White Papers on Amateur Digital Modes?

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I've read lots of posts on the various digital modes available to ARO's. There are so many aspects to this debate its hard to keep it all straight. To name some of them:
1) Interesting and fun to experiment with
2) Results tradeoff: bandwidth, intelligibility, reliability, interoperability
3) Proprietary systems - are they appropriate for amateur radio?
4) Follow the money - who has the most to gain/lose?
5) Cost of implementing each system into the radio and into the repeaters
6) Analog compatibility

I'm sure there are other areas I forgot, but things are getting very complex while everyone is duking it out.
It makes sense to embrace any new mode because of its technical superiority, i.e. more reliable communication under adverse conditions, and a realistic cost/benefit tradeoff. I have no interest in making amateur radio all about "going green". It really is not an issue of sustainable resources.

Can someone suggest some reading material that illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of the various digital voice modes minus the politics? Remember the hype promoting digital modes for cell phones? It was going to be all about voice fidelity. We know that was very sneaky. Digital cell is all about cramming more customers into a smaller bandwidth - not a bad thing, but it was at the expense of understandable audio.

FF

 

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Yaesu has a web site devoted to System Fusion here:
System Fusion Info > Home
but it does not contain any information as yet. The most basic of questions appear such as "How does System Fusion sound? " Answer, "It actually sounds pretty great..."

I hope they add actual information to the site in the future. So, let's say for a moment that "multi-layer interoperability" and "so convenient in an emergency" are not factors in using digital. Compared with analog FM, does digital voice provide more reliable voice communications under variable harsh conditions? Is it more intelligible at lower signal levels? Does it lower the fatigue level of the person who has to listen to it, etc? If digital TV is any guide, the answer would be that it works great as long as the signal strength is good, and is totally unusable once the threshold is reached. Whereas how many of us watched analog TV for years even though it was weak, snowy and on the other side of the hill? I guess the digital coolness factor is hard to resist.

I am not seeing these questions addressed anywhere, which makes me think that they are of little importance to the consortium. One possible problem I can see for the future is that one or two big equipment manufacturers will decide what digital mode will be used and the matter will be closed. IOW, we will get a repetition of what has already happened to 2 meters by channelizing it and making it an FM voice band. Paranoid?

FF