Are Wireless Speakers Reliable In Real-World Situations?

By Mike Heller


Wireless audio has become widely used. A multitude of consumer products for example wireless speakers are cutting the cable and also offer ultimate freedom of movement. I am going to investigate how latest cordless technologies can deal with interference from other transmitters and how well they will function in a real-world situation. The rising popularity of wireless consumer products just like wireless speakers has started to cause issues with various products competing for the restricted frequency space. Wireless networks, wireless telephones , Bluetooth as well as various other devices are eating up the valuable frequency space at 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz. Wireless sound systems have to ensure reliable real-time transmission within an environment having a lots of interference.

The most affordable transmitters normally transmit at 900 MHz. They operate a lot like FM stereos. Because the FM transmission uses a small bandwidth and therefore only uses up a small part of the available frequency space, interference is usually eliminated through changing to a new channel. The 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz frequency bands are utilized by digital transmitters and also are getting to be pretty congested lately because digital signals take up a lot more bandwidth as compared to analogue transmitters.

FM type sound transmitters are generally the least reliable in terms of tolerating interference since the transmission doesn't have any method to deal with competing transmitters. Nonetheless, these kinds of transmitters have a relatively constrained bandwidth and changing channels may steer clear of interference. The 2.4 GHz and 5.8 Gigahertz frequency bands are utilized by digital transmitters and also have become rather crowded these days because digital signals take up far more bandwidth as compared to analogue transmitters.

An often employed technique is forward error correction in which the transmitter sends supplemental information along with the audio. The receiver makes use of a formula which uses the additional data. When the signal is corrupted during the transmission as a result of interference, the receiver can easily remove the invalid data and recover the original signal. This technique will work if the level of interference does not rise above a specific limit. FEC is unidirectional. The receiver won't send back any kind of information to the transmitter. As a result it is usually used by equipment similar to radio receivers in which the number of receivers is big.

An often employed technique is forward error correction where the transmitter transmits extra data with the sound. By using a number of innovative calculations, the receiver can then restore the data which may partially be corrupted by interfering transmitters. Consequently, these products can transmit 100% error-free even when there is interference. Transmitters making use of FEC can broadcast to a huge amount of wireless devices and doesn't need any feedback from the receiver. In situations where there's only a small number of receivers, frequently yet another mechanism is utilized. The wireless receiver will send data packets to the transmitter in order to confirm good receipt of data. The data that is broadcast has a checksum. Because of this checksum the receiver can easily detect whether any particular packet was received properly and acknowledge. If a packet was damaged, the receiver will alert the transmitter and request retransmission of the packet. As a result, the transmitter must store a great amount of packets in a buffer. Likewise, the receiver must have a data buffer. Making use of buffers will cause a delay or latency in the transmission. The amount of the delay is proportional to the buffer size. A bigger buffer size improves the reliability of the transmission. Video applications, however, require the audio to be synchronized with the video. In such cases a big latency is problematic. Wireless products that use this approach, nonetheless, are only able to broadcast to a small quantity of cordless receivers. Usually the receivers have to be paired to the transmitter. Because each receiver also requires broadcast functionality, the receivers are more pricey to fabricate and in addition consume more energy.

To avoid crowded frequency channels, several wireless speakers watch clear channels and may switch to a clear channel once the current channel gets occupied by a different transmitter. Since the transmitter has a list of clear channels, there is no delay in looking for a clear channel. It is simply chosen from the list. This method is usually named adaptive frequency hopping spread spectrum.




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