A common misconception among those investigating RPMA for the first time is that the 2.4GHz band is too crowded.  The Big Bad Wolf, Wi-Fi rules this domain, along with his evil minions, Bluetooth baby monitors – pretty scary, right? The perception is that this space must be riddled with interference, however, this is false.

We have all been there.  It’s a Saturday night at Wal-Mart.  It’s the last minute grocery run for milk and a cartoon of eggs.  You hustle through the store, and are ready to check out two minutes later.  You get to the checkout lanes and realize the whole town has decided to check out at the same time.  All twenty lanes are jam packed.  You slump your shoulders and are resigned to wait a half hour to get through the line.  Then, voila!  Magically, 80 checkout lanes are suddenly fully staffed and open to receive you.  You bypass big bad Wi-Fi with his two carts full of groceries and move to a lane near the edge of the store.   There is no line and you are out of the store a couple minutes later.

So it is with the 2.4GHz spectrum.  As it turns out, the 2.4GHz spectrum is composed of 80 distinct 1MHz channels.  This provides an enormous amount of flexibility, especially given that an RPMA network can reside in a single 1MHz channel.  It is well documented where the Wi-Fi bands lay, and Ingenu has wisely chosen to deploy RPMA outside of those channels.  In fact, there are eleven 1MHz channels completely clear of Wi-Fi on which RPMA can operate.

While choosing a channel that is free and clear of Wi-Fi resolves the majority of inquiries regarding RPMA’s handling of interference, it is but one of the many methods RPMA employs to overcome interference.  Physical layer mechanisms of the network like direct-sequence spread spectrum, and forward error correction have been essential in rolling out over 30 private RPMA networks across five continents over the past eight years.  RPMA is a globally proven and available technology, and from the onset has been prepared to wisely navigate the interference concerns of the 2.4GHz spectrum.