One concern on a stock exchange floor is the use of unauthorized wireless devices. However, according to William Flanagan, marketing vice president of Cognio, monitoring for these violations is one of the many uses for Cognio’s Spectrum Expert products.

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Spectrum Expert 1.0, designed for use with WiFi-based technology, has been upgraded and released in two versions: as Spectrum Expert 2.0 for WiFi and Spectrum Expert for RFID.

These Spectrum Expert systems are hardware/software packages designed for portable operation on a laptop computer. The WiFi and RFID versions have uniquely optimized hardware implementations fully contained within their own XP-based Cardbus cards. The software for each version provides a unique GUI that fully exploits the large yet portable display available in laptop computers.

Because the usage model lends itself to the larger display of a laptop, further reductions in scale, such as deployment on a pen-computing platform, would detract from the usability of the system. However, Flanagan notes that in theory, currently available Spectrum Expert products could be made to work with a Pocket PC equipped with a mini PCI slot, and the resulting increased mobility might have certain advantages for troubleshooting in confined spaces.

To aid in the understanding of the issues that Spectrum Expert resolves, Flanagan offers this observation: “A Spectrum Expert system is not a spectrum analyzer. However, a spectrum analyzer is not a ‘spectrum expert’”. That is, while a spectrum analyzer can sweep a large bandwidth, it may be incapable of detecting transient events or recognizing a single frequency-hopping radio source."

The Spectrum Expert 2.0 system operates in the band of 2.4 GHz to 5.0 GHz. It is used for troubleshooting the physical layer of WiFi, or Layer 1, by dwelling briefly in narrower 20-MHz bands. This technique provides enough sensitivity to register interference from Bluetooth devices, including the decoding of piconets.

Spectrum Expert for RFID represents a new capability that emerged from the expertise Cognio gained from the technology developed for WiFi networks. It operates over the frequency range of 851 MHz to 960 MHz and can support the EPC class 1 Gen 2 RFID specification, which covers the 868 MHz to 956 MHz range.

With the Spectrum Expert systems, troubleshooting is largely automatic. An interesting example deals with a company that had recently completed a corporate move. Thirty marketing agents had been located to an upper floor. One level below, a WiFi network had ceased to operate. Almost immediately after the Spectrum Expert system went active, it identified interference from 30 individual radio signatures, which were almost as quickly realized to be the cordless headsets of the marketing agents.