Future Mobile devices: Winners & Losers in technology

NTT DOCOMO announced a range of futuristic ideas and products that they are going to demo at CEATEC this month. Some of the products/ideas as follows:

Extra-high-speed, next-generation LTE service

• Experience the first Xi-compatible tablets “docomo Tablet GALAXY Tab 10.1 LTE SC-01D” and “docomo Tablet ARROWS Tab LTE F-01D,” set for October release.
• Try out new broadband services for the high-performance Xi network, including internationally popular services and games such as Hulu and Qik Video.

Smartphone-ready device to measure acetone in breath for diet support

• The compact device measuring acetone for diet support that can easily be used anywhere and anytime.
• Visitors blow into the smartphone-connected device to measure acetone in their breath-the higher the concentration, the greater the level of hunger.
• The device also identifies when people are burning fat, based on the concentration of acetone in their breath, which rises when body fat is being burnt.

Smartphone jacket for ultra-high-speed battery charging

• This special battery jacket for smartphones achieves a full charge in just 10 minutes. A recharging indicator will show how the jacket will charge a smartphone 10~15 times faster than conventional charging devices.

Smartphone jackets for various purposes

• Three types of special jackets for smartphones that are equipped with sensors that can be customized to measure ultraviolet light and bad breath, gamma radiation and body fat.

Environmental sensor network

• Presentation of real-time atmospheric data (temperature, humidity, wind direction/speed, precipitation, ultraviolet intensity) collected by DOCOMO’s nationwide network of approximately 2,500 environmental sensors, and a demonstration of visualizing the data using augmented reality.

The DOCOMO booth will also offer a mobile handset recycling service, where visitors can drop off old and unwanted mobile phones, rechargers, battery packs and stands. This service is open to all mobile phone users regardless of their carrier, and mobile phones will be destroyed using specialized tools to ensure the protection of personal information.

You can watch these in action here:

I also recently attended a Cambridge Wireless Handset SIG event and David Wood gave an interesting presentation that is embedded below:

Where Next after 10 Years of Smartphones?

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Other presentations from that event available here.

Macrocells or Metrocells?

Just went through Alcatel-Lucent strategic paper on whether to go for more Macrocell sites or rather have Metrocells instead.

A good description of Metrocells is available in the document:

Metro cells, the latest evolution in small cells, are based on the same low cost femtocell technology that has been successfully used in home and enterprise cells, but with enhanced capacity and coverage. With higher processing and transmit power, the first generation of metro cells is engineered to serve from 16 to 32 users and provide a coverage range from less than 100 meters in dense urban locations to several hundred meters in rural environments. However, unlike home and enterprise cells, metro cells are owned and managed by a MSP and typically used in public or open access areas to augment the capacity or coverage of a larger macro network.

Available in both indoor and outdoor versions, metro cells are plug-and-play devices that use Self-Organizing Network (SON) technology to automate network configuration and optimization, significantly reducing network planning, deployment and maintenance costs. While indoor versions use an existing broadband connection to backhaul traffic to a core network, outdoor versions may be opportunistically deployed to take advantage of existing wireline or wireless sites and backhaul infrastructure, such as Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN), Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), Very-high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL) street cabinets, and DSL backbone.

Since metro cells use licensed spectrum and are part of the MSP’s larger mobility network, they provide the same trusted security and quality of service (QoS) as the macro network. With seamless handovers, users can roam from metro cells to the macro network and vice versa. Metro cells also deliver the same services as the macro network (for example, voice, Short Message Service (SMS), and multimedia services), and support application programming interfaces (APIs), that may be used for developing new, innovative services. In short, metro cells promise to be the ideal small cells for network offloading.

For more details on the whitepaper see: http://www.slideshare.net/zahidtg/metro-cells-whitepaper

Public training on UMTS and HSPA/HSPA+

We are conducting our first public training on UMTS and HSPA/HSPA+. There are still a lot of people working on UMTS / HSPA / HSPA+ even though quite a lot of focus is being put on LTE.

This course is split into 3 parts and the person attending it can decide which days he wants to attend. The intention is to bring a person with minimal knowledge upto a good speed and to a level where (s)he can become an expert by putting some extra effort.

For more details see: http://www.explanotech.com/beta/images/articles_images/file/TrainingBrochure_V_0_5_3.pdf

Discounts available for regular readers of this blog. Please ask.

A global analysis of LTE spectrum requirements and business models

A global analysis of LTE spectrum requirements and business models

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UMTS 900/1800 - Presentation by Qualcomm

UMTS 900/1800

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TD-LTE: Global Market Scenario - Sep. 2011 update

TD-LTE: Global Market Scenario - Sep. 2011

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Panel Session on Small Cells (Femtocells) from Cambridge Wireless SIG event

Panel Session on Small Cells (Femtocells) from Cambridge Wireless SIG event from Zahid Ghadialy on Vimeo.

From the Cambridge Wireless Small Cell Special Interest Group event

“Small Cells: the beginning and where we are now”

15 September 2011

At The IET, Savoy Place, London, WC2R 0BL

Panel Session

Chair: Mike Bowerman, Account Manager, Alcatel Lucent.

Participants (from Left to right):

Professor Will Stewart, IET

Houston Spencer, VP Solutions and Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Will Franks, CTO and Founder, Ubiquisys

Chris Cox, Director of Marketing, ip.access

More details about the speakers and the event available at: http://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/Agenda/SCS1_15.09.11.pdf

Summary from the 'Small Cells' Event in Cambridge Wireless

We recently had our first 'Small Cells' SIG event in Cambridge Wireless entitled 'Small Cells: The beginning and where we are now'. The following presentation is the Introduction to Cambridge wireless and the 'Small Cells' SIG (special interest group).

Introduction to Cambridge Wireless and the 'Small Cells' SIG

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Embedded below are the slides and the videos that were taken by our host for the day, 'The IET'.

The first presentation was by Prof. Will Stewart of The IET entitled 'Small Cells - Why small cells?'.

Slides Available here. Video podcast here.

Next presentation: 'Small Cells - the big brother of femtocells. Why they are needed, and where is the femtocell market that they build on' by Will Franks, Ubiquisys

Slides available here. Video podcast here.

Next Presentation: 'Small Cells - On the origin of Small Cells by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured providers in the struggle for mobile broadband' by Houston Spencer, Alcatel-Lucent

Slides available here. Video podcast here.

Final Presentation: 'Small Cells - Mass scale femtocell deployments' by Chris Cox, IP.Access

Slides available here. Video podcast here.

Overall it was a good event. The main complaint was that people had lots of questions but didnt get to ask them. Hopefully they will ask them in the future events.

Interference Management in Femto/Small Cell and Macro Environments

Interference Management in Femto/Small Cell and Macro Environments

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Inter-technology Carrier Aggregation

Another one from the 4G Americas whitepaper of Mobile Broadband explosion:

Carrier aggregation will play an important role in providing operators maximum flexibility for using all of their available spectrum. By combining spectrum blocks, LTE-Advanced will be able to deliver much higher throughputs than otherwise possible. Asymmetric aggregation (i.e., different amounts of spectrum used on the downlink versus the uplink) provides further flexibility and addresses the fact that currently there is greater demand on downlink traffic than uplink traffic. Specific types of aggregation include:

• Intra-band on adjacent channels.
• Intra-band on non-adjacent channels.
• Inter-band (e.g., 700 MHz, 1.9 GHz).
• Inter-technology (e.g., LTE on one channel, HSPA+ on another). This is currently a study item for Release 11. While theoretically promising, a considerable number of technical issues will have to be addressed.