Showing posts with label P2P. Show all posts
Showing posts with label P2P. Show all posts

Tuesday 24 July 2012

LTE-Direct (rebranded Flashlinq) by Qualcomm

I blogged about Flashlinq before and also about the Proximity based Services (ProSe) and AllJoyn which probably is part of Release-12. Qualcomm is now proposing LTE-Direct that looks like a rebranded Flashlinq here. A video of that is embedded here.


From PCWorld:


Qualcomm is promoting a peer-to-peer cellular technology as a potential new standard called LTE Direct, which it says would make location-based services faster and more efficient.
The proposal grew out of FlashLinq, a system Qualcomm developed in its own labs. FlashLinq lets two cellular devices communicate over the air without relying on a fixed network infrastructure. Qualcomm sees two main applications for the technology: public safety communications in areas where mobile networks are down or unavailable, and a "discovery mode" that provides information about what interesting things and people are nearby. Qualcomm is primarily interested in the discovery mode, which it says has more commercial potential.
LTE Direct eliminates steps in the location process, allowing users to find things more quickly, Qualcomm says. Though the technology can be used for ongoing communication at high speeds, including streaming video, in discovery mode it would only broadcast tiny 128-bit packages of data. Those packages, called "expressions," would contain basic information about the device or user. Each LTE Direct device would look for expressions nearby, choosing among them using filters customized for the user or for specific applications.
"What you do is, every so often, you broadcast this 128 bits of information, which are expressing your desire ... so devices and services around you can listen to (your expressions) and figure out what you're interested in," said Mahesh Makhijani, senior director of technical marketing at Qualcomm.
Mobile consumers as well as businesses could send and receive expressions. If an application detects an expression that's relevant to what it does, that application can then go into action, providing something to the user. For example, if two friends have devices that are sending out expressions, then a social-networking app that both of them use might pop up notifications for each saying the other friend is nearby. A classic example of an application that might take advantage of discovery mode is the location check-in app Foursquare, Makhijani said.
Decentralized process
Current location-based services rely on a central database of location data. Every party's location, determined by GPS or other methods, has to be collected in that database and then sent out to other interested parties who request it, Makhijani said. LTE Direct finds nearby devices directly over the air.
Finding a match between one user and other people or services nearby is also quicker, because "service layer" information is contained in the 128-bit expression, Makhijani said. That service layer information determines whether something is of interest to you, such as whether someone uses Facebook and is a friend, or whether your favorite store nearby is offering a deal. To determine these things with LTE Direct, it's not necessary to query a central server over the Internet or even to establish a dedicated connection with the nearby device, he said.
LTE Direct isn't intended to provide exact location or replace GPS for finding out exactly where you are, but it could complement existing location systems and speed up the process of finding out where you are, Makhijani said. Its benefits include the speed of proximity-based location as well as its ability to work indoors, where GPS often has trouble getting a fix because it relies on satellites, he said.

Thursday 1 September 2011

Device to Device communication (FlashLinQ?)

Recently I read on twitter that Qualcomm has asked 3GPP to do a study on device to device communication. Sometime back I blogged about FlashLinQ, Qualcomm's proprietary P2P communication technology. I am not sure if Qualcomm is pushing for this one or wants to have a study in general. If you know more details please add as comments.

Meanwhile, I found this video that explains what FlashLinQ does:



And there is also this presentation which is less technical and explains the information in the video.

More technically detailed presentation embedded in my earlier blog post here.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

FlashLinq: A P2P Network For Nearby Phones

Looks like the new technologies and enhancements just keep coming.

Following from MobileCrunch:

Imagine being at a concert. As the band wraps up their last song, the lead singer takes the mic and says: “Thanks for coming out everyone! Just for being here, we’re giving you all an exclusive track from our upcoming CD. It should be available on the local wireless network… now!”

Generally, pulling off something like this would be nigh impossible. You’d need a pretty intense wireless infrastructure to handle thousands of freebie-hungry concert goers connecting at once, and then an even beefier backbone to handle the actual transfer. That’s where Qualcomm’s new localized P2P network technology, FlashLinq, comes into play.

As Qualcomm puts it, FlashLinq “enables devices to discover each other automatically and continuously, and to communicate, peer-to-peer, at broadband speeds without the need for intermediary infrastructure.”

In other words, it’ll build a wireless network between FlashLinq-enabled devices, allowing those devices to pass data (like the theoretical exclusive track mentioned above) without some monstrous server doing all the heavy lifting. Qualcomm says

“But wait!” you say, “Isn’t this what WiFi Direct was built for?”.

Yep — the key difference here is that while WiFi Direct can share files between devices, FlashLinq can do that and share connectivity to a cellular network. Nice idea for those situations when only a handful of people in a big crowd can actually manage to pull down any data, right?

So, when can we expect this tech to roll out? Not for a while. Qualcomm’s working with South Korea’s SK Telecom to test out the tech, with trials beginning later this year. If those go well, Qualcomm will have the task of convincing other hardware partners to build this tech into their new gear.

A presentation on FlashLinq below: