.  Getting them to verify the validity of a modulation scheme would be like getting my local greengrocer to verify the long-term effects of genetically-modified carrots on the human immune system.  If they don't understand the issues, then they will be unable to critique the subject matter, and so will have nothing useful to say.
:If I (or Phil Karn, or anyone else dismissive of VMSK) were "missing something", then it would require the fundamentals of Fourier analysis and comms theory to be wrong.  VMSK simply cannot work the way its advertised if Fourier, Nyquist and Shannon are correct.  The maths explicitly prevents it, without resorting to any ambiguity, assumptions or approximations.  If VMSK does indeed work, then the implication would be that every communications system in existence today would not be working the way we thought it was.
:But it's not even as if Walker has tried to point out some fundamental flaw in our current understanding of comms theory (e.g. something along the lines of "although Fourier analysis would seem to indicate X, this analysis is in fact invalid because of Y"); indeed, from reading the contents of his website, he doesn't seem to be able to present a coherent case at all, and seems unable to deal with rational and logical arguments (see the conversations, etc. listed at Karn's website).  Simply re-defining the meaning of variables and blatantly misapplying rock-solid mathematical principles does not make the result correct!  So there's literally nothing to go on; nothing to make someone go "ah, right, maybe I'm missing something!".
:Quoting examples of experts being wrong in other fields at other points in history does not make Walker's "analysis" any more correct, nor Karn's any less correct.  (The examples you quoted were not in fact dismissed for mathematical reasons, but simply because people did not belive that humans were capable of the precision, etc. required to manufacture such things.  A modulation scheme, however, can be analysed completely mathemetically.  It is, after all, a bunch of mathematical operations on a bunch of mathematical functions.  It's even possible to analyse modulation schemes that aren't possible; this is implicitly what Shannon's 1948 paper does!)
:As for money that you may have invested in VMSK, ask yourself the following:
:* Why does CTLG have its stock price displayed live on its front page, and create press-releases along the lines of "Market Advisors Issues 12-Month Price Target of XXX"?  Do you think they're trying to make something out of nothing?
:* Why do their CEO and CTO, both of who apparently have 25 years of high-profile experience in the industry, have zero internet presence (other than that produced by CTLG's syndicated press releases)?
:* Why does their "technology" page only have images of breadboard-based circuitry?
:* Why are there non-sequiturs, such as referring to their patent (#6748022) as a "cryptology transmission method" that "will prove to be the most secure methodology for the safe transmission of all types of sensitive data", when in fact this patent has nothing to do with cryptography at all?
:* Why are there links to Walker's scrappy incoherent web material, rather than well-presented professional-quality material?  If they were indeed at the point where they were implementing this technology, it should not be a challenge for them to produce some decent-quality papers that discuss VMSK.
:* Why do the partners mentioned in press-releases (e.g. "Ludwig Enterprises" and "Balmoral Financing") have zero internet presence, or equally amateurish-looking websites?
:To me, this all screams "amateur", certainly not indicative that CTLG consists of a bunch of highly intelligent, innovative comms engineers.
Oli Filth 19:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  If you read too much 

message: Hoping Mr. Karn and any fellow electrical/telecom engineers will forgive me for the extreme simplifications and some degree of term abuse for the sake of clarity, I'll try to write a short debunking in layman's terms, for someone entirely unfamiliar with modulation or signal theory. The only thing required is understanding the concept of frequency, and bandwidth.
As a practical explanation, a standard phone line cannot plainly carry a frequency of 5000 Hz because it has a bandwidth such that it allows only frequencies from 300 to 3400 Hz to "pass", everything else is either strongly weakened or cut off. It is possible to convert a certain "zone" of frequencies, e.g. from 5000-7000 Hz to 1000-3000 Hz to make them "fit" through the channel but I can't "squeeze" a zone larger than the bandwidth itself, e.g. I can't generally "squeeze" a signal with frequency range from 1 to 7000 Hz inside a medium with a band of 300-3400 Hz unless special conditions apply (e.g. I encode the signal differently, essentially trying to compensate the lack of available frequencies by using a more precise amplitude encoding). 
That's what Mr. Walker indirectly claims to be able to do, but instead of compensating for frequency with amplitude and more sophisticated modulation, he uses a simplistic modulation scheme based on the delusion that somehow embedding high frequencies "as they are" will go "unnoticed". That just doesn't work.
"Modulating" a carrier with a certain frequency, e.g. changing an FM Stereo carrier with a signal of a certain frequency, will make that same frequency (or even worse, multiples of it) appear in some form inside the original carrier. Thus, if the channel transmitting the modulated carrier does not have the bandwidth to carry both frequencies (carrier's + signal's) the modulation scheme just can't be used, and will result in distortion and loss of information.
Mr. Walker instead, claims to be able to do just that: the concept of "slightly marking" a low frequency carrier with a (much) higher frequency one while keeping the OVERALL frequency requirements equal to the carrier ONLY is just plain wrong: the higher frequency will have to appear in some form, and thus it will need a channel width at least as wide as the frequency itself. If (oversimplifying VMSK) I try to "slightly change" the phase of a 1 kHz carrier a million times per second (1 MHz), that 1 MHz will have to appear somewhere, plain and simple. It can't be "packed" with such a naive modulation scheme.
There are ways to "pack" information contained in a 1 MHz carrier into a 1 KHz one, but VMSK isn't one of them, plain and simple, as any and all valid methods require transferring the modulation complexity into the carrier's amplitude (essentially, trading bandwidth for signal/noise ratio, which implies being able to discern between increasingly tiny signal level variations. That's another reason why e.g. 1 Mbit/sec cannot be carried by a POTS phone line). EpiVictor 08:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: EpiVector was correct in explaining that "all valid methods require transferring the modulation complexity into the carrier's amplitude"; that's what distinguishes your examples from VMSK.  Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Debunking in layman's terms 

message: are not searchable at Amazon, so the reference could be in one of those. VMSK's value, or lack thereof, should be settled pretty quickly right here. Which book, and what exactly does it say, if anything? It may also be included in an upcoming book of Dr. Lee's, as CTLG recently announced that Wiley & Son's, the publisher of at least one of Lee's books, will be including a chapter on VMSK in a scheduled book (this was confirmed by Wiley). It may take a little time to find out which book to order, plus time to order and receive the book. I think Dr. Lee's positive assessment would carry very, very significant weight, should it exist. It would be most unusual for Mr. Walker to make up or alter a quote from an eminent source such as Dr. Lee, and have it rest unchallenged on his site for 10 months: http://www.vmsk.org/Comments.pdf. I think we all can all agree that, if real, the value of VMSK would be hard to calculate.71.52.105.197
:The book that Walker references is the one I linked to; "Lee's Essentials of Wireless Communications".  I haven't got the book, so obviously I'm speculating as to whether the quote is real or not.  But if it is made up, who exactly is going to challenge it?
:IMO, it would be much more "unusual" for an eminent source such as Dr. Lee to publicly endorse a technology that makes claims as absurd ("revolutionary", if you will) as a spectral efficiency of 400 bit/s/Hz, and no-one to challenge that!
:It would also be "unusual" if the Vice President of Vodafone endorsed such a revolutionary technology after a demo, but yet failed to invest in it in any way; i.e. Vodafone purchasing the rights to the technology and developing it.
:Incidentally, do you have a link or something that describes the chapter in the upcoming book?  I can't find anything via Google.
:One last thing, it's not necessary to create a new heading for every message that you leave here!  Indentation is the preferred way of indicating a reply (see Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Technical_and_format_standards).  Oli Filth 19:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I noticed that four of Lee's books 

message: When you find out who's been working - very successfully - with VMSK.
:So... do you have any information you'd like to share?  Or are you just going to add unhelpful unsubstantiated fluff to the discussion?  Oli Filth 18:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, now that 60 days has passed, I wait with baited breath to see what news our anonymous editor will surprise us with... Oli Filth 19:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I think you may all be in for a surprise 

message: We have the exalted Dr. Lee in one corner, along with xG supporter & Electrical Engineering Professor Stephen Schwartz of Princeton. Plus my knowledge of who continues (successfully) to work with VMSK.
In the other corner, we have you guys who I know very little about. Even if I know nothing about anything - who would I believe? They have the more weighted credentials, I think you may agree.
On the other hand, I am absolutely certain you gentlemen are seriously grounded in the fundamentals of RF technology. No question about it. But, if it's so easy to calculate the flaws in these technologies - and you repeatedly refer to them as almost childish efforts - tell me how that could possibly escape these capable men? How could that be? You seem convinced, they seem convinced. I am now not sure where to take this other than wait out xG & CTLG developments. They will sink or swim on their own merits or lack thereof, and in the end, that is the out of the control of any us at our keyboards. 
It would have been wrong to leave the other side of the case without a voice.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.52.105.197 (talk • contribs) 
:Just a friendly reminder - claiming credentials on Wikipedia is troublesome, please have a look at Essjay controversy. May I also remind all parties here that suggestions are to be taken on their own merit, to be discussed in details and implemented if worthy. Regards,xC | ☎  15:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I strongly agree. Don't take my word for it that VMSK is bunk, learn the math yourself. Karn 22:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's Recap 

message: I've rewritten the article from sources.  It's not our job as wikipedia editors to create our own debunkings of junk science. Please do help to extend the article, with reliable sources only please. Dicklyon (talk) 19:43, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  My rewrite 

message: Why all this effort to discredit Walker and Joe Bobier at Xg Tech.  ???
Both have demonstrated hardware - over the air - utilizing their methods,
Xg in Miami and Datona Beach. Walker over Ham Radio and a Cable TV network.
Plextek in England is presently marketing UNB hardware, although the method is not VMSK
Ultra Narrow Band Technology of Aurora IL manufactured a UNB system for use on
microwave networks in 2004. It was placed on the air in Denver. 
Unfortunately the company folded and the hardware is no longer available.
The switch to ATSC rendered Walker's method out of date.
Walker is only the inventor of VMSK. He has not done any work on it since Dec. 2000.
He has no ownership rights to the method and has no commercial interest in it. 
Why pick on him. Walker and Bobier did some parallel work on UNB in 2000 and 2001 which resulted in Walker's newer methods called 3PRK and 3PSK. Bobiers 'missing cycle' method.
Work has continued at various universities on VMSK since the original papers appeared. 
The Chinese National Science Foundation is presently supporting a number of projects at South East University, Nanjing, and Beijing University.
There are nearly 80 peer revue papers on UNB that can be obtained from the UNB Textbook that can be downloaded from VMSK,org. These papers have been written by dozens of PhDs, some are department heads at their universities.
It is true that UNB methods cannot be analyzed at baseband. A baseband analysis shows the bandwidth efficiency cannot exceed 2b/s/Hz. The spectrum accepted by the FCC shows a much higher bandwidth efficiency. Shannon is in no way violated.
K. Stanley.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.3.33.104 (talk) 20:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  About UNB in general 

message: I have no further interest in VMSK whatsoever - commercial or otherwise. I only invented it.
It should be noted that papers by reputable scientists continue to be published on the method.
76 are listed in the UNB Textbook, appearing as recent as 2009.
I may be an unknowing character as alleged, but my hardware does work as claimed and the many reputable scientists who have published peer review papers confirm this. Bobier's methods can also be proven. ( Xg Tech., since they are in use.)
The problem with the commercial acceptance of the UNB methods is in the filters.
These filters are vector adding filters which have very low envelop group delay - as opposed to conventional filters which have a group delay related to their bandwidth and Q. Vector adding filters can have a group delay as short as 1 IF cycle.  Unfortunately they cannot be realized with digital filter equivalents.  They must be built with crystals or LC resonators and hand tuned. This is too costly for mass production. The filter noise bandwidth can be as narrow as 500 Hz.
Tomazic is correct in reporting the maximum bandwidth efficiency at baseband, or with conventional filters, is 2 b/s/Hz. This is not true however with RF modulated methods using vector adding filters.
The Naye sayers should dig a lot deeper and get the facts straight.
H.R. Walker  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.3.33.104 (talk) 20:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inventors Note: 

message: Why all these cries of FRAUD and SNAKE OIL. To be a fraud, the method must not do what is claimed. Haven’t the critics noticed that products have been made using Walker’s methods and some are still on the  market. Frauds usually claim have some secret ingredient or process. There are no secret ingredients in Walker’s methods. Everything is carefully explained in the Textbook – along with reference sources and schematics for anyone who wishes to duplicate and try the methods themselves.  The critics should try and verify the methods before they complain. They obviously have not done so.
VMSK is nothing more than pre-coded BPSK. NRZ-MSB is nothing more than QPSK using only 2 of the 4 phases. The alleged secret filter has been published in the ARRL handbook since the 1940s. The method used to calculate Shannon’s Limit is published in Textbooks – Schwartz, “Information Transmission, Modulation, and Noise” McGraw Hill, 1959. The methods do not violate Shannon or Nyquist. Whether or not the methods are commercially viable is another matter. Why not accuse Walker of stealing his ideas from others, whose methods are known to work ?
Critics need to open their eyes and minds, and then put brain in gear before shouting.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.3.33.104 (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Snake Oil 

message: I read this article with some amusement. It seems to be both a classic engineering confrontation, and a classic Wiki confrontation. I don't have any opinion on the mechanics, but I do have one on the presentation. This key point, that makes up half the "con" argument has two issues:
:"Analysis by third parties have concluded that "no ultra narrow band modulation (UNBM) method, which includes very minimum shift keying (VMSK) and VPSK, can have substantially greater efficiency than conventional methods."[3]"
But only the abstract is available w/o paying $31. So there's no way for a casual editor to interpret what the vague word "substantially" means. What's substantial to one person, one usage, may not be to another. Publishing in IEEE does not mean that an entire community has approved of an opinion or result.
Questions are: Why can't the engineering community resolve this? Shouldn't Wiki be able to present a fair representation of the sides, regardless? In some perfect world? Maybe? Leptus Froggi (talk) 11:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  A classic Wiki confrontation