Spatial capacity is an indicator of "

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...

intensity" in a transmission medium. It is usually used in conjunction with wireless transport mechanisms. This is analogous to the way that lumens per square meter determine illumination intensity. Spatial capacity focuses not only on

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represente ...

rates for

data transfer Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

but on bit rates available in confined spaces defined by short transmission ranges. It is measured in bits per second per square meter. Among those leading research in spatial capacity are Jan Rabaey at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Some have suggested the term "spatial efficiency" as more descriptive. Marc Weiser, former chief technologist of

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

, was another contributor to the field who commented on the importance of spatial capacity. The System spectral efficiency is the spatial capacity divided by the bandwidth in hertz of the available frequency band.

Relative spatial capacities

Engineers at

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

and elsewhere have reported the relative spatial capacities of various wireless technologies as follows: *

IEEE 802.11b IEEE 802.11b-1999 or 802.11b is an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking specification that extends throughput up to 11 Mbit/s using the same 2.4 GHz band. A related amendment was incorporated into the IEEE 802.11-2007 standard. ...

1,000 (bit/s)/m² *

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

30,000 (bit/s)/m² * IEEE 802.11a 83,000 (bit/s)/m² *

Ultra-wideband Ultra-wideband (UWB, ultra wideband, ultra-wide band and ultraband) is a radio technology that can use a very low energy level for short-range, high-bandwidth communications over a large portion of the radio spectrum. UWB has traditional applicati ...

1,000,000 (bit/s)/m² * IEEE 802.11g N/A

References

{{Reflist Wireless networking Network performance Radio resource management

Relative spatial capacities

See also

References