Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We don’t see hear or feel them, but the electro-magnetic waves that surround us make
nearly every aspect of modern life possible. Without those speedy radio waves, your day
would be unrecognisable. In fact you wouldn’t even be able to leave your house. Let’s
look at a day in your life of radio spectrum use.
You wake up around 6am to the alarm clock bringing you news – on the radio.
After breakfast, you try to check your emails on the laptop – but it just won’t connect
to the wireless LAN. You dash out the door past your daughter happily listening to music
via a pair of wireless speakers. You unlock your car and garage doors with
two remote keys. On the Highway, the traffic update warns of
a delay ahead – they and the cameras that detect the traffic are linked back to the
control room. The traffic report on the radio has been fed
back to the radio newsroom from the helicopter you saw overhead.
Once past the delay at the construction works, you may try to make up time. A sudden flash
registers in the corner of your eye, and you know you’ve been caught.
Very soon there’ll be a ticket with photo attached waiting in the mail – thanks to
a radar gun reporting back to base on a microwave link.
Back on the road, there’s a ‘bleep bleep’ as you pass through the toll gates.
Just then the mobile rings and, not wanting to risk another ticket, you use the Bluetooth
hands-free. Finally, you’re at work. The swipe card
opens the carpark boom gates. A motion detector keeps your car safe throughout
the day. As you approach the office, motion detector
‘sees’ you and the doors slide smoothly apart.
At your desk, you connect your laptop to the office’s LAN. You check your emails, and
industry alerts – this one is transmitted from London via satellite.
You make a couple of phone calls from a portable hands-free then it’s the 9am video conference
with one of our regional teams. The video is streamed from Coffs Harbour to Sydney using
a variety of fixed links. At 10.30, you leave the office to fly to Canberra
for an important meeting. But the flight is delayed and you have half
an hour to kill, a chance for some quick shopping. You buy your son a miniaturised helicopter
and a new pink mobile phone for your daughter - this one downloads video too.
While handing over your credit card, there’s a commotion and the radio spectrum helps apprehend
a shoplifter. After you board, the plane is taxiing along
the runway – with ground guidance courtesy of the radio spectrum.
Takeoff and in the cockpit, pilot and crew are busy – air traffic control directs them
using radar and GPS establishes the correct course to Canberra.
Air traffic control keeps you away from other aircraft and automatic direction finding makes
sure you stay on course. Rain in Canberra means an Instrument Landing
System brings you down safely. A taxi takes you to your Canberra office, where it’s
meetings, emails, phone calls, emails, phone calls, meetings until it’s back in the taxi,
onto the plane, and takeoff! By the time you land, it’s been a long day.
Though tired, you drive home, not noticing the traffic lights up ahead turning red. Your
reactions aren’t quick enough, but fortunately your car’s collision avoidance radar steps
in and prevents an accident. You make it home in time for the 7 o’clock
news and linked from the TV studio to the transmitter. Your son is watching FOXTEL upstairs
from the Optus satellite overhead. Your daughter’s lounging out on the veranda
again with those mysterious headphones. You flip open the laptop to check my emails,
but again it refuses to connect to the wireless LAN.
Baffled, you turn back to the news where a reporter is explaining that an Al Qaeda stronghold
has been detected and destroyed. What the news doesn’t say is that behind
the scenes a network of surveillance satellites were listening to the land mobile radios used
by the terrorists. This information was relayed to the strike
aircraft in real time and tactical data links and the target was destroyed within 10 minutes
of being detected. This story is followed by a live-cross to
an outside broadcast unit reporting on the bushfires in north-east Victoria.
Your laptop’s wireless connection mysteriously springs into life and you notice my daughter
wandering into the kitchen…and the music from the veranda has stopped. (2.4 GHz)
You use your new-found digital freedom to go to the Bureau of Meteorology site to check
details of tomorrow’s weather. The colour weather radar confirms that a storm
is on its way from the south west. Hail is predicted so you close the garage door.
Back in the house, you close the garage door. In the kitchen, you microwave last night’s
left-overs. You settle back in front of the TV and wait
for the storm to arrive. This is today. It could be any day. A day
in your life is a day in the life of radio spectrum.