3.6GHz 802.11y for Competitions

[EricWilliams]

Based on a thread in the Scouting forum that has now grown legs and walked off-topic, I thought having a quick discussion about the possibility of changing the robot <-> FMS communications technology for the purpose of enhancing both the performance, security, and spectator/team "quality of experience" (I understand we'd only be removing only a minimal inconvenience, but you don't try to minimize the benefits of your proposal while making it).

I'm sure this conversation happened over and over again after the Einstein incident, but I couldn't find much about my specific idea. Sorry if this is old news re-hashed, hopefully the thread will quickly disappear into obscurity if that's the case.

What about the possibility for FIRST official competitions (just focusing on FRC now, as we already have an entirely separate scenario in FTC/FLL) to try to acquire (relatively - from what little information I can find) cheap licenses from the FCC for 802.11y 3.6GHz operation. References: http://www.bwianews.com/2007/06/fcc_attempts_th.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11y-2008

Teams could still practice/demonstrate/run off-season events using standard ISM band WiFi - at the competitions the wireless bridge would simply be swapped out for a FIRST owned 3.6GHz module.

As the MAC and higher layers remain the same, there shouldn't be any performance difference between practice/demo/off-season and competition. And this is not a proposal to come full circle and go back to custom radios in obscure spectrum bands - this is (mostly) standard COTS hardware.

It's a bit of an up-front investment, but I think there's potential to improve things.