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Wireless Communications:

The Future

Professor William Webb

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Contents

• Some history

• The basis for prediction

• The prediction

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Predictions made in 2000 for 2005 proved accurate• We predicted that

not much would happen, and not much did!

• But the time has come for a “refresh” to take new developments into account and broaden the contributor base

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Contents

• Some history

• The basis for prediction

• The prediction

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A hard look at the current industry position

• There will not be a new “4th generation” of cellular since 3G reaches the limits of what is possible in a radio channel

• Fixed wireless access will not succeed – even with the advent of WiMax technology

• W-LAN in the home will provide the basis for convergence between home and cellular systems

• The current vertically integrated approach where operators own networks and provide customer facing services is not sustainable in the long term– but will persist for many years and in doing so will slow convergence.

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An understanding of adoption rates

• Services take between five and ten years to be adopted even if the service is “perfect”

• Spending on communications can only grow slowly.

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Moore’s Law

1000

10000

100000

1000000

10000000

100000000

1000000000

10000000000

1971

1973

1975

1977

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

2003

Num

ber o

f tra

nsis

tors

8086

Double every 18 months Itanium

Pentium486

386286 Double every 24

months

A note of caution – Moore’s Law does not directly provide more wireless capacity and powerrequirements increase with the number of transistors but batteries don’t improve that fast

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Cooper’s Law – wireless voice traffic doubles every 30 months

Gains 1950 – 2000

• 15 times by using more spectrum (3 GHz vs. 150 MHz)

• 5 times from better voice coding• 5 times from better MAC and

modulation methods• 2,700 times from smaller cells

• Total gain 1million-fold

1100

10,0001,000,000

100,000,00010,000,000,000

1,000,000,000,000

100,000,000,000,000

10,000,000,000,000,000

1,000,000,000,000,000,000

100,000,000,000,000,000,000

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

1900 1950 2000 2050 2100Year

Cellular Era

Incr

ease

in E

ffici

ency

of W

irele

ss S

pect

rum

Spatial Processing Era

Logarithmic Scale

1

100

10,000

1 Million

100 Million

10 Billion

1 Trillion

100 Trillion

10,000 Trillion

1 Million Trillion

10 Billion Trillion

Cooper’s Law

Source: Arraycom

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2G

0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000

10m

100m

1km

10km

ZigBee802.15.4 Bluetooth

802.15.1

UWB802.15.3

Wi-Fi802.11

3G

WiMax / HSDPA

Technologies and where they take us

Data rate (Mbits/s)

Range (km

)

Physics, economics andspectrum allocationmake entry into this

space difficult

ADSLrate

Source: Webb

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Contents

• Some history

• The basis for prediction

• The prediction

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A prediction of some possible new services

VideoDownload and view video

anywhere on any device, make video calls

LocationA range of appropriate services

Interwork devicesSynchronise devices and allow one to make use of resources in another nearby (eg large screen)

EnvironmentMonitor and control home and

local environment

Personal applicationsA wide range of specialist

applications such as a meal-suggestion service

Transport Route guidance, travel

information, payment, etc

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The winners and losers

Winners• Handsets. These will become ever more advanced. As

a result they will be higher price, sold in large volumes and changed frequently.

• Home networks. These will require substantial memory and processing power and multiple means of interconnection.

• Contextually aware software. This will provide the intelligence to allow handsets to predict user requirements.

• Network software providing convergence. Complex software will be needed in the network to ensure that the user is kept connected in the best manner possible.

• User applications. We expect there to be many valuable applications written for wireless networks.

• Service provisioning. Service providers will enables multiple different communications channels and generally keeps a users communications environment “working”.

Losers• SDR. We believe that multi-modal

phones will be cheaper and just as effective.

• Cognitive radio. We note a number of difficulties and cannot see any convincing application.

• Smart or MIMO antennas. As cells get smaller, the benefits of these fall while the cost per user increases.

• Fixed wireless access. We believe wired technologies will continue to be cheaper and offer higher data rates in all but a few niche applications.

• 4G. We do not see the need for a completely new generation, nor the “space” where it will provide distinct advantages.

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Services will gradually evolve, becoming fully available between 2015 and 2020

2005 2010 2015 2020

Offices and homes deploy W-LAN

systems

Communicators become multi-modal

Personalisation, reformatting and message filtering

Home appliances add wireless

Broadband connections to the home proliferate

Speech recognition and other user

interface advances

“Remote control on life”available to wealthy in developed countries

“Remote control on life”widely available in

developed countries

Handset manages daily life

Mobile TV and intelligent PVRs assemble viewing

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In conclusion

• The user experience based on wireless communications is likely to change dramatically over the next 10 – 20 years as the handset becomes a “remote control on life”

• This will not require much change in technology, although mesh networks, UWB, better user interfaces and enhanced backhaul will all help

• Services will grow rapidly on the back of increasingly ubiquitous and standardised wireless connectivity

• A flexible spectrum allocation policy will allow networks to grow in reaction to the new services and for new technologies to be rapidly deployed

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Contact details

• william.webb@ofcom.org.uk

• +44 20 7981 3770