Suggestions For Choosing Wireless Speakers

By Mike Heller


I'll take a look at just how modern sound transmission technologies that are used in current wireless speakers operate in real-world conditions with a great deal of interference from other cordless gadgets. The most common frequency bands which might be used by wireless gizmos include the 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz frequency band. Mainly the 900 MHz and 2.4 Gigahertz frequency bands have begun to become crowded by the ever increasing number of devices like wireless speakers, wireless phones and so forth.

The popularity of cordless products such as wireless speakers is responsible for a quick rise of transmitters that broadcast in the preferred frequency bands of 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 Gigahertz and therefore cordless interference has turned into a serious issue.

Frequency hopping devices, however, will continue to cause problems since they will disrupt even transmitters employing transmit channels. Sound can be considered a real-time protocol. Because of this it has stringent needs with regards to dependability. Furthermore, small latency is essential in many applications. For that reason more innovative techniques are necessary to ensure reliability.

Some wireless products like Bluetooth devices and also wireless telephones use frequency hopping. Hence simply changing the channel will not avoid those frequency hoppers. Sound can be considered a real-time protocol. As such it has stringent demands with regards to reliability. Additionally, low latency is essential in numerous applications. For that reason more advanced strategies are required to guarantee stability.

An additional approach utilizes bidirectional transmission, i.e. every receiver transmits data to the transmitter. This method is only practical if the number of receivers is small. In addition, it requires a back channel to the transmitter. The data which is broadcast includes a checksum. Because of this checksum the receiver can determine whether any certain packet was received properly and acknowledge. In cases of dropped packets, the receiver is going to notify the transmitter and the lost packet is resent. Consequently both the transmitter and also receiver have to have a buffer to keep packets. This will create an audio latency, also called delay, to the transmission that could be a problem for real-time protocols like audio. Commonly, the bigger the buffer is, the larger the robustness of the transmission. A big latency can be a problem for several applications however. Particularly when video exists, the audio must be in sync with the movie. In addition, in multichannel surround sound applications in which a number of loudspeakers are cordless, the cordless loudspeakers ought to be in sync with the corded loudspeakers. Cordless systems which use this technique, however, can only broadcast to a restricted number of cordless receivers. Normally the receivers have to be paired to the transmitter. Since each receiver also requires broadcast functionality, the receivers cost more to fabricate and also use up more power.

In order to steer clear of crowded frequency channels, some wireless speakers keep an eye on clear channels and may change to a clear channel when the current channel gets occupied by another transmitter. Since the transmitter has a list of clean channels, there's no delay in looking for a clean channel. It's simply chosen from the list. This approach is often referred to as adaptive frequency hopping spread spectrum.




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