The case for Femto-optimised handsets

Dean Bubley from Disruptive wireless has come out with a report arguing for the need of Femto-aware handsets. The following is an extract from the report summary:

Already, femto proponents are talking up massmarket business models that go beyond simple indoor coverage and macro-network offload. They are talking about 10’s of millions of subscribers, and new “in-home” services for users, that exploit fast and cheap local mobile connectivity.

But this is based on the notion that people will use their cellphones differently when in range of femtos. There will be different applications and behaviour when people are at home – perhaps content backups, podcasts or even advertiser-sponsored TV programming. The mobile phone may need to linked to TV, PC, HiFi or other items of domestic technology.

This report argues that if the phone will be used differently, it needs to be designed differently as well. Standard phones can work with femtocells, but they are not optimised. The phone needs to be “aware” of the femtocell, ideally both in the radio and the application platform.

The report looks at all the various "layers" of a typical phone, and examines how the advent of femtocells will drive changes and optimisations:

• Physical design & form-factor of the handset
• Radio layer & protocol stack
• Internal hardware - memory, power management etc
• Handset operating system & connection manager
• New femtocell-related applications & capabilities

The study includes forecasts for the overall femtocell market, and scenarios examining how the evolution of femto-cell aware handsets may evolve. It examines the value chain of the phone design & manufacturing industry, and discusses the role of component suppliers, OS specialists and industry bodies.

More Info here.

The following is from an article in Tech World:

The devices could do useful jobs such as handling large media files on phones, but these applications won't work well unless the phone has a reliable way of knowing whether it is on the femto or the "macro" network, said Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis. Unfortunately, vendors' efforts to make femtocells work seamlessly with all existing phones has resulted in a definition which makes the femto look exactly like a macrocell, to the handset.

"If femtos change user behavior you will need to change the handsets," said Bubley of Disruptive Analysis, who warns in a report that femto-aware handsets will be required.

Femto-aware handsets will be important after 2010, said Vedat Eyuboglu, chief technology officer at femto maker Airvana, which supplies silicon modules to Thomson, a maker of home gateways including BT's Home Hub.

However, Bubley warned that the actual phones might get forgotten, or take too long to develop: "The debate around femto-aware phones may get mired in discussions about interference management and 3GPP R8 tweaks to the interfaces involved," he said. "It takes two years to alter protocol stacks and hardware - we won't have femto-optimized phones until at least the end of 2010."

The handset issue could be addressed by industry body the Femto Forum, said Forum chair Simon Saunders, announcing the Forum's new relationship with the Next Generation Mobile Network Alliance (NGMNA), a body helping specify requirements for WiMax and LTE systems.

"As well as phones, femtocells will be used by devices including dongles and ultra-mobile PCs," said Saunders. "They do not have such long development cycles as mobile phones."

The NGMNA is developing recommendations for a cost-optimized indoor node, and for self-organizing networks, both of which can be met by femtocell designs that the Femto Forum will help develop. The two bodies will promote joint solutions and submit them to standards bodies.

Mobile TV! Still no joy

Mobile TV is floundering in one of its bastion (Korea ... other one being Japan). The following is from a report in telecoms.com:

With mobile TV services in the flagship market of South Korea floundering and with few signs that operators anywhere else have found a successful formula for launching such services, most operator and vendor delegates at the recent CommunicAsia Summit in Singapore struggled to find enthusiasm for the fledgling industry.

Some operators and vendors say that mobile TV should be subscription-based, to offer a reliable revenue stream; others say an ad-supported model is the most viable option; and still others argue that a combined pay/advertising approach is the way forward.

Figures from South Korea seem to suggest that both pay-based and ad-supported models have critical weaknesses, which would also apply in other markets in the region. A lot more experimentation and creativity from operators might be required to find the right model.
Those promoting the idea of a pay-based service say that only by charging for content can a business model work. They say operators must team up with content firms to acquire premium content - most particularly sports - that people will be willing to pay a monthly fee to view or even pay for on a per-view basis.

But this line of thinking seems flawed, given that there is a limited amount of blue-chip content for which people will be prepared to pay, most notably live sports events - such as English Premier League soccer games - or highlights of them.

The problem is, of course, that content-rights holders have become adept at exacting a premium price for key sports rights, meaning that mobile TV operators would have to recoup their heavy capital investment by charging high subscription fees.

This is a problem, since the high churn rate experienced by TU Media in South Korea seems to suggest that mobile TV subscribers are extremely price-sensitive.

TU Media subscribers pay just KRW13,000 ($12.60) a month for the service but have been leaving in droves after their initial one-year contracts finish, forcing the firm to offer significantly reduced subscription rates to keep subscribers from deserting the service.

TU Media's experience suggests that mobile TV subscribers will be willing to pay only so much for services and that although blue-chip sports content has a crucial role to play, operators must find a way to acquire the content without paying excessive prices.

On the advertising side of the debate, many delegates at CommunicAsia argued that an ad-based strategy would work best for mobile TV platforms but that operators would have to be extremely creative in their approach.

There is no magic bullet that will provide a successful business model, but there seems to be a reasonable possibility that an attractive model can be built if operators can match the largely young and technology-friendly subscribers viewing mobile TV on their handsets with advertisers desperate to reach such a market.

Intriguingly, conference delegates also discussed the possibility that broadcast-type mobile TV services might never fully take off in the region and that Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) video streaming over high-speed HSPA and future LTE networks would dominate the market.

The debate has strong proponents on both sides. Many vendors back an MBMS approach, saying that experience shows that broadcast-style services are not what users are demanding and that the more-narrowly targeted VOD-style content being offered on HSPA networks is already proving hugely popular.

The pro-MBMS argument also runs that with HSPA/LTE networks already in place and offering voice, data and video services, why go to the expense of deploying a terrestrial or satellite-based mobile TV network, especially with the expense involved in creating high-quality in-building reception?

Although this is a persuasive argument, it has shortfalls, most notably the fact that even LTE networks will still be point-to-point networks and will be unequipped to operate as point-to-multipoint services, which a full broadcast mobile TV service would require.
The broadcast-mobile-TV lobby argues strongly that the core strengths of broadcast-based networks cannot be replicated by even high-speed mobile networks, which would not be able to support the huge demand that's sure to arise for broadcasts of live sports and important news events.

In reality, the MBMS-vs.-broadcast-mobile-TV debate is spurious, given that both technologies are going to be on the market, and it will be users who determine which is the more successful.
At this early stage, it looks likely that subscribers and operators will use high-speed, quality video streaming for VOD-based "snacking" on content and that full broadcast mobile TV will be used for some live events, for which only a broadcast-style service can supply the quality of service required.

Korean Insight has an interesting section on Mobile TV (but no blogs on this topic for some time). A blog on this topic last year says a lot:

As TU Media started operations in mid 2005 it tried to acquire simultaneous re-transmission rights from broadcasters. This means that S-DMB viewers would be able to watch popular dramas and shows simultaneously with fixed TV. These contents are considered the most popular on both fixed and mobile TV. However, previously have broadcasters been reluctant to share these contents because they wanted to use it for their own T-DMB service. This is why S-DMB had to focus on other contents like sports and news. But the lack of “killer” contents from fixed TV hindered S-DMB development (as shown in the graphic above). Until today it had been able to acquire approximately 1.26 million subscribers. But according to TU Media they need approximately 2.5 million subscribers to be profitable.

But also T-DMB is struggling to build a profitable business. Despite more than seven million T-DMB devices in Korea the advertising revenues are marginal. Which partially is the result of very restrictive legislation on advertising but also broadcasters have failed to develop an attractive mobile advertising value proposition to make this channel more attractive for advertisers.

Consumers have embraced this new medium and it is very likely that broadcasters will take mobile TV more serious and endeavor to make mobile TV advertising more attractive for broadcasters. Until 2012 more than 20 million T-DMB devices are expected, so mobile TV has a future in Korea.

LTE And WiMax Together?

In my last blog I talked about LTE and WiMax finally finding a peace in each other and the early signs of the two having a future together. As I said before I have always believed that the two technologies as a basic are not very much different. I certainly support the notion that the industry can benefit a lot from the two working side by side.

But as always when I was discussing this with some of my friends in the industry they questioned about the similarity between the two technologies.

So how much similar or different they are?

Whenever the similarity between LTE and WiMax is discussed we conclude that the single most important similarity between LTE and WiMax is orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) signalling. Both technologies also employ Viterbi and turbo accelerators for forward error correction. From a chip designer's perspective, that makes the extensive reuse of gates highly likely if one had to support both schemes in the same chip or chip set. From a software-defined radio (SDR) perspective, the opportunity is even more enticing. Flexibility, gate reuse and programmability seem to be the answers to the WiMax-LTE multimode challenge and that might spell SDR.

So to start with I just concentrated on OFDMA and did some research to find out how much similar the two technologies are in terms of OFDMA or are they?

Most of the articles and discussion shows that LTE and WiMax may be two peas in an OFDM pod, but they are not twins. Here are three significant differences:

1. Both use orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) in the downlink. But WiMax optimizes for maximum channel usage by processing all the information in a wide channel. LTE, on the other hand, organizes the available spectrum into smaller chunks.
WiMax pays a price for high channel utilization, however, because processing that much information might require a 1,000-point fast Fourier transform. LTE can get by with a 16-point FFT. This translates into higher power consumption, because it's difficult to design fixed-function WiMax hardware that is also efficient in LTE designs. An architecture that exploits the principles of SDR, however, could reconfigure its FFT function for better power efficiency.
2. LTE uses single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) for uplink signaling, while WiMax sticks with OFDMA. A major problem with OFDM-based systems is their high peak-to-average power ratios. The average power spec cited in marketing presentations does not show the whole picture. Unfortunately, the system's power amplifier has to be designed to handle peak power--and the PA is the single-largest power consumer in a handset.
LTE opted for the SC-FDMA specifically to boost PA efficiency. "If you can improve the efficiency from 5 percent up to 50 percent simply by changing modulation schemes, then you save a lot of battery time," said Anders Nilsson, principal system architect at multimode specialist Coresonic AB. WiMax's OFDMA has a peak-average ratio of about 10 dB, while LTE's SC-FDMA's peak-average ratio is about 5 dB.
The difference also affects the baseband chip, Nilsson added, because of the need to support two modulation schemes in the uplink. Programmable solutions are flexible enough to reuse gates and keep power low in LTE mode.

Regarding the PAPR issue (Peak to Average Power Ratio), I found the following tutorial interesting
http://to.swang.googlepages.com/peaktoaveragepowerratioreduction

3. Although both the IEEE 802.13e standard and the evolving LTE standard support frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD), WiMax implementations are predominantly TDD. LTE seems to be heading in the FDD direction because it is true full-duplex operation: Adjacent channels are used for uplink and downlink. LTE can therefore quote a better spec for downlink data rates, albeit at a cost of placing very severe latency requirements for forward error correction. The bottom line is that the WiMax radio is much simpler
These differences make designing a chip or chip set to support both standards more difficult, but they also have network infrastructure consequences that might be more easily resolved by harmonization instead of competition. Certainly, from the handset designer's perspective, there is no clear winner.
The battery life and power efficiency of the chip or chip set are critical to market success, said Fannie Mlinarsky, an independent consultant specializing in wireless testing and design. Power is a big issue for WiMax and LTE because megabit-per-second capability means running the DSP hard and making the chips more power hungry.

Rumors: Femtocells being rolled out from this month

Sprint's indoor coverage-extending femtocell device, Airave, will be rolled out nationwide on July 15 (USA) according to early reports. Airave is a device which connects to any cable modem or DSL router with an open port, and generates a signal to which mobile phones can connect. Airave allows up to three simultaneous voice connections to be made within a 5,000 square foot coverage area.

Additionally, Airave comes with a 20-foot long antenna (cant be right) that must be stationed near a window so its onboard GPS receiver can connect. This is necessary for the device to function because the GPS determines if it is stationed within Sprint-licensed territory. If this device is used in an area that does not offer some degree of native Sprint coverage, it will not function.

This is a bold move from Sprint considering this another story from Unstrung titled, "Operators Feel Femto Frustration":

A lack of standards, unresolved technical issues, and unclear business cases are conspiring to push operator plans for commercial femtocell launches into next year. That’s the message from major mobile operators at the recent Femtocell Europe 2008 conference. While operators are still enticed by the potential for cost savings, capacity increases, and new service revenues that the mini home base stations promise, they gave a realistic account of their own plans for femtocells here, and they said they anticipate commercial deployments in the market some time in 2009 .

The lack of a definitive standard for femtocells is a sticking point for operators and has even caused some to postpone their vendor selections. SFR , for one, has delayed its femtocell RFQ (request for quotation) because the standards are not yet defined.

While equipment suppliers have taken a big step recently to agree on a framework for defining a femtocell standard -- thanks to vendor compromises and the Femto Forum Ltd. facilitating a consensus -- the hard work to hash out a standard at the 3GPP is just beginning.

T-Mobile International AG ’s head of RAN strategy, Zhongrong Liu, said the femtocell standardization process was hampered by “lack of resource or focus from big vendors,” and he urged them to send more delegates to the 3GPP working groups.

O2 (UK) Ltd. has found in recent femtocell tests that the devices were not hitting HSDPA data speeds. Chris Fenton, director of convergence policy at O2, said that the femtocells the operator tested recently got to just 700 kbit/s on the downlink. “There is some work to do to get us to the 3.6 Mbit/s and 7.2 Mbit/s” he said. “We’re testing early boxes, though -- I think it’s really close, so that’s OK.”

Operators admit that they are not yet certain of what the service proposition for home base stations should be or how they’ll make money from the devices. Some look to femtocells simply to improve indoor coverage, which could have a big effect on churn. AT&T’s Gordon Mansfield, director of radio access network planning, said that poor coverage is the number one cause of churn. “In the U.S. market, we’ve got these challenges,” he said.

Mansfield said that early femto deployments would be aimed at improving indoor coverage and that future deployments could be aimed at “integrating three screens in the home,” or, in other words, tying the mobile phone into consumers’ home networks.

Another article in Unstrung last month had an interview with Vodafone visionary on how Vodafone dreams of Metro Femto:

Femtocells could one day proliferate in metropolitan areas at bus stops, on lamp posts, or on buildings, if Vodafone Group plc's vision for a hotspot deployment of femto access points becomes reality. The giant mobile operator's head of new technologies and innovation, Kenny Graham, proposed taking the mini home base stations out of the home/office and onto the streets at the Femtocells Europe 2008 conference in London Wednesday morning. Graham (a.k.a. the Vodafone Visionary) reckons the same attributes that make femtocells ideal for deployment in homes and offices -– localized coverage, improved performance, self-configuration, self-optimization, and low cost -– can be of use outside, too. He dubbed this kind of deployment a “metrozone.”

Meanwhile operators are working hard to make sure the cost of Femtocell hits rock bottom:

Telecoms operators are pushing to get the cost of a 3G femtocell in the home down to €40 – well below the current $99 (€63) target. "For the femtocell to be economically viable compared with the macrocells, it has to be less than €40 in the total cost of ownership per access point," said Thierry Berthouloux, head of network evolution at French mobile phone operator SFR, speaking at the European Femtocell conference. "It is not €100, that is far to expensive, and that is really the challenge," said Berthouloux.

NFC: Near-Field Communication

Saw this posted on Forum Oxford. Very good introductory article on NFC:

Near-field Communication (NFC) is characterized as a very short-range radio communication technology with a lot of potential, especially when applied to mobile handsets. Imagine yourself using your cellphone to interact with posters, magazines, and even with products while at the store, and with such interaction initiating a request or search for related information in real-time. Other usages of NFC include the electronic wallet to make payments using your handset, the same way you do with your credit card. With NFC all this is possible. But NFC is still a young technology. That said, NFC-enabled handsets are being introduced into the market, and deployments and pilots around the world are occurring.

Near-field Communication or NFC is a standard defined by the NFC Forum, a global consortium of hardware, software/application, credit card companies, banking, network-providers, and others who are interested in the advancement and standardization of this promising technology.

NFC is a short-range radio technology that operates on the 13.56 MHz frequency, with data transfers of up to 424 kilobits per second. NFC communication is triggered when two NFC-compatible devices are brought within close proximity, around four centimeters. Because the transmission range is so short, NFC-based transactions are inherently secure; more on this shortly.

When compared to the other short-range radio technologies, NFC is extremely short ranged and what I call people-centric. Some of the other short-range communication technologies have similar characteristics, for example RFID, while others are completely different yet complimentary to NFC; for example Bluetooth and Infrared. A good scenario of such compliment is the combination of NFC and Bluetooth, where NFC is used for pairing (authenticating) a Bluetooth session used for the transfer of data.

Complete Article at Sun Developer Network.

More about NFC at NFC Forum homepage.

Mobile broadband to overtake wired broadband by 2010

According to this report in Times Online, "By 2010, the mobile phone network will have overtaken home broadband as the primary way of connecting to the web, experts say".

I agree that more and more people are accessing web through their mobiles but replacing the connected web is still long way to go. There are many factors that will keep the connected web in business:

• The mobile networks are not properly dimensioned and optimised to heavy data use
• The networks are still not very reliable
• The network backhaul is not good enough. Operators have been too cautious to upgrade their backhaul as it costs good money.
• Mobile Web will never be suitable for large and medium business.
• People who regularly watch Movies and Videos (inc. IPTV) over the net can never get desired quality over mobile (maybe for short time they can)

Things may change with the introduction of Femtocells but thats still long way away and anyway, the Femtos will use connected web to tunnel its data.

From the Times report:

Increased sales of laptops - which can be connected to the internet via the owner's mobile phone connection - the widespread roll out of high-speed mobile networks and the falling price of connecting to such networks have all contributed to the uptake of mobile broadband, they said.

One person in ten now regularly accesses the internet on a computer via a mobile phone connection, despite such services only having been on sale for less than a year, according to research released this week by You Gov. Of those, up to a third now connect their computers to the internet solely through the mobile network.

"This trend is as significant as the shift from home to mobile phones that took place in the mid Nineties," a spokesman for Top 10 Broadband, a price comparison site, said. "We predict that by 2010, mobile broadband will overtake home broadband as the default way to access the internet in the UK." A similar claim was made by Broadband Expert, another comparison site.

Mobile broadband takes advantage of high-speed 3G phone networks that can transfer data at speeds approaching those achieved by a fixed-line home internet connection. The customer plugs a small device known as a dongle into a laptop's USB port, and can then surf the web at speeds of about 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps).

Most home broadband packages advertising speeds of "up to 8Mbps" achieve speeds of 2.7Mbps, according to a study by Which? last year.

Prices have come down by 50 per cent from late last year, with a typical mobile broadband package now costing £15 a month - roughly on par with a fixed-line deal.

Via: WirelessMoves

T-Mobile USA Hotspot@Home goes National

T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home can be labelled as pre-femtocell service. Its based on UMA and needs UMA based phones for this service to work.

The following is from a report in C-net:

Subscribers will be able to connect any regular home telephone to a T-Mobile router that will send calls over the Internet much the same way as services like Vonage operate. The service costs $10 a month plus taxes and fees for unlimited domestic local and long-distance calls.

Only T-Mobile wireless customers who subscribe to at least a $39.99 individual calling plan or families subscribing to at least the $49.99 monthly T-Mobile calling plan can get the service. The @Home service also requires that users subscribe to a separate broadband service from a cable operator or telecom provider. And they are required to use a special T-Mobile router, which also provides Wi-Fi Internet access throughout the home.

This router can also be used to provide T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home phone service. This service, launched last year, allows T-Mobile subscribers to use dual-mode cellular and Wi-Fi phones that switch between both networks. When subscribers are near their home Wi-Fi hot spot, they use the broadband network to make unlimited domestic calls. And when they are outside the home, the phone seamlessly switches to T-Mobile's cellular network.

The service, which also costs $10 extra per month, serves two purposes. It helps provide better in-home cell phone coverage and also helps reduce the number of minutes used on the T-Mobile cellular network.

Via: Dailywireless

LTE and WiMax Working Together?

In my past blogs I have written about the competition between LTE and WiMax. From some of my previous blogs you might remember that I mentioned about the dirty war between LTE and WiMax. Until few months ago both LTE and WiMax camps never missed any opportunity to have go on each other. But it looks like things are changing now and may be changing for the good.

I have always believed that there is not much difference in the basics of the two technologies. Then why to have two camps which will not serve good to any body.

The issue for me is simply resources in our industry where we only have a finite number of R&D engineers and we split them into different camps, then we would be diluting what we can do in the future.
In the recent days after reading some articles and talking to some of my friends in the industry I can say that after a couple of years of verbal skirmishing and specsmanship, there are signs that the WiMax and LTE camps may be seeking a negotiated settlement.
I believe that LTE standard is an encompassing standard, an accommodating standard and there is a TDD section that I think WiMAX could fit into.

People in our industry must be knowing by now that the outgoing CEO of Vodafone group Arun Sarin has always been a supporter of WiMax. If I say that he was the one to kick start the open debate of LTE WiMax coming together then I won’t be million miles away from the fact. During the opening keynote at the last GSMA's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain the executive tossed out the suggestion that WiMAX could find a place within the LTE standard. He argued that we need about one sixth of the number of operating systems out there in the market and that we have to narrow the range of operating systems. Sarin continued by saying that that we have 30 or 40 operating systems right now, if we had three or five operating systems, then that would be a good thing.

For many players, there are compelling reasons for peace between the two camps and no doubt saving the money tops the list. A head-to-head battle over the next few years would require an outlay of multiple billions of dollars in equipment deployment. It would also be confusing for end users, and might even determine a winner and loser in a very high-stakes game.

Until recently, much has been made of the differences between the two 4G wireless-communications candidates, usually by comparing performance characteristics and ignoring architectural similarities. Sean Maloney, executive vice president at WiMax champion Intel Corp., has already hinted that the two standards should be harmonized because they are "about 80 percent similar." Maloney added that Intel is looking into ways to integrate the technologies. It is technically possible to create a chip set that could be used for both, he said. Maloney's comments might be interpreted as a response to Arun Sarin’s suggestion of the two coming together during the february’s GSMA’s mobile world congress.

While the feelers may not qualify as a love fest, they come at a time when emerging semiconductor technologies promise to make LTE-WiMax multimode operation a reality in the not-too-distant future. In that context, spending billions to deploy standard-specific networks becomes unattractive.

"The differences are more political than anything else," said Nadine Manjaro, senior analyst for wireless infrastructure at ABI Research (New York). Although Manjaro predicted the standards would merge, she also said LTE will not be a formal standard until 2009 or 2010. Thus, she said, it would be 2015 before any merger takes place.

Well time only will tell whether the early signs of this friendship between the two camps will materialize or not. I firmly believe there are more positives as compared to negative if the two camps come together. The time, money and resources saved will be immense if the two work together.

muni Wi-Fi for Beiging, China

I wrote about this topic earlier this year. Municipal WiFi's are failing in US as the cost of maintaining them can sometimes overwhelm the municipaltys. Anyway, I still think that they may serve a very useful purpose especially when IMS is available and they can be used as Access Networks.

While China is still holding back on 3G rollout, I read in China news that there will be a blanket of WiFi over the whole of Beijing. This will be in place by olympics and during olympics there will be free access for people. Here is what the news said:

Chinacomm Communications, the service provider, will implement the plan in three phases. The first phase began trial operations on June 25, and covers an area of 100 square kilometers.

The second phase is scheduled to finish in 2009 and the final phase will be completed in 2010 with the creation of a citywide wireless network, the report said.

Through the wireless access points, people with laptops, PDAs or Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones will be able to go online outdoors, the report said. However, the report didn't say how much the service will cost.

According to the plan, CECT-Chinacomm Communications will build 9,000 wireless access points in public areas and 150 WiMAX stations by the end of 2009, providing Wi-Fi services on more than 90 percent of streets in Beijing. Xuanwu District already has 15 such stations that serve the city's sanitation departments.

Future Tech Home of 2013 (after LTE of course ;)

Got this one in a mail from The Standard:

It's 2013, and you've just come home from work. As you pull into the driveway, you reach into your pocket and swipe the screen of your smartphone with your thumb. Your garage door opens and the lights in your house turn on. The TV queues up the shows you missed while you were working late. Your favorite songs are following you from the living room to the kitchen. Then you stop. The phone blinks and warbles at you. The fridge says you forgot the milk.

It's the HD/wireless/automated/streaming/sych'd/ready-to-entertain house of the future, and you're living in it.

Welcome home.

Sit back, strap on your sense of imagination, and get ready to step into the digital home of 2013. Here are ten technologies that will make our life complicated ... I mean simpler:

High-speed telecommunications: In 2013, you can forget about the cable guy running coax cable through your home or your Wi-Fi signal petering out in the master bedroom. By then, you'll have high-speed Internet access anywhere you go, regardless of whether you're chillin' on the deck out back or surfing upstairs in your pajamas. Constant access to the Internet will be provided by technologies like WiMAX and 4G.

It's an HD world: What's better than sitting on the couch in the family room while stuffing your mouth with popcorn as you watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica on your new 50-inch HDTV? Nothing? Well, what if you could live in a home where HD isn't found in just the living room, but all over the place? Now that is what I call living!

Gaming gets real: The digital home in 2013 will see a new breed of consoles that go beyond the Xbox 360/PS3/Wii experience. And although some say that game graphics have little room for improvement, the consoles being fired up in living rooms of the future will certainly feature titles that are far more life-like than ever imagined. As graphics approach photorealism, PC gaming could feel the greatest impact of all.

Reach out and touch something: Touching is fun. It's really fun to touch gadgets, and navigate user interfaces using your fingers. And while you're walking through your digital home in 2013, you'll be doing a lot of touching all the time.

Automated home control: The digital home in 2013 will provide residents with exciting new ways to control their houses, devices, and appliances, while saving energy. And who isn't happy about helping out ol' Mother Earth?

Green goes mainstream: The green trend is undeniable. More and more high-tech companies are becoming aware of their collective obligation to the environment. Right now, companies including Dell, Apple, and HP provide safe recycling of computers, while small manufacturers like Green Machine Shop in Michigan are promising more environmentally friendly computing gear.

Welcome to the cloud: As broadband penetration expands, the idea of accessing data storage, software, and even extra processing power is becoming more attractive. And if you play your cards right, your digital home in 2013 will not only be free from clutter, but it might be in a serious relationship with the Web.

The rise of streaming media: Although Blu-ray seems like the ultimate in futuristic home technologies right now, it will look like a dinosaur by 2013. By that time, streaming content from the Internet and from room to room will be relatively commonplace, and the idea of spinning a plastic disc to watch a movie will seem positively archaic.

Online distribution of TV, movies: In the digital home of 2013, the Internet will help you access libraries of content that go far beyond what Netflix or Wal-Mart offer in their DVD catalogs. Furthermore, on-demand Internet delivery will allow viewers to turn away from prescheduled TV programs. You'll be able to watch what you want, whenever you want.

Collaborating across town, and across the world: Collaborating via email is, well, outdated. In the future, you won't need to wait for an email with an updated file attachment, and you certainly won't need to send off documents through FedEx. Instead, you will be using services like Google Docs to share documents in real-time, and using next-generation conferencing and messaging services to collaborate. Sharing is the key to the future, and as your mother once told you, sharing is good for you.

You can get all the details by following this link.

And by the way, if you want to find out how the world will look in 2032, see this earlier blog.

New Fad: "SMS with Attachments"

The press release said: New ''SMS with Attachments'' Service Used by 18 Million Mobile Subscribers in China. SMS with atthments? Isnt this what MMS stands for. Maybe people are reluctant to try new Mobile Applications. Anyway, here is the press release summary:

First you get the text message. And then the phone rings, playing back a multimedia joke message sent by one of your friends. It's funny enough that you want to share it with others. It's called SMS (text) messaging with attachments, and it is the latest revenue-generating service built using Open Access(TM) media processing boards from telecommunications services platform provider NMS Communications. The SMS with attachments service, developed by value-added service provider ChannelSoft, is available to nearly 96 million China Unicom and China Mobile subscribers, and has already been adopted by more than 18 million subscribers to date.

SMS with attachments allows users to send external multimedia content to friends and family. Callers can subscribe to the service and select attachments such as music, ringback tones, jokes, other audio files and other forms of entertainment that they want to share with friends. The operator will then send the SMS message with the attachment to the recipient, who could then forward the message to other friends. ChannelSoft expects the service to continue to grow, increasing average revenue per user (ARPU), with estimates topping $44 million for 2008.

"While text messaging still enjoys the lion's share of mobile messaging revenues, operators are expanding their menus to give subscribers more options that will, in turn, drive revenues," said Jamie Warter, vice president of marketing at NMS Communications. "SMS with attachments is another great example of a creative service developed by an innovative company like ChannelSoft using NMS Open Access media processing boards."

Now you may soon hear about Phone Call with Picture (a.k.a. Video calling ;)

Life has become busy

Couple of days back Ravi sent me a mail asking why I have not been blogging regularly recently and have in fact received many queries on my 3G4G website as to when I would be updating it.

There is no simple answer to these questions as at present I am extremely busy and finding it very difficult to update the site. This was the main reason I started blogging as its far less time consuming then the website. As for now, I cant see getting some good time slot till the year end to do both these tasks so please bear with me.

Kyocera's iBurst-Based Technology Approved as New Standard for IEEE 802.20

17/06/08: Kyocera Corporation announced that Kyocera’s iBurst-based technology proposal (625k-MC mode) was approved as a new standard for IEEE 802.20 by the IEEE Standards Association at its headquarters, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA on June 12, 2008.

“Having been a draft standard since January 2006, Kyocera is gratified that iBurst has finally been approved as an 802.20 standard by the IEEE Standards Association,” said Mr. Masashi Yano, General Manager of the Corporate Communication System Equipment Division, Kyocera Corporation. “With this industry standard approval, we are expecting to expand the iBurst service area to more and more countries.”

Kyocera’s iBurst, or HC-SDMA, is a mobile broadband wireless access (MBWA) system that has been commercially rolled out in more than 10 countries and has been approved as a standard by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector ( ITU-R). iBurst has remarkably high capacity, essential for mobile broadband wireless access services, and distributes its high data rates to many mobile PC users. This is enabled by field-proven Adaptive Array Antenna (AAA) and Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) technologies.

iBurst operators worldwide have formed the iBurst Association (iBA), a not-for-profit organization advocating the promotion and development of iBurst technology as a preferred MBWA solution.

IEEE 802.20 is also known as MobileFi and I have written a blog on it earlier this year.

MobileFi is more of a compitetor to WiMAX as compared to the 3G+ technologies.

WiMAX is targeted for mobile users moving at speeds of up to 60 mph inside a WiMAX region (laptop users moving across a corporate campus, for example). But 802.20 is focused more on highspeed mobile users traveling acrossan extended metropolitan area at speeds of up to 150 mph (a salesman traveling across a city or an executive traveling between nearby cities on a high-speed train, for example). WiMAX/802.16e also differs from 802.20 in that it supports substantially higher data rates (up to 71 Mbps) than 802.20 (up to 1 Mbps). Another thing is that the cell radius with 802.20 is 15km while with WiMAX is 50km.

Why iBurst? The maain Features of iBurst are:

1. High data rate: iBurst supports Data Rate of 1.061Mbps downlink/ 346Kbps uplink with System capacity 24.4Mbps downlink/ 7.9 Mbps uplink.

2. High Spectral Efficiency: iBurst supports more customers per base station. In 5 MHz Spectrum, 50X over-subscription as compared to 3G system

3. Wide Area coverage: Maximum coverage of iBurst is 12.75km. iBurst uses lower frequency, which is good for non-line-ofsight indoor penetration.

4. Mobility: iBurst supports Mobility of over 100km/h. iBurst also supports Handover between base stations.

5. Easy access to IP network: iBurst is packet based technology

6. VoIP compatibility: QoS is implemented to assure wireless VoIP quality. iBurst has achieved fixed phone level voice quality.

Links:

• Kyocera news section on iBurst technology.
• IEEE 802.20 introduction in PDF from IEEE.
• iBurst introduction from ITU-T in PDF.
• iBurst technical overview from Kyocera.

WiMax and LTE backwards compatibility

Most of you must be hearing on daily basis about the race for 4G and who will reach there first and will claim the victory for the 4G post.

The competition between WiMax and LTE is really blossoming and both the camps never miss any opportunity to find a hole or negative in other. One of the major point of conflict in recent days between the two camps (WiMax and LTE) is the backwards compatibly of the two technologies.
WiMax based on the 802.16 standard could push data transfer speeds up to 1 Gbit/s while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing WiMax radios. Vendor sources, however, have expressed some scepticism about the speed with which the work can be completed (the end of 2009 is being mooted as a baked date) and the chances of maintaining backwards compatibility with mobile 802.16 technology.

What's really provoking the disbelieving chuckles are the requirement for backwards capability between current and future 802.16e offerings and the planned advanced air interface. Such disbelief is not that surprising when you think back to the recent interoperability issues between 802.16d and 802.16e

Around the same time that LTE rolls out, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.16m, or WiMAX 2.0, will make its way into products, analysts said. But there is not doubt in one thing though that WiMax is ahead of LTE in terms of technology as of today. Service providers with the right spectrum, available capital and access to enough sites to place base stations are in great position to take advantage of WiMAX's head start on the 4G market. Backwards compatibility is one area where WiMax heads towards a grey area whereas LTE at the same time is supposed to be very much backwards compatible. The network architecture for LTE/SAE already shows interface defined for the handover between LTE and 3G. The debate between WiMAX and LTE has become dirty when it comes to the issue of backwards compatibility.

Speaking exclusively to WiMaxVision from the WiMax Forum's member conference in Hawaii, Siavash Alamouti, CTO of Intel's Mobile Wireless Group, takes issue with a key claim made by proponents of LTE. Alamouti's argued and puts a very big question mark on LTE’s backwards compatibility claims.

Word is already out in the industry that although they welcome 'healthy' technology competition to mobile WiMAX in the so-called '4G'space, a number of misconceptions have been promulgated by some vendors, and even some analysts, about main rival LTE. Some peoples biggest gripe is LTE being perceived in some quarters as backwards compatible with 3GPP standards, from WCDMA through to HSPA+.

One of the reasons why many of the mobile giants decided to be in LTE camp is because of its claims for the backwards compatibility. But a doubt has started creeping in and some industry sources even says that they see no genuine evolution in LTE as LTE requires an entirely new RAN and system architecture to 3G, in much the same way as mobile WiMAX does.
To make an LTE device backwards compatible, you would have to add 3G modules to that device but you could do that with mobile WiMAX or in fact any other technology argues Siavash Alamouti of Intel.

My above claim is supported when I heard that Qualcomm announced in February it was expanding its device and base station chipsets to include LTE along with UMTS and CDMA2000. The chipsets will allow backward compatibility to legacy UMTS and CDMA2000 networks for carriers that deploy LTE. The new family of Qualcomm MDM9xxx-series LTE device chipsets will include:
MDM9200™ chipset designed to support UMTS, HSPA+ and LTE
MDM9800™ chipset designed to support EV-DO Rev. B, UMB and LTE
MDM9600™ chipset designed to support UMTS, HSPA+, EV-DO Rev. B, UMB and LTE

LTE, however, has made standardisation progress with the announcement by 3GPP last month that some RAN specifications have been frozen and are now under change control, but there is still some work to be done before the 3GPP Release 8 specification for LTE is finalised, probably by the end of the year.

Where WiMAX is today in 2008 I think LTE will be in late 2010 and early 2011, which is early stages, ready to deploy, but the equipment not necessarily completely interoperable. As for WiMax I expect we'll see embedded mobile WiMAX laptops coming onto the market between April and June this year.

Flatter Architecture from Nokia-Siemens Network

From Unstrung:

In its bid to overtake Ericsson AB and become the world’s top radio access infrastructure supplier in terms of revenue, Nokia Siemens Networks believes its approach to all-IP flat architecture on 3G networks will give it an edge. Nokia Siemens says operators do not have to wait for LTE, to get the benefits of an all-IP architecture, and it is the only vendor that currently champions a flat 3G radio access network (RAN) approach.

As mobile data traffic continues to surge, operators are considering how to adopt flat, all-IP architectures in their 3G networks before the advent of 4G in order to gain lower latency, lower cost per bit, support for multiple access networks, and preparation for next-generation networks. But there are different ways to implement such architectures, and just how operators arrive at a flatter data network architecture is hotly debated.

Nokia Siemens has put its money on a flat RAN approach for high-speed packet access (HSPA) and the coming HSPA+ standard, in addition to its support for the Direct Tunnel architecture.
In a flat RAN architecture, the radio network controller (RNC) is integrated into the Node B so that the base station communicates directly with the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN).
But there are as many benefits as drawbacks to flat 3G RANs, which makes it a controversial approach, according to the recent Heavy Reading report, "Flat IP Architectures in Mobile Networks: From 3G to LTE."

With flat RANs, some of the benefits include lower latency for data applications, lower operational costs due to fewer nodes to maintain and manage, augmented data capacity through a data network overlay, and good preparation for so-called 4G LTE/SAE (System Architecture Evolution), which uses a similar functional architecture. Also, costs won’t grow in line with data traffic growth, because operators won’t have to deploy extra RNC and SGSN capacity as traffic increases.

It may be challenging to integrate the RNC into a Node B. RNCs are critical to supporting macro-diversity in mobile networks, which enables mobile handsets to communicate with multiple base stations on the uplink and allows operators to deploy fewer base stations. NSN’s flat RAN architecture supports this feature, but in an unorthodox way, according to the Heavy Reading report.

So far, Nokia Siemens has three customers using its Internet HSPA (I-HSPA) flat RAN solution: Stelera Wireless and TerreStar Neworks in the U.S. and T-2 in Slovenia. And Mobilkom Austria AG & Co. KG recently trialed the solution.

Nokia Siemens’ Rouanne explains that flat 3G RANs aren’t necessary when there is just “medium” data traffic, but are best suited when operators have big data traffic volumes. “Those networks that are starting to be under pressure with traffic are coming to us and wanting to direct traffic directly to the Internet,” he says.

Even though Nokia Siemens is the only vocal supporter of flat 3G RANs right now, Brown says the strategy isn’t risky, but it’s “forward-looking.”

And a flat 3G RAN can set up an operator to be ready for the shift to LTE with its inherent flat architecture.

According to an old Ericsson presentation, ”Direct Tunnel” support added for 3G payload optimization has the following advantages:

• Cost efficient scaling for Mobile Broadband deployments
• Increased flexibility in terms of network topology
• Allows the SGSN node to be optimized for control plane
• Specifications part of 3GPP rel-7
• Designed for operation in legacy (GGSN/UTRAN) networks
• First step towards the SAE architecture

According to heavy reading article:

To efficiently deliver mobile broadband services, operators require a network infrastructure that simultaneously provides lower costs, lower latency, and greater flexibility. The key to achieving this goal is the adoption of flat, all-IP network architectures. With the shift to flat IP architectures, mobile operators can:

• Reduce the number of network elements in the data path to lower operations costs and capital expenditure
• Partially decouple the cost of delivering service from the volume of data transmitted to align infrastructure capabilities with emerging application requirements
• Minimize system latency and enable applications with a lower tolerance for delay; upcoming latency enhancements on the radio link can also be fully realized
• Evolve radio access and packet core networks independently of each other to a greater extent than in the past, creating greater flexibility in network planning and deployment
• Develop a flexible core network that can serve as the basis for service innovation across both mobile and generic IP access networks
• Create a platform that will enable mobile broadband operators to be competitive, from a price/performance perspective, with wired networks

Note: Diagrams above shamelessly copied from Ericsson's presentation.

Nortel bets on LTE as prediction rises to 32 million by 2013

In a bid to gain head start in the development of technology conforming to LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology standards across the globe, Nortel has withdrawn funds from its in-house research & development for WiMax and diverted the funds to development of LTE-based solutions. The R&D activities for WiMax will be handled by Nortel’s Joint Venture for WiMax with Israel-based Alvarion.

The Globe and Mail newspaper has an interesting analysis of Nortel's revenue model and how moving to LTE may help in long term.

Analysts praised the move, in part because some of North America's largest phone companies are leaning toward LTE.

Richard Lowe, president of Nortel's carrier networks division, says the company is the only one in the industry conducting live trials of LTE.

The first LTE products are expected to be ready for sale in 2010, and the market is estimated to be worth $400-million in the first year and $1.6-billion in 2011.

Even if Nortel is first to get LTE to market, the technology is unlikely to match CDMA for profitability. Mr. Notter describes Nortel's CDMA business as a "gravy train," thanks to what has effectively been a duopoly between Nortel and French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent.

One reason the transition to LTE will hurt Nortel is because the company will be competing against more vendors, including Telefon AB LM Ericsson of Sweden, Finnish-German joint venture Nokia-Siemens Networks and China's Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Mr. Notter said.

Nortel's own financial forecasts indicate the juicy 24-per-cent operating margin in wireless will slide to between 13 per cent and 16 per cent by 2011 as annual growth falls 3 per cent on a compounded annual basis.

Nortel vows to offset these declines by offering new software and services to customers on networks capable of handling greater amounts of data in new and faster ways.

One such service is unified communications, which Nortel chief technology officer John Roese defines broadly as multimedia features that allow people to interact and collaborate from any device and any location.

In terms of intelligent network services, 61 per cent of companies said they were interested in buying unified communications, which they considered to include integrated voice, e-mail, instant messaging, Web and video-conferencing functions.

In another news, Long Term Evolution (LTE), the 4G technology of choice for many major wireless carriers, won’t be commercially launched until at least 2010, but could see upwards of 32 million subscribers by 2013, according to a new study by ABI Research.

Asia-Pacific countries will account for much of LTE’s early growth, according to ABI, given that China Mobile, and Japan’s NTT Docomo and KDDI are expected to make use of the technology.

“ABI Research anticipates about 12 million Asia-Pacific LTE network subscribers in 2013,” said senior ABI analyst, Nadine Manjaro. “The remainder will be split about 60-40% between Western Europe and North America,” where Vodafone and Verizon Wireless (respectively) have announced plans to adopt LTE.

Meanwhile in Korea, KTF announced that its working on LTE with Samsung and ETRI. LG has also been working on LTE from the start.

Nokia, Google, Apple to battle the Mobile Ad market

The mobile ad market is suddenly going to become very hot with the launch of "Nokia Advertising Alliance".

In a press release we have been informed of the launch of the Nokia Advertising Alliance, which will simplify mobile advertising for brand advertisers. The program brings together leading mobile marketing solutions, including couponing, location-based targeting, image recognition, and other emerging technologies, to offer advertisers a simple way to increase consumer engagement. Now brands can work with Nokia to combine the reach of mobile advertising on the Nokia Media Network with the latest mobile technologies for more effective campaigns.

"The Advertising Alliance brings together the most innovative technologies in the market, and brings trust to brands who want to use them," said Scott Heron, Director of Digital Services at Wunderman.

Members of the Alliance are integrated with the Nokia Media Network allowing brands to plan, execute and measure mobile advertising campaigns through a single Nokia interface. A range of companies have been initially certified as Members of the Alliance, including i-movo, Mobile Acuity, Mobiqa, and uLocate, with many additional members in testing. Leading brands from the automotive to entertainment industries have built campaigns using the Nokia Advertising Alliance.

We are all aware of Google's ambition to dominate the mobile ad space. Google maps of my E61 already are able to tell me my location without the need of GPS. In fact they tell me the accuracy of my location as well. Some of us are already seeing the local ads appear on Google maps. In an interview last month, Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) said that soon we will be able to find property in an area when we switch on Google maps and maybe in 5 years time Google may become the largest Estate agent.

By the way, is Nokia trying to do the same with Nokia maps?

Google definitely likes to do things its own way. What is the possibility of it joining the Nokia alliance? What are the chances of the Nokia alliance wanting Google? Also we should probably not leave Apple with its iPhone out of the equation.

Apparently iPhone has some amazing discovery mechanism (sorry not used iPhone yet personally) which helps application creators push and advertise their applications to users and this helps increase the sales. Combine this with large touch screen and high quality video capability. This can create a deadly cocktail for advertisement if used properly. Apple is another player that wants to do things its own way. Wouldnt this create a three way battle?

And yes, we should for the time being forget the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.

3GPP Selects Femtocell Architecture

Picked this up from Dean Bubley's post on his blog.

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has adopted an official architecture for 3G femtocell home base stations.

The 3GPP wants to have the new standard done by the end of this year, which appears to be an aggressive time schedule given the fact that vendors had various approaches to building a femtocell base station. The agreed upon architecture follows an access network-based approach, leveraging existing standards, called IU-cs and Iu-ps interfaces, into the core service network. The result is a new interface called Iu-h.

The architecture defines two new network elements, the femtocell and the femtocell gateway. Between these elements is the new Iu-h interface. This solution was backed by Alcatel-Lucent, Kineto Wireless, Motorola and NEC.

All of the femtocell vendors must go back and change their access point and network gateway equipment to comply with the new standard interface.

All femtocell vendors will have to make changes to their access points. Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, NEC, and those that already use Kineto's GAN approach, such as Ubiquisys, will have the least work to do.

Kineto Wireless, Inc., announced its full support for the 3GPP agreement reached last week on the Home NodeB (HNB) architecture for femtocell-to-core network connectivity. Recognizing that a standard is needed for the mass-market success of femtocells, Kineto took a lead role in developing consensus among the contributing companies. Having an agreed architecture marks a major milestone towards the completion of a global 3G femtocell standard.

The agreed 3GPP HNB architecture follows an access network-based approach, leveraging the existing Iu-cs and Iu-ps interfaces into the core service network. The architecture defines two new network elements, the HNB (a.k.a. Femtocell) and the HNB Gateway (a.k.a. Femto Gateway). Between these elements is the new Iu-h interface.

• Home NodeB (HNB) – Connected to an existing residential broadband service, an HNB provides radio coverage for standard 3G handsets within a home. HNBs incorporate the capabilities of a standard NodeB as well as the radio resource management functions of a standard Radio Network Controller (RNC).
• HNB Gateway (HNB-GW): Installed within an operator’s network, the HNB Gateway aggregates traffic from a large number of HNBs back into an existing core service network through the standard Iu-cs and Iu-ps interfaces.
• Iu-h Interface: Residing between an HNB and an HNB-GW, the Iu-h interface includes a new HNB application protocol (HNBAP) for enabling highly-scalable, ad-hoc HNB deployment. The interface also introduces an efficient, scalable method for transporting Iu control signaling over the Internet.

With an agreement on an underlying femtocell architecture, 3GPP has now transitioned to the phase of developing detailed specifications. This work is targeted for completion by the end of 2008.

More Info:

• 3GPP Picks Femtocell Standard - Unstrung
• The 3GPP Home Node-B (HNB) Standard FOR FEMTOCELLS - Kineto
• 3GPP TR 25.820 - 3GPP
• 3GPP workshop on Home Node B's in, Jeju, Nov. 2007

Discovery Protocols for FMC devices

Today’s mobile computers include additional features such as Java, Bluetooth, Smart Covers, WAP 2.0, and JavaScript enabled Web pages and with embedded SOAP, 3GPP with SIP, and other technologies that make it possible to provide sophisticated, distributed applications. These new applications need Discovery tools to learn about the nearby networks or network-accessible resources available to them.

In future when FMC is common and PnP devices will be commonly available, when a user brings a new device home, the device will be able to automatically integrate itself into the home network. Discovery protocols are the mechanisms that make this possible.

Discovery protocols are network protocols used to discover services, devices, or other networked resources. The ability to discover networked resources at runtime makes it possible to dynamically configure distributed systems.

Over the past 20 years, dozens of discovery protocols have been developed. Despite many years of practical experience with discovery protocols, it remains an active area of research for many organizations investigating topics related to scalability or security or context awareness.
Usually, a discovery protocol allows a service to be discovered on the basis of its type, its Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and other properties—not just its name. For example, DNS (Distributed Name Service) is a name service. It resolves domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. For example, SLP (Service Location Protocol) clients can ask for services that match certain constraints, and servers respond with the names of services that match those constraints.

In general, there are four basic mechanisms that discovery protocols use for “discovery.”

1. Advertisement

2. Inquiry

3. Directories

4. Description

The wide range of protocols, representation languages, and query languages has resulted in very little, if any, interoperability between the various discovery protocols. As a consequence, most commercially available systems implement multiple discovery protocols.

Supporting multiple protocols has major drawbacks. Many mobile devices are memory constrained or have inadequate user interface capabilities. This limitation makes it very undesirable to use multiple protocols when, at least theoretically, a single protocol would be sufficient. Users of laptops or desktops are not usually concerned with the cost or power consumption of the network they are connected to. Mobile phone users may be concerned inefficient protocols designed for Local Area Networks (LANs)—both the financial cost of using the cellular network and the drain on their batteries of using any network.

It is common for discovery protocols to come as an integrated part of a distributed middleware toolkit. In addition to discovery, distributed middleware toolkits provide for remote invocation and events. For example, SSDP (Simple Service Discovery Protocol) is part of UPnP (Universal Plug and Play); a suite of distributedcomputing technologies that includes SSDP, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), and GENA (Generalized Event Notification Architecture). Likewise, Jini is a distributed middleware toolkit that provides its own services discovery protocol.

Distributed middleware toolkits make it possible to create smart controllers that (1) use discovery protocols to integrate themselves with the home devices, (2) are aware of the device state and display information from the device to the user, (3) receive responses from control messages, (4) can authenticate themselves as authorized for the device, and (5) coordinate the actions of many devices.

For more information see:

• Service Discovery Presentation - Prof. Do van Thanh
• Technologies for Home Networking - Sudhir Dixit and Ramjee Prasad

LTE v/s WiMax

In my last blog “LTE Latest News and Status” I wrote how LTE is developing as a technology how some companies are choosing LTE over WiMax.
But we still have a long way to go before it is clear that which technology will be the winner in the race of 4G.
Every now and then the trends are occurring in which one technology being preferred than the other.
But some of the recent developments have once again suggested that WiMax as a technology can’t be taken as lightly and is providing seriously competition for LTE.

WiMax already has a first-mover advantage over LTE. It is possible that WiMax could prove to be the winner in the 4G race against LTE (Long Term Evolution) simply because the technology is here, first.
Teresa Kellett, director of global development for telco Sprint Nextel, said during a panel discussion at WiMax Forum Asia 2008 that WiMax's first-mover advantage over LTE may help the former become a more widely-adopted technology eventually.

LTE is touted as the successor to the existing UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) 3G technology, capable of supporting significantly faster data rates.
Comparing the two competing technologies to another pair of competing standards--GSM and CDMA--she said GSM is the dominant cellular technology globally because it was first to market. CDMA, on which Sprint Nextel operates, has a stronger footprint in the United States.

"The head start a technology has is the key differentiator," said Kellett.
Another panellist, Scott Wickware, vice president of carrier networks for Nortel, said the exchange of knowledge is also beneficial to current players in the market in helping them in areas such as establishing business plans.
"This is the first time I'm seeing so much cooperation in the industry, so it's good to be a first mover," said Wickware.

Recent trends in the industry are showing that when some big gun like Nokia, Ericsson are choosing LTE then WiMax as a technology also has something to relish when it sees that Intel is in their camp.

But together with the competion between the two technolgies, both the camps also realise that to survive and instead of killing each other they might be complementary to each other and move towards the convergence.

Garth Collier, managing director, of Intel's WiMax division for Asia-Pacific and Japan, said he is "seeing for the first time a convergence in the cellular industry".
Collier raised the point of WiMax and 3G being complementary and the possibility of co-existence.

While the market waits for LTE, WiMax will serve as a "data overlay" for 3G, meant for delivering data where 3G's speeds are inadequate, while the cellular network continues to handle voice well, he said.

The emergence of dual mode or dual band devices is most likely to happen in the "early days" as the industry in developed markets embraces 4G technology, he said. Raising the example of Korea, he noted the availability of models which combine both HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) and WiBro functionality.

In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Wickware said he expects WiMax to find its place as a more cost-effective and quicker way for providers to turn on broadband in rural areas without having to lay physical copper or fibre infrastructure to homes.

This concept is not just contained to emerging markets. "Even in developed countries, there are pockets where coverage is not good, where the operators have not had a business case to provide standard broadband," said Wickware.

Furthermore, the ecosystem is growing, he said. "When you consider that companies such as Intel are very much backing WiMax, it is not a stretch to imagine many of the PCs or consumer electronics devices will drive the deployment of WiMax in developed urban areas, too," said Wickware.

LTE camp sees this competition and trying very hard to complete 3GPP specifications for LTE (36 series comprise of LTE specifications).In the recent RAN meeting in Kansas, USA (May 5 – 9 2008) it was concluded that most LTE specifications are about 95% ready (RRC about 80%).

So LTE is not keeping itself far behind and only time will tell who will score the goal in this extra time or the match might go to penalties.