In the end of 2015 there were 3.2 billion people online. 67% of Americans now have broadband at home, compared to 70% in 2013, and 13% connect via smartphone only vs 8% in 2013; smartphone penetration in US at 68%. The share of Americans with broadband at home has plateaued, and more rely only on their smartphones for online access. We can see downtick in home high-speed adoption has taken place at the same time there has been an increase in “smartphone-only” adults – those who own a smartphone that they can use to access the internet, but do not have traditional broadband service at home. The American broadband market is notoriously oligopolistic with the majority of citizens offered limited choice, especially at the high-speed end, complete with high monthly fees.
Fixed Internet speeds increase – even without fiber to every house. We will start to see more 1Gbps Internet connections – and not all of them need fiber (2014 was the year of “fiber everywhere”). For example Comcast ‘rolls out’ ‘world’s first’ DOCSIS 3.1 modem, pumping 1Gbps over existing cable. It should, in theory, be quick and easy to get 1Gbps broadband to your home using DOCSIS 3.1, but I expect we will see only very few experimental roll-outs of the service in 2016. The beauty of DOCSIS 3.1 is that it is backwards compatible.
Mobile networks continue to lead the way when it comes to connecting people for the next generation of communications: Mobile subscriptions are now at 7.1 billion globally, and more than 95% of the world’s population are now within reach of a mobile network signal. Mobile cellular subscriptions have overtaken fixed phone subs, mobile broadband subscriptions and households with Internet access. This development most probably causes expectations that Network jobs are hot so salaries are expected to rise in 2016 as especially wireless network engineers, network admins, and network security pros are needed.
There are still some 350 million people globally who have no way of Internet access, mobile or otherwise, and there will be some race to get connections to at least some of those people. High stakes in broadband satellites race as building a satellite network and associated ground-based facilities and user terminals to provide Internet access to even the remotest and poorest parts of the world will be a huge technical, regulatory, and business challenge. Data versions of low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellite networks started appearing in the late 1990’s, followed with mobile telephony via LEO satellites, but never managed to deliver on the hype—partly because of technology constraints or poor business models. Over years there have been huge technology advances in satellites: they can now be made much smaller and lighter, so launch costs are significantly lower. Also component costs associated with the different terminals and handsets have plummeted. These factors have clearly helped the business proposition, but there are still challenges.
There will be new radio frequencies available for wireless communications thanks to WRC-15 Spectrum Decisions: In addition to confirming the use of the 700 MHz band (technically 694 to 790 MHz) for mobile broadband services in ITU Region 1, which includes Europe, Africa, the Middle east and Central Asia, delegates also agreed to harmonize 200 MHz of the C-band (3.4 to 3.6 GHz) to improve capacity in urban areas and used in small cells, and the L-band (1427-1518 MHz) to improve overall coverage and better capacity. So the mobile broadband sector now has, at least in the short to medium term, three globally harmonized bands. There was also decision for spectrum to be used for wireless avionics intra-communications (WAIC).
5G gets started. Just five years after the first 4G smartphone hit the market, the wireless industry is already preparing for 5G: cell phone carriers, smartphone chip makers and the major network equipment companies are working on developing 5G network technology for their customers. There are still many challenges as 5G infrastructure must be able to serve the billions of internet-connected objects of small appliances in addition to large consumers of information.700MHz harmonization is a key feature in operators’ plans to begin rolling out 5G services and C-band is also likely to be used for 5G. After 2016 to get the fastest promised 5G speeds very high frequency bands that will need to be deployed for 5G services, mainly above 24 GHz.
5G will not only be about a new air interface with faster speeds, but it will also address network congestion, energy efficiency, cost, reliability, and connection to billions of people and devices. Many believe that a critical success factor for 5G will be a fully revamped TCP/IP stack and a group of major vendors has put forward an open source TCP/IP stack OpenFastPath they say is designed to reinvigorate the ancient and rather crusty protocol. Cyber security research will be important important in 2016 as 5G networks will be critical infrastructure, on top of which for example. transport, industry, health and the new operators set up their business around 2020. Growing network virtualization functionality and programmability are both an opportunity and a threat to security. Keep in mind that everything connected to the Internet can, and will be hacked.
Heightened interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) and of Everything (IoE) will continue in 2016. IoT networks heat up in 2016 as low-power wide area networks for the Internet of Things have been attracting new entrants and investors at a heady pace with unannounced offerings still in the pipeline for 2016 trying to enable new IoT apps by undercutting costs and battery life for cellular and WiFi. There are many competing technologies in this field, and some will turn out to be winners and some losers. Remember that IoT is forecasted to be 50 billion connections by 2020, so there is lots of business opportunities for many IoT technologies.
2016 will be another booming year for Ethernet. Wi-Fi is obviously more convenient than wired Ethernet cables for average mobile user. But Ethernet still offers advantages — faster speeds, lower latency, and no wireless interference problems. Ethernet matters a lot with desktop PCs, laptops at desks, game consoles, TV-streaming boxes, and other devices – like when building backbone networks and data centers. Assuming it’s easy enough to plug the devices in with an Ethernet cable, you’ll get a more consistently solid connection. Yes, Ethernet is better.
The augmented global demand for data centers is the key driver for the growth in Global Ethernet Switch and Router Market 2016-2020.25G, 50G and 100G Ethernet is finding it’s place in in the Data Center. Experts predict that the largest cloud operators will shift to 100G Ethernet fabrics while cost-efficient 25G and 50G will remain the workhorses for most of the other well-known data-center companies.The increasing usage of advanced technologies, such as 10GbE ports, by enterprises and universities for educational and official purposes, is a significant factor in the enterprise and campus segment. The key players in this segment will be Arista Network, Brocade Communications, Cisco, Dell, HP, Huawei and Juniper Network. The 2015 Ethernet Roadmap shows a roadmap for physical links through 2020 and looks into the future terabit speeds as well.
I expect 2016 will be a year of widespread product adoption around 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) bandwidth over twisted-pair copper cabling (2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T) as transition to next generation 802.11ac Wave 2 access points will drive significant demand for 2.5G ports. Enterprise operators are looking to fill the gap between 1G and 10G over this legacy unshielded twisted-pair copper cabling (Category 5e/Category 6) that is installed all over. IEEE 802.11ac is 3x faster and 6x more power efficient than its predecessor, 802.11n, while remaining interoperable with 802.11n. Rapid adoption of 802.11ac is run by fact that tablets and smartphones are becoming ubiquitous in the workplace.
Driven by IEEE standards, Ethernet hits the road in 2016: A new trend emerging in the automotive market in 2016 is the migration of Ethernet, a tried-and-true computer network technology, into connected cars. The proliferation of advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) features in many vehicles is also expected to expand Ethernet use. The completion of IEEE 100BASE-T1 and 1000BASE-T1 standards are both expected. The emergence of the 1000BASE-T1 standard in mid-2016 provides a roadmap for automotive Ethernet evolution. Ethernet, starting in 2016, will be seen as the dominant in-vehicle network backbone.
Prepare for the PAM4 phase shift. PAM4 (four-level pulse-amplitude modulation) will be coming to wider use in 2016 because we all the time need faster communications links between ICs inside devices. NRZ won’t work at 56 Gbps and it seems that PAM-4 is the way to go as PAM4 doubles the bit rate for a given baud rate over NRZ. At 56 Gbps, 400 Gbps Ethernet can be realized with four lanes of PAM4 but might require eight 28 Gbps lanes with NRZ. PAM-4 is also gaining traction in 28 Gbps links. The bad news is that PAM4 trades off bandwidth for SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) meaning it is more sensitive to noise and timing skew than NRZ. PAM4 does bring SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) to the forefront of design issues. With four voltage level and three eyes, PAM4 requires new design techniques for recovering embedded clocks and for identifying bits in symbols. PAM4 will be used mainly on copper links, but it can be also used with fiber optic links, which has it’s own set of challenges. These and other issues are forging new techniques for how to measure and simulate PAM4 signals.
Cloud Scale Networking term will be seen. The virtualization of networks, storage, and servers is reshaping the way organizations use IT. Cloud computing plays an essential role in this process as cloud delivers the additional capacity required to satisfy growing demand to an enterprise or small business from a third party. The amount of data volume carried by networks has exploded. Cisco estimated last year that by 2017, data centers will handle some 7.7 zetabytes of IP traffic, two thirds of which would be on account of cloud computing. Total global data centre traffic is projected to triple by the end of 2019 (from 3.4 to 10.4 Zettabytes). Legacy, tiered, network designs can be replaced with scalable flat network topologies. They can be future-proofed using open, scalable SDN and NFV platforms. The network is cloud computing’s final frontier, at technology, people and process levels. Service providers seek to reduce costs, create new business opportunities, and introduce new services more quickly.
The “software-ization” of Telco and increasing use of pen-Source Networking will continue in 2016. In 2015, the adoption of OpenStack, OpenDaylight, OpNFV for software and services, and Open Compute for hardware will supported more virtualized, more open source network computing platforms and architecture. The trend will continue. SDN provides control to the enterprises and carriers on the complete network through a single logical point, thereby simplifying the network design and operation. The traditional, one-vendor, proprietary solution is transitioning to solutions involving many suppliers – and this offers customers with significant cost savings and performance optimization. Growing network virtualization functionality and programmability are both an opportunity and a threat to security. Keep in mind that everything connected to the Internet can, and will be hacked.
After COP21 climate change summit reaches deal in Paris there will be also interest in thinking how clean our networking is. It is being reported that communications technologies are responsible for about 2-4% of all of carbon footprint generated by human activity. The needs for communications and faster speeds is increasing in this every day more and more connected world – penetration of smart devices there was a tremendous increase in the amount of mobile data traffic from 2010 to 2014. When IoT is forecasted to be 50 billion connections by 2020, with the current technologies this would increase power consumption considerably. The trend to look for greener technologies is tackling first mobile networks because of their high energy use. Base stations and switching centers could count for between 60% and 85% of the energy used by an entire communication system. More and more facilities, especially big names like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, have looked to renewable energy.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
PCTEST Partners with Anritsu to Offer PTCRB-Verified LTE Data Throughput Testing
RFT 113 Performance Test Capability Now Available to Support the Wireless Device Ecosystem
http://buyersguide.cablinginstall.com/anritsu-co/pressrelease/pctest-partners-with-anritsu-to-offer-ptcrbverified-lte-data-throughput-testing.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February82016
Anritsu Company and PCTEST Engineering Laboratory, Inc. announce that PCTEST has acquired LTE data throughput test capability for the Anritsu ME7834L Mobile Device Test Platform (MDTP). RFT 113 data throughput tests installed on the ME7834L include both static and dynamic fading configurations across multiple LTE bands, with more than 60% of the test cases verified by PTCRB. Initial static tests were approved for release in September 2015, as the dynamic fading tests in RFT 113 are forecast to accelerate in early 2016 with their expected addition to the PTCRB certification requirements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Verizon puts cellular antennas under seats to improve DAS ahead of Super Bowl 50
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/01/verizon-puts-cellular-antennas-under-seats-to-improve-das-ahead-of-super-bowl-50.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February82016&eid=289644432&bid=1303591
“Brian Mecum, vice president, network for Verizon Wireless, said in a phone interview that large amounts of wireless traffic at last year’s Super Bowl spurred Verizon to help fund a full replacement of the Levi’s Stadium DAS, which was only a year old, to make sure that this year’s big game would be able to handle the expected usage growth.
Mecum said the carrier expects to see as much as 6 terabytes or more of cellular traffic during the Feb. 7 game between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers at the San Francisco 49ers’ home field in Santa Clara, Calif.
To increase capacity in the lower seating bowls, Mecum said that Verizon basically invented its own under-seat DAS antenna system and paid for its deployment, adding about ’30 percent more capacity’ through the under-seat antennas alone.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel, Qualcomm mend fences over WiGig 60 GHz 802.11ad Wi-Fi roadmap
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/02/intel-qualcomm-mend-fences-over-wigig-60-ghz-802-11ad-wi-fi-roadmap.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February82016&eid=289644432&bid=1303591
Even though many of these companies are members of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance which has a certification process, there is still a certain level of proprietary technology that most of these companies don’t share with each other. However, today, Qualcomm and Intel, the two biggest leaders in 802.11ad 60 GHz Wi-Fi, have announced multi-gigabit interoperability between each other’s devices.
Intel And Qualcomm Partner (Yes, Really) To Move WiGig 60 GHz 802.11AD Wi-Fi Forward
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2016/02/03/intel-and-qualcomm-partner-yes-really-to-move-wigig-60-ghz-802-11ad-wi-fi-forward/#344e222b13c4
For the longest time, the 802.11ad space, also known as WiGig by others, was a conglomeration of different 60 GHz Wi-Fi technologies. There have been many companies that have announced technologies utilizing 60 GHz Wi-Fi technologies including Intel INTC -0.07%, Nitero, Peraso, Qualcomm QCOM -0.63%, Samsung Electronics and SiBEAM. Even though many of these companies are members of the Wireless Gigabit Alliance which has a certification process, there is still a certain level of proprietary technology that most of these companies don’t share with each other. However, today, Qualcomm and Intel, the two biggest leaders in 802.11ad 60 GHz Wi-Fi, have announced multi-gigabit interoperability between each other’s devices.
What makes this partnership all the more interesting is that Intel and Qualcomm have been at one another’s throats for many years in the smartphone space.
This announcement is probably the biggest announcement for Wi-Fi in 2016 because it finally means that 802.11ad 60 Ghz Wi-Fi can finally become a broadly available commercial technology. WiGig or 802.11ad is no longer a multitude of different Wi-Fi silos with each company creating their own vertical solutions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Cisco beats Q2 estimates with $11.8B in quarterly revenue, up 2% YoY, net income of $3.1B; stock up over 8% after hours
Cisco tops Q2 targets with $11.8 billion in revenue
http://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-q2-2016/
The networking giant managed to beat analyst estimates after offering a mild outlook last quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A new technology to prevent eavesdropping of fiber
Information Technology Company, Allied Telesis has introduced a technology that prevents the fiber optic cables eavesdropping. Active Fiber Monitoring-named technique detects small changes in the fiber link the amount of light received.
Technology provides a simple and effective means of identifying when passing the fiber transport manipulated. The patent pending solution can detect the fiber-optic cable from being subjected to tampering and can send an alarm in case of a possible security breach.
Allied Thesis has developed the Active Fiber Monitoring technology that detects small-fiber link the amount of light received by the changes taking place. When someone tries to penetrate into the fiber, the light level changes, because the eavesdropper directs some of the light to other fiber. As soon as that happens, the Active Fiber Monitoring detects intrusion and sends an alarm.
After the link to the alarm can be switched off, either automatically or operator may warn and intervene manually.
Active Fiber Monitoring is built-in to all Allied Thesis of the company switches and firewalls that use the latest Allied Ware Plus operating system, and which are included in the company’s X-series. The program calls for the use of optics, which can be performed in the digital signal diagnostic functions (DDM).
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3958:uusi-tekniikka-estaa-kuidun-salakuuntelun&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
MathWorks WLAN System Toolbox for MATLAB enables faster and more robust WLAN design
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4441378/MathWorks-WLAN-System-Toolbox-for-MATLAB-enables-faster-and-more-robust-WLAN-design?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160211&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160211&elqTrackId=beddf23e83eb4e2593361ee7010c80a5&elq=f0494f38262c40d39c188fb19b43bdf7&elqaid=30786&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=26927
MathWorks recently introduced WLAN System Toolbox, which provided designers and test engineers standard-compliant functions for the design, simulation, analysis, and testing of wireless LAN communications systems.
Designers were spending precious time in creating reference models and ways to generate test signals for their systems. Test engineers were also struggling to verify the performance of a newly designed WLAN product. Now designers and test engineers can have a head start in their design efforts for a product and/or a test system.
This system toolbox has reference designs to enable exploration of baseband specifications, and demodulate and recover signals. Designers also need to study the effects of RF designs and interference sources on their new system performance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software expands wireless test set for M2M, IoT
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4441315/Software-expands-wireless-test-for-M2M–IoT?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20160208&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20160208&elqTrackId=851bf1a811ee4cc3b5659f15fedeced2&elq=fc9b4350a94743d0b96eaeba544af358&elqaid=30727&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=26873
Anritsu has added support for 802.11p, Bluetooth DLE, and Z-Wave to its measurement software product line for the MT8870A Universal Wireless Test Set, covering a frequency range from 10 MHz to 6 GHz.
The rapid expansion of the IoT/M2M applications market is increasing the need for wireless testing of communications terminals and modules. The majority of these products support both mobile wireless systems, such as LTE and W-CDMA, as well as short-range 802.11a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth in one unit, requiring a fast, all-in-one, test set for measuring multiple wireless systems.
The Universal Wireless Test Set MT8870A has been specifically designed for the high volume manufacturing test of all common cellular and short range wireless technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keysight enhances RF signal analyzers
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4441331/Keysight-enhances-RF-signal-analyzers?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20160208&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20160208&elqTrackId=5c7fa2af540c43119a517b417c1cc636&elq=fc9b4350a94743d0b96eaeba544af358&elqaid=30727&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=26873
Tomi Engdahl says:
New world record: 1,125 terabytes per second through fiber
English researchers have managed to make a new world record in the optical transmission of data. the research team at University College London, optical networks capable of transferring data at 1,125 terabytes per second.
How terabytes over the speed then was it possible? The researchers borrowed the data to the modulation 256QAM technique, which is used, for example, cable modems and wireless data transmission. Bits are sent along the working 15 at a different wavelength channels on a single optical receiver.
By grouping the channels together researchers managed to create a single “super-station” 1,125 terabytes band.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3979:uusi-maailmanennatys-1-125-terabittia-sekunnissa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia tells provided the Japanese Enecomille the first G.Fast network. It allows Enecom brings to its subscribers up to a gigabit data connections copper lines.
Delivery includes 7367 switches that provide 16 vectorized G.Fast link in a single device. In addition, the delivery includes ethennet 7368 series switches, and separate management software.
International Telecommunication Union ITU ratified by the end of 2014 a new G.Fast technology, with copper along the lines can transfer data at gigabits per second. G.Fast promises to reach gigabit connections hundred meters from the distribution center. 200 meters away from the standard promises speeds of 200 megabits per second and 250 meters from the 150 megabits per second.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3981:nokia-vei-gigabitin-kuparin-japaniin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Hamblen / Computerworld:
AT&T preparing to test 5G technologies in Austin, Texas by the end of the year — AT&T to run field trials of 5G wireless in Austin this year — AT&T announced today it will being field trials of faster 5G wireless technology this summer in Austin, Texas.
AT&T to run field trials of 5G wireless in Austin this year
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3032686/mobile-wireless/att-to-run-field-trials-of-5g-wireless-in-austin-this-year.html
AT&T announced today it will begin field trials of faster 5G wireless technology this summer in Austin, Texas.
The 3GPP industry standard for 5G, also known as Fifth Generation wireless, is not expected to be completed until 2020, with the earliest phase completed in 2018.
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Wireless speeds with 5G could be 10 to 100 times faster than with 4G LTE, which generally averages in the 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps range for users downloading data.
Both AT&T and Verizon have ambitious 5G rollout plans, prompted by the recent explosion of wireless video and Internet of Things connectivity. AT&T estimates that its wireless network grew 150,000% from 2007 to 2015, largely because of video traffic; more than 60% of its wireless traffic in 2015 was video.
Self-driving cars, robots, smart cities and other technologies are expected to test networks like never before, and “5G will will help make them a reality,” said John Donovan, chief strategy officer at AT&T Technology and Operations.
The advent of 5G will be more efficient and cost-effective for carriers. AT&T plans to build its version of 5G on a software-centric architecture that adapts quickly to new demands
SDN is expected to allow AT&T to virtualize 75% of its network by 2020. In 2015, about 6% was virtualized, a number that should reach 30% in 2016. About 14 million wireless customers use the virtualized network already. SDN that uses open source software will save costs, as well.
WIth a virtualized network, AT&T can turn routers, firewalls and other network equipment into virtual functions that run on commodity hardware, primarily servers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
ISPs want “flexible” privacy rules that let them “innovate” with customer data
ISPs want “flexible” privacy rules that let them “innovate” with customer data
ISPs should be able to choose how they protect customer data, they tell FCC.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/02/isps-say-privacy-rules-that-are-too-specific-would-thwart-innovation/
Broadband industry lobby groups urged the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday not to impose privacy rules that dictate “specific methods” of protecting customer data, since that would prevent “rapid innovation.”
ISPs should have “flexibility” in how they protect customers’ privacy and security, said the letter from the American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, Consumer Technology Association, CTIA, the Internet Commerce Coalition, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and USTelecom. Together, these groups represent the biggest home Internet service providers and wireless carriers such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Charter, Sprint, T-Mobile, and many smaller ones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reuters:
Google says it will not participate in the FCC’s upcoming auction for 600 MHz airwaves
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-auction-idUSKCN0VL2AV
The FCC will be auctioning off valuable 600 megahertz airwaves that can travel long distances and penetrate buildings. The auction is aimed at wireless carriers and other companies that want to improve existing wireless networks or build new ones.
Wireless providers such as Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile and cable operator Comcast Corp have said they will take part in the auction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alan Fram / Associated Press:
Congress passes bill permanently barring state and local governments from taxing access to the Internet
Congress gives final OK to banning local Internet taxes
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_INTERNET_TAXES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress voted Thursday to permanently bar state and local governments from taxing access to the Internet, as lawmakers leapt at an election-year chance to demonstrate their opposition to imposing levies on online service.
On a vote of 75-20, the Senate gave final congressional approval to the wide-ranging bill, which would also revamp trade laws. The White House said President Barack Obama will sign it.
“The Internet is a resource used daily by Americans of all ages,”
Since 1998 in the Internet’s early days, Congress has passed a series of bills temporarily prohibiting state and local governments from imposing the types of monthly levies for online access that are common for telephone service. Such legislation has been inspired by a popular sentiment that the Internet should be free, along with Republican opposition to most tax proposals.
Until now, states that imposed Internet access taxes have been allowed to continue. Under the approved bill, those states would have to phase out their taxes by the summer of 2020.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suddenly, 4G Feels Slow
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/14/suddenly-4g-feels-slow/
Researchers at University College London successfully transferred data over an optical transmission system at a rate of 1.125 Tb/s. That’s over ten times as fast as typical commercial optical systems, and thousands of times faster than the standard broadband connection. The study appeared in Scientific Reports and takes advantage of encoding techniques usually seen in wireless systems.
The prototype system uses fifteen channels on different wavelengths. Each channel used 256QAM encoding (the same as you see on cable modems, among other things). A single receiver recovers all of the channels together. The technology isn’t commercially available yet. It is worth noting that the experiment used a transmitter and receiver very close to each other. Future tests will examine how the system performs when there are hundreds or thousands of feet of optical fiber between them.
Increasing the information rates of optical communications via coded modulation: a study of transceiver performance
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep21278
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Linux Foundation Forms Open Source Effort to Advance IO Services
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2016/02/linux-foundation-forms-open-source-effort-advance-io-services
Industry leaders unite for Fast Data (FD.io) Project; aims to establish a high-performance IO services framework for dynamic computing environments
SAN FRANCISCO – February 11, 2016 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing FD.io (“Fido”), a Linux Foundation project. FD.io is an open source project to provide an IO services framework for the next wave of network and storage software. The project is also announcing the availability of its initial software and formation of a validation testing lab.
Early support for FD.io comes from founding members 6WIND, Brocade, Cavium, Cisco, Comcast, Ericsson, Huawei, Inocybe Technologies, Intel Corporation, Mesosphere, Metaswitch Networks (Project Calico), PLUMgrid and Red Hat.
Architected as a collection of sub-projects, FD.io provides a modular, extensible user space IO services framework that supports rapid development of high-throughput, low-latency and resource-efficient IO services. The design of FD.io is hardware, kernel, and deployment (bare metal, VM, container) agnostic.
“The adoption of open source software has transformed the networking industry by reducing technology fragmentation and increasing user adoption,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “The FD.io project addresses a critical area needed for flexible and scalable IO services to meet the growing demands of today’s cloud computing environments.”
Software Features
Initial code contributions for FD.io include Vector Packet Processing (VPP), technology being donated by one of the project’s founding members, Cisco. The initial release of FD.io is fully functional and available for download, providing an out-of-the-box vSwitch/vRouter utilizing the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for high-performance, hardware-independent I/O. The initial release will also include a full build, tooling, debug, and development environment and an OpenDaylight management agent. FD.io will also include a Honeycomb agent to expose netconf/yang models of data plane functionality to simplify integration with OpenDaylight and other SDN technologies.
VPP is production code currently running in products available on the market today. VPP runs in user space on multiple architectures, including x86, ARM, and Power, and is deployed on various platforms including servers and embedded devices.
https://fd.io/
1 Vector Packet Processing (VPP)
At the heart of fd.io is Vector Packet Processing (VPP) technology.
In development since 2002, VPP is production code currently running in shipping products. It runs in user space on multiple architectures including x86, ARM, and Power architectures on both x86 servers and embedded devices. The design of VPP is hardware, kernel, and deployment (bare metal, VM, container) agnostic. It runs completely in userspace.
VPP helps FD.io push extreme limits of performance and scale. Independent testing shows that, at scale, VPP-powered FD.io is two orders of magnitude faster than currently available technologies.
The fixed costs of processing the vector of packets are amortized across the entire vector. This lead not only to very high performance, but also statistically reliable performance.
The graph node architecture of VPP also makes for easy extensibility. You can build an independent binary plugin for VPP from a separate source code base (you need only the headers). Plugins are loaded from the plugin directory. A plugin for VPP can rearrange the packet graph and introduce new graph nodes. This allows new features to be introduce via the plugin, without needing to change the core infrastructure code.
2 Hardware Acceleration
This same graph node architecture also allows FD.io to dynamically take advantage of hardware acceleration when available, allowing vendors to continue to innovate in hardware without breaking the “run anywhere” promise of FD.io’s software.
3 Programmability
The VPP Technology also provides a very high performance low level API. The API works via a shared memory message bus. The messages passed along the bus are specified in a simple IDL (Interface Definition Language) which is used to create C client libraries and Java client libraries.
4 Integration With Other Systems
If the controller supports OpenStack Neutron (as OpenDaylight does) this provides a simple story for Openstack to VPP integration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Juniper or Cisco gear at any of your “mission-critical” sites?
If you do, there’s plenty of Linux running underneath.
“Juniper uses FreeBSD & Cisco use their own proprietary operating system called ios (yup, same name as apple’s mobile O/S)”
Cisco has a number of “operating systems”:
- IOS, used on older router platforms and Catalyst switches (which are now limited mostly to use as access switches)
- IOS-XR which runs on high-end routers (CRS, ASR9K, C12K), which is based on QNX
-IOS-XE which runs on current entry-level to mid-range routers (ASR1K), which is Linux-based
-NX-OS which powers most current Cisco data-centre offerings (Nexus), which is Linux-based
If you have Cisco equipment and no Linux, your equipment is most likely all EOL or very close to it.
Source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/02/14/187256/the-linux-foundation-forms-open-source-effort-to-advance-io-services?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Tomi Engdahl says:
Om Malik:
Facebook’s Free Basics isn’t free, it’s all about advertising and making money
Nothing Is Free, Not Even Facebook Free Basics
http://om.co/2016/02/08/nothing-is-free-not-even-facebook-free-basics/
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has given Facebook’s Free Basics (a cutely rebranded Internet.org) a big thumbs-down, according to reports. The opposition from all quarters led to the decision by local regulators. “This can prove to be risky in the medium to long term as the knowledge and outlook of those users would be shaped only by the information made available through those select offerings,” the agency wrote. Today in a report, The New York Times wrote, “Facebook spent millions of dollars on advertising to promote its position and ran special banners in the news feeds of Indian users urging them to petition the government to allow Free Basics.” It is a setback for Mark Zuckerberg and the company, which has been working hard to win over India.
My opposition to Internet.org is not recent: Ever since it was announced, I have denounced its duplicitous name. Facebook still calls its efforts Internet.org across most of the world and paints it as a not-for-profit effort. I disagree with two points:
Internet.org isn’t about the internet, so Facebook should stop calling it as such and call it what it is: Facebook Free (with strings attached). To call it Internet.org is actually the first sin of this whole debacle.
Facebook Free Basics isn’t a charity. People will pay for it with their data. It is a way for Facebook to gather more attention and sell services and advertising to those who get Facebook’s Free Basics.
In our post-internet age, labor and commodities have been replaced by attention and connectivity. By controlling these, Facebook in many ways has its algorithm decide what is important in the future. I am positive that its role as a gatekeeper of information will cause much deeper problems in the long term.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quentin Hardy / New York Times:
AT&T CEO pitches employee education program, hoping to build a cloud computing business — Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else — DALLAS — Thirty-four years ago, Kevin Stephenson got his younger brother, Randall, a job with the telephone company.
Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/technology/gearing-up-for-the-cloud-att-tells-its-workers-adapt-or-else.html?_r=0
Today, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and chief executive, is trying to reinvent the company so it can compete more deftly. Not that long ago it had to fight for business with other phone companies and cellular carriers. Then the Internet and cloud computing came along, and AT&T found itself in a tussle with a whole bunch of companies.
AT&T’s competitors are not just Verizon and Sprint, but also tech giants like Amazon and Google. For the company to survive in this environment, Mr. Stephenson needs to retrain its 280,000 employees so they can improve their coding skills, or learn them, and make quick business decisions based on a fire hose of data coming into the company.
In an ambitious corporate education program that started about two years ago, he is offering to pay for classes (at least some of them) to help employees modernize their skills. But there’s a catch: They have to take these classes on their own time and sometimes pay for them with their own money.
To Mr. Stephenson, it should be an easy choice for most workers: Learn new skills or find your career choices are very limited.
“There is a need to retool yourself, and you should not expect to stop,” he said in a recent interview at AT&T’s Dallas headquarters. People who do not spend five to 10 hours a week in online learning, he added, “will obsolete themselves with the technology.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Cats
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/15/cat-exploit-the-internet-of-cats/
With the miniaturization of technology, we’re now able to do some pretty crazy things with computers the size of credit cards. [Dennis] has been working on a rather unique project — he calls it the Cat Exploit — we call it the Internet of Cats.
By making pet-wearable tech (is that a new term?), it’s possible to create a mini war-driving server that stray cats (or other small animals) could wear. As they roam the streets, their feline-augmentation searches and taps into open or badly secured WiFi networks, repeating and spreading the signal to other Server Entities (other network-enabled cats), opening up the networks for all to use.
Cat Exploit
Cat Exploit is focussed on creating an independent WiFi network based on urban animals wearing minified wardriving servers.
https://hackaday.io/project/9667-cat-exploit
Cat Exploit is a project focussed on creating an independent and free WiFi network using cats (so-called Server Entities) and related species carrying a minified version of a wardriving-server. While roaming through streets and backyards of the urban area, they tap into open and badly secured WiFi networks in order to repeat and spread the signal through nearby Server Entities for everyone.
The range of usage is indeed very broad and depends on the “needs” of the users, reaching from general parasitic and almost restriction-free internet access to abusive and criminal driven activities.
Generally speaking, Cat Exploit takes place in a legal grey zone, though facing and criticizing outdated laws like the punishment of hotspot owners for users’ copyright violations. Moreover it is demonstrating and exploiting these weaknesses.
The minimal but powerful setup of a Raspberry Pi, WiFi dongles and a power bank is packed into a flat and lightweight acrylic housing fastened to the Server Entity. Apart from wardriving, it runs a web server, router and regular access point, which can be used for both general internet access and advanced file and information sharing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emerging 2.5- and 5-Gbit/sec wired connectivity aims to support high-speed wireless
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-24/issue-1/features/wireless/emerging-2-5-and-5-gbit-sec-wired-connectivity-aims-to-support-high-speed-wireless.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993
In late 2014 the NBase-T Alliance officially unveiled, with founding member companies Aquantia, Cisco, Freescale and Xilinx combining to carry out the group’s stated mission “to promote the development of 2.5- and 5-Gigabit Ethernet technology for enterprise infrastructure.” A little more than a year later the alliance-now boasting approximately four dozen member companies including several manufacturers of cabling technologies-can look back on a successful 2015. In fact, it did just that last month.
On December 9 the NBase-T Alliance released a new MAC-PHY specification and announced the addition of 14 members, which brought its total membership past 45. Peter Jones, the alliance’s chair and a principal engineer with Cisco, commented, “We have spent the last year building consensus with key industry leaders and individuals involved in the IEEE standards process, and providing the industry with specifications in order to begin real product development. We believe our work has accelerated the definition of the 802.3bz standard, and is facilitating the widespread deployment of multigigabit products. We expect 2016 will be a year of widespread product adoption and intend to deliver the supporting specifications and certification programs needed to develop a strong ecosystem around 2.5G and 5GBase-T.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 4 most typical wireless network hacks
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/02/the-4-most-typical-wireless-network-hacks.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993
Wi-Fi networks are inherently vulnerable, but there are steps organizations can take to protect themselves.
Grey says, “If you have Wi-Fi, then you definitely have vulnerabilities. The point is to know what they are and have a solution in place so you know when you’re being attacked, and can mitigate the risk and consequences. These increases match the growth of the wireless industry: ”
The top 4 key attack vectors used to hack wireless networks, as identified by Netscout include snooping, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, password cracking, and information theft.
Grey adds, “It’s no coincidence that security incidents are increasing at a faster rate than ever before and are costing organizations significantly more. The more we have connected people on the Web, the more we have security incidents.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientists In Japan Build 100Gbps Wireless Network Using Terahertz Transmitter
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/02/scientists-in-japan-build-100gbps-wireless-network-using-terahertz-transmitter.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993
JUK writes: A group of Japanese scientists working on a project managed by Hiroshima University claim to have successfully built a Terahertz (THz) transmitter, which is implemented as a silicon CMOS integrated circuit and can transmit a signal running at 10Gbps per data channel over multiple channels in the 275-305GHz band for a top speed of 100Gbps (Gigabits per second).
Read More at Slash Dot
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/11/158244/scientists-in-japan-build-100gbps-wireless-network-using-terahertz-transmitter
A group of Japanese scientists working on a project managed by Hiroshima University claim to have successfully built a Terahertz (THz) transmitter, which is implemented as a silicon CMOS integrated circuit and can transmit a signal running at 10Gbps per data channel over multiple channels in the 275-305GHz band for a top speed of 100Gbps (Gigabits per second).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Japanese Scientists Push 100Gbps Wireless Broadband Using 300GHz
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/02/japanese-scientists-push-100gbps-wireless-broadband-using-300ghz.html
Last week we reported that Japanese scientists had managed to build a wireless network that could send data at a speed of 56Gbps (Gigabits per second) using the 72-100GHz (GigaHertz) radio frequency bands (here) and now another team claims it can hit 100Gbps by pushing into the TeraHertz (300GHz+).
At present most existing home WiFi networks prefer to use the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, with a few newer services (802.11ad) also starting to make use of 60GHz to deliver peak network speeds of around 4.6Gbps over a short distance. As a general rule, the higher the frequency the lower its coverage but the more data you can push (more frequency for you to use).
The future generation of 5G based Mobile Broadband services may also aim to harness the performance of even higher frequency ranges (e.g. 6GHz to 100GHz) for ultrafast speeds (10Gbps), although such networks would need much more powerful signals and a greater density of expensive infrastructure. Indoor coverage could also be a big problem as the signals would struggle to penetrate through walls.
By comparison the latest development of a TeraHertz (THz) transmitter (300GHz+), which was implemented as a silicon CMOS integrated circuit and can transmit a signal running at 10Gbps per data channel over multiple channels in the 275-305GHz band, is yet another big leap forwards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suddenly, 4G Feels Slow
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/14/suddenly-4g-feels-slow/
Researchers at University College London successfully transferred data over an optical transmission system at a rate of 1.125 Tb/s. That’s over ten times as fast as typical commercial optical systems, and thousands of times faster than the standard broadband connection. The study appeared in Scientific Reports and takes advantage of encoding techniques usually seen in wireless systems.
The prototype system uses fifteen channels on different wavelengths. Each channel used 256QAM encoding (the same as you see on cable modems, among other things).
Increasing the information rates of optical communications via coded modulation: a study of transceiver performance
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep21278
Optical fibre underpins the global communications infrastructure and has experienced an astonishing evolution over the past four decades, with current commercial systems transmitting data rates in excess of 10 Tb/s over a single fibre core.
The continuation of this dramatic growth in throughput has become constrained due to a power dependent nonlinear distortion arising from a phenomenon known as the Kerr effect. The mitigation of fibre nonlinearities is an area of intense research. However, even in the absence of nonlinear distortion, the practical limit on the transmission throughput of a single fibre core is dominated by the finite signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) afforded by current state-of-the-art coherent optical transceivers. Therefore, the key to maximising the number of information bits that can be reliably transmitted over a fibre channel hinges on the simultaneous optimisation of the modulation format and code rate, based on the SNR achieved at the receiver.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Router configurations suck (power out of mobile devices, that is)
RFC asks IPv6 admins to quiet routers so mobile devices don’t have to wake up quite so often
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/16/ietf_rfc_7772/
Unknown and unseen to most users, your smartphone is “talking” in its sleep, and that can sap your battery.
The problem? Routing advertisements, one of the fundamental operating principles of the Internet, can demand enough communications to have a noticeable impact on battery life.
Router advertisements are multicasts that remind the devices they serve what IP address the router’s interface is using (in the old IPv4 world, 192.168.0.1, for example). However, when the smartphone receives that advertisement, it has to process it, even if the screen stays dark.
Over at the IETF, a Cisco* engineer called Andrew Yourtchenko and Google* researcher Lorenzo Colitti are suggesting ways that sysadmins can lighten the load on users, at least in the IPv6 world.
In particular, the authors say the habits of sysadmins in wired networks, where router advertisements might fly around every few seconds, don’t translate well to the world of mobile devices.
In RFC 7772, the pair lay down the current best practice for configuring systems so that on devices like phones and tablets, router advertisements don’t suck more than 2 per cent of a device’s power during sleep mode.
They note that “current-generation devices might consume on the order of 5 mA when the main processor is asleep. Upon receiving a packet, they might consume on the order of 200 mA for 250 ms, as the packet causes the main processor to wake up, process the RA, attend to other pending tasks, and then go back to sleep. Thus, on such devices, the cost of receiving one RA will be approximately 0.014 mAh”.
That’s too high, the RFC contends: to keep to their suggested two per cent power budget, the document says the average power budget for router advertisements has to be kept to 0.1 mA, which equates to the device receiving seven advertisements per hour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland launches a 5G test network in Barcelona
Finland is prominently displayed at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In addition to Nokia’s one of Finland’s main events at the fair is a 5G test network The launch of Finnish joint stand. At the event the Ministry of Transport and Communications Anne Berner.
Mobile World Congress in Finland seeks 5G test environment to foreign developers. Internationally unique 5G test environment serves as a platform for the development and testing of new applications.
“Finland 5G test network is a genuine innovation ecosystem that supports industries-border cooperation. It serves not only to developers of technologies, including those companies and industries that will continue to take advantage of 5G-environment ”, the image to be presented in Barcelona on the test network background 5thGear Tekes program, Programme Manager Mika Klemettinen.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/02/16/suomi-lanseeraa-5g-testiverkon-barcelonassa/
Tomi Engdahl says:
100 megabit Internet everywhere in 2019
Broadband services develops Viasat has presented Viasat-3 project, which will revolutionize Internet connections everywhere. In 2019, the satellite system will bring a hundred-megabit data connections within the reach of users.
Viasat-3 platform will bring Gigabit amount of network bandwidth for each new satellite. The first two satellites will bring in twice as much network bandwidth as all of today’s more than 400 communications satellites together.
Significantly system is that it consists of only three satellites. The first two are already underway, and they bring satellite-based links to users in North America and Europe (the wider EMEA region). The third satellite also covers the Asia-Pacific region.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3995:100-megabitin-netti-kaikkialle-vuonna-2019&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optical designs provide multiple ways to reach speeds, distances
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-24/issue-1/features/design/optical-designs-provide-multiple-ways-to-reach-speeds-distances.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February152016&eid=289644432&bid=1309993
Several recent examples show that when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE; http://www.ieee.org) 802.3 Working Group develops a specification for Ethernet, even when the specification is complete it is not the proverbial “be-all, end-all” for a given speed. On the contrary, such a specification often is just the beginning for optics developers, system designers, networking professionals and ultimate end-users; it signals the kickoff of what is likely to be a number of specifications that enable Ethernet transmission at a specific speed to some distance.
For example, among the recent initiatives within 802.3 was the formation of study groups for 25-, 50- and 100/200-Gbit/sec Ethernet transmission, in November. The IEEE 802.3 50-Gbit/sec Ethernet Over a Single Lane Study Group, and the 802.3 Next Generation 100-Gbit/sec Ethernet Study Group will jointly investigate the market requirements for 50-, 100- and 200-Gigabit Ethernet, including server-to-switch and switch-to-switch applications. The study groups will define objectives for the Ethernet specifications leveraging 50-Gbit/sec signaling technology, based on market needs. The 25-Gbit/sec Ethernet PMD(s) for Single Mode Fiber Study Group is tasked with exploring the development of new 25-Gbit/sec singlemode fiber links, as well as evaluating market requirements supporting longer-reach 25-Gbit/sec interfaces up to 10 kilometers or more. The group’s work will complement the fast-tracked efforts of the 802.3by 25-Gbit/sec Ethernet Task Force to develop a 25-GbE specification.
During the 802.3 meeting at which the group gave the go-ahead to form these study groups, a presentation advocating the 25-GbE Over Single Mode effort elaborated somewhat on Kipp’s notion of Ethernet being optimized for different markets.
The group explained that, as was the case with 1- and 10-GbE, adoption of 25-GbE over multimode fiber started earlier and ramped faster than 25-GbE over singlemode fiber.
“The 25-GbE ecosystem is missing a story for >100 meters,” the presentation said. The group added that metro networks and many enterprise networks require more than 100 meters, and “leveraging 25G lane rates with 25-GbE/100-GbE just makes sense.”
The presentation referenced 25- and 100-GbE because the current 25-GbE initiative is for a “single lane,” and by providing four such parallel lanes, users can achieve 100-GbE transmission rates.
This approach of using fewer, higher-speed lanes to achieve a given data rate is common within IEEE 802.3. The multiple-lane, parallel optic approach gives rise to the use of array-style, MPO connectors that facilitate multiple paths of light in each direction.
Multiplexing options
Also covered in that same issue (“On the fast track: WBMMF standardization,” September 2015) was the emergence of multimode-based wave-division multiplexing (WDM)-a potential alternative to serial and parallel optics designs to accommodate high speeds. Cisco brought multimode WDM to the market with its introduction of its QSFP 40G BiDi (bidirectional) transceiver in early 2014. BiDi uses duplex LC ports to enable 100 meters of 40G transmission over Om3 fiber and 125 meters over Om4 fiber.
Multimode-based WDM technology is an ecosystem, requiring optical fiber cabling capable of handling transmission over multiple wavelengths but also requiring the development of transceiver technology that facilitates the generation, transmission and reception of those signals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microchip Launches Cloud-Based IDE for PIC Microcontrollers
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328943&
Microchip Technology Inc. Monday (Feb. 15) announced a new cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) for the company’s PIC microcontrollers.
According to Microchip (Chandler, Ariz.), the free MPLAB Xpress cloud-based IDE is the easiest way for users to get started with PIC MCUs, requiring no downloads, sign-in or setup to start designing. It brings the most popular features of Microchip’s MPLAB X IDE to connected PCs, laptops and tablets, the company said.
Features of MPLAB Xpress include:
a library of Microchip-validated code examples,
interface to MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC) 3.0 for GUI-based MCU peripheral setup and automatic code generation,
integrated MPLAB XC compilers,
support for programmer/debugger hardware,
and 10 GB of secure online storage with a myMicrochip account.
Microchip said cloud-based hardware development is supported by connecting any USB-enabled PC, laptop or tablet to tools such as the MPLAB Xpress evaluation board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Battle: Carriers’ Big Narrowband Push
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328944&
Critics say that cellular network carriers, too preoccupied with 4G data-capacity issues, are neglecting their Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities.
However, despite widespread skepticism, the cellular industry is fully aware that non-cellular players such as the LoRa Alliance and Sigfox are ratcheting up the competition, using unlicensed spectrum for their edge in the emerging IoT network battle.
In response, cellular network operators will return to the Mobile World Congress next week to demonstrate a renewed commitment to Cellular IoT, recently agreed upon and designated as LTE Cat-M1 and LTE Cat-M2.
LTE chipmaker Sequans Communications S.A. revealed Tuesday (Feb. 16) that it has partnered with Gemalto, an LTE module supplier, to extend their LTE Category 1 collaboration. They’re developing a new set of narrowband LTE Machine Type Communication solutions (MTC) based on Category M1 and M2 technologies.
Cat-M1 will deploy the bandwidth of 1.4MHz (including guard interval) enabling “an average speed at around 200-300 kilobits per second,” Georges Karam, CEO at Sequans, told EE Times in an interview. Cat-M2 will use 200kHz (including guard interval) designed for “applications requiring 10 to 30 kbps in average.”
The move to M1 and M2 is significant, first, because it represents the cellular community’s coordinated effort to use narrowband technology to support massive numbers of IoT devices. Second, cellular players have now concentrated divergent plans, applying the LTE legacy network to the demand for Low-Power, Wide-Area (LPWA) networks.
The cellular community last year was sharply divided about how much existing LTE network can be repurposed for IoT.
After a showdown on M2M connectivity proposals at the 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s (3GPP) plenary meeting in Phoenix, Arizona last September, the industry group reached a decision on the standardization of a new NB-IOT technology. The so-called “clean-slate” NB-IOT is now renamed LTE Cat-M2, and it will not pursue a spectrum separate from LTE.
Qualcomm masterfully united the cellular community, observed Karam, by giving neutral new names (M1 and M2) to the two narrowband-based technologies.
To be clear, the cellular industry is already pushing LTE Category 1 (LTE Cat 1) – using wideband technology (as opposed to narrowband) – for the M2M/IoT market. By moving from Cat 4 at 150Mbps to Cat 1 at 10Mbps, the cellular industry claims it has effectively made LTE viable for M2M and IoT apps.
A few networks are already configured to allow Cat 1 devices. Cat 1 LTE chipsets are available both by Sequans and Altair (which was acquired by Sony last month). The cellular industry’s goal is to keep ramping up Cat 1 devices in 2016.
Certainly, Cat 1 at 10Mbps seems ideal for home security IoT applications that might demand a video stream. But it represents overkill in small-data IoT devices that must be cheap while consuming much less power.
Triggering the cellular industry’s strong push for cellular IoT is its plan to sunset 2G and 3G services, to improve their 4G networks. For example, AT&T is shutting down 2G by January 1, 2017, and Verizon is killing CDMA. Since their current machine-to-machine (M2M) business customers have been dependent on the disappearing 2G/3G services, cellular carriers have two nagging questions to answer: First, where they can move those M2M customers, and second, what technology they must offer to support a massive number of low-throughput M2M/IoT devices. Mobile network operators (MNOs) can offer Cat 1 now
Sequans CEO Karam made it very clear, “We want to go very fast with M1.”
Sequans’ M1 efforts are backed by Verizon Wireless, an operator pushing M1. The new partnership with Gemalto announced today is designed to accelerate the IoT market. Gemalto owns roughly a 30 percent share of LTE module market.
Karam observed that with cellular industry now united to push M1 and M2 narrowband technology, “carriers will have a big avenue to make use of their LTE networks for IoT” ranging from LTE Cat 1 to the emerging LTE Cat-M1 and M2. “Carriers can make flexible solutions available by making tiers of wide-ranging IoT network choices.”
M1 and M2: specs and schedules
But where exactly do M1 and M2 stand in terms of technical standards and what do they entail?
In Karam’s opinion, 99 percent of LTE Cat-M1 specs are done. “We expect it will get a stamp of approval by the second quarter of 2016.”
The finalization of Cat-M2 specs will followed, perhaps “six months later,” he added.
As things stand, Cat-M1 will use 1.4 MHz with guard interval. The signal’s net bandwidth without guard interval is 1.08 MHz. Its peak throughput is 1 Megabit per second, split between downlink and uplink. In typical use, this will translate into an average speed around 200 – 300kbps, Karam explained.
Meanwhile, Cat-M2’s bandwidth is 200kHz including guard interval. Hence, its net bandwidth is 180KHz. Cat-M2’s peak throughput is 500kbps for downlink and 40kbps for uplink.
Cat-M1-based IoT products, likely to emerge on the market in 2017, are wearable IoT devices including tracking devices and smart watches that may feature screens. Devices that use Cat-M1 will be able to leverage LTE’s carrier-grade networks, Karam said. He estimates the Cat-M1 module price to be between $7 and $8.
Cat-M2-based products are expected to reach the market in 2018, said Karam, priced as low as $6 “because the M2 chip can integrate 20dBm Power Amplifier chip.”
Machina Research’s Markkanen acknowledged “competitive overlaps between the ‘dedicated’ and ‘cellular-based’ (3GPP) LPWA networks.”
Cat-M2’s options
It appears that there are three deployment options in Cat-M2. The first is to deploy it in the new frequency band (or refarming). In this case, it needs 200kHz to be available.
The second option is in the “in-band of an already used LTE frequency band.” For this option, carriers will use 200kHz out of a 10MHz or 20MHz LTE spectrum.
The last option is to use the “guard band” between two adjacent frequency bands already used (by LTE or 2G/3G).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup Dials in 5G Air Interface
Stretching OFDM for massive MIMO
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328952&
Cohere Technologies wants its wireless coding scheme to be adopted as part of the 5G air interface being defined over the next year. To make its case, the startup released today data from a field trial that one analyst called promising.
Cohere’s Orthogonal Time Frequency and Space (OTFS) uses time and frequency data to characterize wireless channels. Backers claim the approach is more precise than today’s methods, reducing signal fading and reflections and yielding benefits in coverage and bandwidth.
OTFS is said to be particularly valuable for 5G which is widely expected to use dozens of antennas to hit new peak data rates in urban areas. It also helps cope with the Doppler Effect on wireless transmissions which is especially useful given the goal of making 5G available on fast moving trains. And it is suitable for use in existing cellular frequency bands as well as anticipated new millimeter-wave bands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 trends you’ll likely see at MWC
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4441440/7-trends-you-ll-likely-see-at-MWC-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160218&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160218&elqTrackId=874c005a2b9c4f75888f92c5f25a77a6&elq=af61efef94d141858f8d1024ba970f82&elqaid=30888&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27027
The early January Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show is becoming an increasingly common place for cellular industry-targeting chip, software, and systems companies to ply their newest wares. Yet the late February Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress (MWC) show remains the dominant conference for wireless applications. This year’s event takes place next week, February 22-25 to be exact. What should you expect to hear announced there? Glad you asked.
LTE bandwidth improvements
Next-gen wireless advancements
New design wins for latest SoCs
Next-gen SoCs
Smartwatch evolutions
Handset successors’ other advancements
Apple’s influence
Tomi Engdahl says:
Passive WiFi On Microwatts
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/26/passive-wifi-on-microwatts/
A lot of you use WiFi for your Internet of Things devices, but that pretty much rules out a battery-powered deployment because WiFi devices use a lot of juice. Until now. Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a passive WiFi implementation that uses only microwatts per device.
Working essentially like backscatter RFID tags do, each node has a WiFi antenna that can be switched to either reflect or absorb 2.4 GHz radiation. Your cell phone, or any other WiFi device, responds to this backscattered signal. All that’s missing is a nice steady signal to reflect.
A single, plugged-in unit provides this carrier wave for multiple WiFi sensor nodes. And here’s the very clever part of the research: to keep the carrier from overwhelming the tiny modulated signal that’s coming from the devices, the plugged-in unit transmits off the desired frequency and the battery-powered units modulate that at just the right difference frequency so that the resulting (mixed) frequency is in the desired WiFi band.
If you’re a radio freak, you’ll recognize the WiFi node’s action being just like a frequency mixer.
Passive Wi-Fi
Bringing Low Power to Wi-Fi Transmissions
http://passivewifi.cs.washington.edu/
What is Passive Wi-Fi?
We introduce Passive Wi-Fi that demonstrates for the first time that one can generate 802.11b transmissions using backscatter communication, while consuming 3 – 4 orders of magnitude lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets. Passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on any Wi-Fi device including routers, mobile phones and tablets. Building on this, we also present a network stack design that enables Passive Wi-Fi transmitters to coexist with other devices in the ISM band, without incurring the power consumption of carrier sense and medium access control operations. We build prototype hardware and implement all four 802.11b bit rates on an FPGA platform. Our experimental evaluation shows that passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on off-the-shelf smartphones and Wi-Fi chipsets over distances of 30 – 100 feet in various line-of-sight and through-the-wall scenarios. Finally, we design a Passive Wi-Fi IC that shows that 1 and 11~Mbps transmissions consume 14.48 and 49.28 µW respectively. This translates to 10000x lower power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets and 1000x lower power than Bluetooth LE and ZigBee.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FCC Locks Down Router Firmware
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/26/fcc-locks-down-router-firmware/
For years, we have been graced with consumer electronics that run some form of Linux, have a serial port on the circuit board somewhere, and are able to be upgraded through official and unofficial means. That digital picture frame you got for Christmas in 2007 and forgot to regift in 2008? That’s a computer, and it would make a wonderful Twitter feed display. Your old Linksys WRT54G router? You can make a robotic lawnmower out of that thing. The ability to modify the firmware of consumer electronics is the cornerstone of Hackaday’s editorial prerogative. Now that right we have all enjoyed is in jeopardy, thanks to regulations from the FCC and laziness from router manufacturers.
Several months ago, the FCC proposed a rule that governed the certification of RF equipment, specifically wireless routers. This regulation would require router manufacturers to implement security on the radio modules inside these routers. While these regulations only covered the U-NII bands – the portion of the spectrum used for 5GHz WiFi, and there was no expectation of implementing security on the CPU or operating system of these routers, there were concerns. Routers are built around a System on Chip, with the CPU and radio in a single package. The easiest way to prevent modification of the radio module would be to prevent modification to the entire router. Some would call it fear mongering, but there was an expectation these proposed FCC rules would inevitably lead to wireless routers being completely locked down.
These expectations have become reality. Libre Planet has received confirmation from a large router manufacturer that firmware is now being locked down thanks to FCC rule changes.
[Battlemesh] Chilling effect – Lockdown (FCC/EU)
http://ml.ninux.org/pipermail/battlemesh/2016-February/004379.html
Yes. Less than 24 hours ago I was given the following information from a
customer service rep from tplink:
Adam Longwill09:10:01 pm downgrading does not work
I get an 18005 errror
upon attempting to downgrade
I want to know if this is because of the FCC’s rules regarding broadcast
strength and DFS control. Has TP-Link complied with these rules and locked
down its firmware and if so, for what models
I need to know if I am going to continue purchasing devices from you.
Camille09:13:25 pm wait one moment please
Thanks for your waiting, right now only these products has limitation on
firmware: Archer C7 V2 Archer C1900 V1 Touch P5 V1 Archer C2600 V1 Archer
C3200 V1 Archer C2 V1 Archer C5 V2 Archer C8 V1 Archer C9 V1 TL-WR841N V11
TL-WDR3500 V1 TL-WR940N V3.0 TL-WR1043ND V3.0 TL-WR710N(USA) TL-WR841N V9.0
and all products will also limite firmware in the future.
Adam Longwill09:34:19 pm Thank you very much, Camille. You’ve been very
helpful
Sorry for the formatting, I’m on mobile.
I’m very interested in what we, as a community, can do to ensure we can
continue to build our networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5G will not solve all problems
New wireless technologies presented in the communication between both man and machine. Of these, recently received the most attention is the so-called 5G. However, none of the new technology does not directly replace the previous, rather, allows for new applications.
Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority recently granted to Aalto University and Ericsson in the first 5G trial permits to Otaniemi. However, it will take years before the technology is transferred to the chambers of researchers widely commercially available. Also, 5G of the standardization is expected a long and laborious process, is there is no consensus about what 5G even mean. For others, it is a natural continuum of technology 3G and 4G after, while others believe that it is rather the use of existing technologies, cross-current situation.
What is certain is that there is a long before the 2020′s 5G technologies are commercially available and widely used, and even then we see 2G networks to be increasingly used for communication between machines.
However, it seems that none of the new technology does not directly replace the old one, but rather allows for new applications. 5G to promise an all-inclusive solution, but my contention is that at the stage when the 5G networks will be for commercial use, we see still to this day a greater variety of radio technologies in use – the convergence is not in sight.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4027:5g-ei-ratkaise-kaikkia-ongelmia&catid=9&Itemid=139
Tomi Engdahl says:
testing of 5G networks is widely discussed today in Barcelona for annual Mobile World Congress. 5G requires a very broadband signals including millimeter wave frequencies. Rohde & Schwarz presents exactly these needs, many novelties.
Rohde & Schwarz points out that there is still no final decision on what technologies will eventually 5G is formed. However, the broadband and exploiting millimetriaalueen are the qualities by which the field is wide unified vision.
This sense Rohde presents in Barcelona SMW200A tester. The device has a first digital signal generator which is capable of creating internally 2 GHz-width modulated signal up to 40 GHz frequency range
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4017:5g-vaatii-kahden-gigahertsin-levyista-signaalia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Airscale is Nokia’s new base station
Nokia has for many years sold the base stations of different operators’ networks and different network technologies Flexi brand name. Yesterday Nokia launched its next-generation base station platform. The new platform is called Airscale.
Airscale supports all network technologies from 2G to 5G future technology and all possible frequency bands under the areas gigahertz millimeter regions, whether it be licensed or free frequencies. The network control will take place in the cloud of the previously announced airframe servers and may make use of the fast Wi-Fi links Airscale Wi-Fi routers using.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4020:airscale-on-nokian-uusi-tukiasema&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gigabit 4G connection featured in Barcelona
5G technology is expected to become commercially available until about around 2020, but mobile connections reached to Gigabit, and long before that. Barcelona measurement equipment manufacturer Anritsu does things with already, how Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X16 -modem achieved gigabit speed.
Thus the large bandwidth of the combination of three carrier and 4×4 MIMO type of link is needed.
When the addition signal is modulated by 156QAM technique, the IP level is achieved over a gigabit data rate.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4023:gigabitin-4g-yhteys-esilla-barcelonassa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco Explains 5G Auto Potential
5G debate shifts to network slicing, virtualization
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329047&
Chuck Robbins, who took Cisco’s reins from John Chambers six months ago, said this week at the Mobile World Congress on 5G: “We see the value isn’t in connectivity, but in data and insight into it.”
Further, he added, “As billions of devices are being added to the network, we envision the next-generation [network] architecture will become incredibly distributed.”
Robbins said the new-generation cellular network’s mobile core is getting increasingly virtualized. It’s being distributed closer to the network’s edge, enabling it to be divvied in slices for different services.
Those in the wired network world are familiar with things like network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN). What’s new at the Mobile World Congress here, however, is that the mobile industry is not only catching up with the wired world, but introducing a concept called “Network Slicing” into the 5G system. In describing it, Ericsson said, “networks will be built in a flexible way so that speed, capacity and coverage can be allocated in logical slices to meet the specific demands of each use case.”
Combined with NFV and SDN, the new concept is challenging cellular network operators to rethink architecture and business strategy.
Indeed, for the cellular industry, this is a big deal.
For decades, when the global mobile industry embarked on the development of the next-generation cellular standards, its main concerns were radio access technologies, modulation schemes and network architecture.
Cisco announced at the show, among other things, a next-gen collaboration with Ericsson and Intel to develop 5G routers, and a partnership with AT&T on Internet of Things.
Cisco also introduced a new virtualized mobile services platform, called Cisco Ultra. Anticipating different industries to request a slice of network for their particular services, Cisco developed Ultra to help mobile operators launch and deploy new services and more efficiently.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethernet Picks up the Pace
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329043&
The industry is counting on getting new Ethernet solutions at a faster rate, according to the chairman of the Ethernet Alliance who reviews what’s in the pipeline.
In the world of Ethernet, the rate of change over the past two years has been nothing short of incredible. While it can be argued that the 2007 decision to develop 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE) and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) simultaneously was the catalyst for the state of Ethernet today, the reality is much more complex.
In hindsight, 40GbE turned out to be a big opportunity for many companies, and not the disaster some feared back in early 2007. The success of 40GbE, driven largely by hyper-scale data centers, is providing many lessons that the Ethernet industry has taken to heart as it moves forward today.
Next, the investment required to advance electrical and optical signaling rates has grown in significance for Ethernet rates where the expectation is cost effectiveness. This resulted in the Ethernet approach of adopting the parallelization of these new signaling lane rates.
Finally, Ethernet found the sweet spot for 1x and 4x lane increments. A serial solution benefits mostly the high volume server market while 4x solutions provide networking applications with an appropriate mix of lower cost and higher performance.
The result is we are seeing a plethora of new Ethernet projects targeting different physical layer specifications for different market needs. They leverage 25, 50 and 100 Gbit/second electrical and optical serial signaling to deliver 25, 50, 100, 200 and 400 Gigabit Ethernet. Figure 1 (above) provides a summary of the current work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5G: The race is picking up pace
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/from-the-edge-/4441480/5G–The-race-is-picking-up-pace?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160225&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160225&elqTrackId=7830db9f1db1407b9e0673fd03f96acf&elq=99e849a6a50243a6bb8c117108ea1d4a&elqaid=31037&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27132
Telecom providers are vying to be the first to have a working 5G cellphone network or at least a network that is far faster than any in existence today. Although the target date for 5G demos is 2018, it would be prestigious and profitable to be the first one to enable customers to download a full-length movie in seconds instead of the minutes it takes today. That type of speed would catapult the successful telecom provider to forefront of customer’s minds.
The advent Internet of Things (IoT) would be accelerated by feat, satisfying the need for speed that the smart home needs along with the autonomous vehicle market.
Companies like Verizon has already begun early 5G field tests in New York, partnered with Samsung. Tests are evaluating service in moving vehicles as well as smooth hand off for in-building reception. Your cell phone speeds will approach your high-speed home internet access.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Communications hits and misses at CES
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4441462/Communications-hits-and-misses-at-CES?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160224&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20160224&elqTrackId=428d62a1982a41568cd8c3371add31e1&elq=ff98e0443d6f439888de89ddebff6534&elqaid=30997&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27096
I’m happy to report that generally speaking the situation was much improved this time around, representing an admittedly impressive achievement for the various cellular service providers and network administrators that made it happen. This isn’t an easy task, after all, considering that more than 170,000 people attended CES again this year. And it represents capacity that must be dynamically added on an as-needed basis; no cost-conscious service provider in his right mind would over-build capacity on an ongoing basis just to encompass the CES peaks.
Theoretically, at least, I could have alternatively gotten and sent my data via Wi-Fi. And in the hotel’s defense, when I was connected to the wireless LAN, the upstream and downstream speeds were tolerable, even late at night when such networks typically slow to a crawl.
And as I previously mentioned, my iPad’s cellular data service wasn’t a feasible substitute in this case.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … it’s better to not offer a service at all than to tease potential users with something that ends up under-delivering on its promises, regardless of whether or not it’s “free” (but especially if it’s not). Sigh.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UNH-IOL, Ethernet Alliance gear up for PoE equipment plugfest
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2016/02/unh-ea-plugfest.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February222016
The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry, announced that it will be hosting the latest Ethernet Alliance Power over Ethernet (PoE) interoperability test event, scheduled for March 29 – 31, at the UNH-IOL’s new laboratory in Durham, NH. The multi-vendor plugfest for Ethernet Alliance members will bring together a diverse array of equipment and technologies to test PoE interoperability, as well as conformance with IEEE 802.3 specifications.
The three-day testing event will focus on demonstrating technology and equipment compliance with IEEE 802.3 PoE standards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Institute of Directors: Make broadband speeds 1000x faster than today’s puny 2020 target
Pie in the sky? More like a Scotch egg in space
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/29/iod_weighs_into_blightys_crap_broadband_debate/
Forget the government’s paltry promise of universal broadband speeds of 10 Mbps by 2020. The Institute of Directors is today calling for a target of 10 gigabits per second by 2030.
In its Ultrafast Britain Broadband report, author Dan Lewis said Blighty currently lives in a paradox.
“It has some of the worst broadband speeds in the developed world, some of the least reliable broadband in rural and urban areas alike, and patchy mobile coverage. Our digital economy has grown in spite of, not because of, our digital infrastructure.”
Lewis added: “It is time to be more ambitious, and the relaxed approach the industry took towards meeting the target when it was announced indicates its lack of the necessary ambition.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Car-makers, telecoms bodies push standards for self-driving vehicles
Connected cars get a look-in too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/29/car_makers_telecoms_bodies_standards_connected_autonomous/
New areas for standardisation that could aid with the development of new connected and autonomous vehicles will be identified by car manufacturers and telecoms companies in collaboration, industry bodies have said.
According to a joint statement issued by groups representing companies in both the automotive and telecoms industries, standardisation is one of “three priority areas” that car manufacturers and telecoms providers have identified “for further cooperation”.
The statement was issued by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the European Association of Automotive Suppliers, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association and global mobile operators association GSMA.
“Standardisation is crucial for a timely and cost efficient market development of connected and automated driving,” the statement said. “To that end, the two industries have agreed to map all relevant standardisation activities that are being undertaken, either by the auto industry or by the telecom industry, and to jointly determine priorities.”
Expert in connected and autonomous vehicles Ben Gardner of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: “The information and communication industry has historically used technical standards to make complex information and communication systems possible and to ensure the compatibility of different products. A similar approach to standardisation in the automotive industry could help to facilitate fast and extensive product development for connected and autonomous driving.”
The automotive and telecoms bodies also said they intend to work more closely on issues of connectivity because the emergence of computer-aided driving will depend on “upgraded communication systems that provide higher performance levels in terms of latency, throughput and reliability of the network”.
“Europe must support private investment by all operators in order to foster the deployment of the necessary enhanced fixed and mobile infrastructure,” the groups said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup, with Mixed-Signal ASICs, to Boost 4G Capacity
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329054&
No doubt 5G is coming to save a mobile world that’s struggling to keep up with the explosion in data traffic. But mobile network operators must find a solution — not in 2020, but today.
Blue Danube Systems, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup armed with a unique 3D beam-forming technology, came to the Mobile World Congress to pitch high-definition antenna systems that increase by tenfold the average LTE spectrum efficiency of a typical base station.
Historically, building new towers, adding more spectrum and bringing small cells were the options available for network service providers. However, Pinto said that small cells aren’t spreading as fast as initially thought, largely due to cost issues associated with siting and wiring. “There are also issues in managing interferences among small cells,” he added. Naturally, putting up new towers isn’t cheap, either.
5G is viewed as the answer to capacity issues, “But that [standardization] is going to be a while,” Pinto said. “We think we have a true breakthrough based on our proprietary VLSI design.”
Blue Danube Systems believes it can offer beam-forming solutions that integrate easily with LTE at “commercially viable cost.”
Pinto explained that there is nothing new about beam-forming itself.
The technique is used in sensor arrays for directional signal transmission or reception. It’s common in military radar. The 5G technical committee is also discussing the use of massive antennas for beam-forming.
The system, designed to form highly precise 3D beams by using a large number of array elements, deploys low-cost RF components.
Assume, for example, 100 elements inside a single box. The Blue Danube’s mixed-signal ASICs can keep them all synchronized and calibrated.
The real key to Blue Danube’s system, though, is that it can be used by mobile operators for capacity increase without making big changes in today’s 4G/LTE infrastructure.
More specifically, Blue Danube’s high definition antenna systems can be quickly installed at existing antenna locations using conventional mounting techniques. They are also fully compatible with LTE 3GPP Release 8 and above, said Pinto.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hot and ‘Connected’ at Mobile World Congress
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329035&
The hot corner at the Mobile World Congress this week is an area called Innovation City. The GSM Association has joined with AT&T, the Global M2M Association, Jasper, KT and Sierra Wireless to showcase mobile connected products and services, and to show how these offerings from different companies in different nations all connect.
We also spotted new mobile and connected products, ranging from Huawei’s Mate Notebook, Sony’s Xperia Ear to Nokia’s 5G autonomous cars and Xiaomi’s Mi5.
AT&T is conducting “Smart Cities” pilots in six U.S. areas, including Atlanta, Dallas, Chapel Hill and Montgomery County, Maryland.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wi-Fi Alliance sets draft test specs for Wi-Fi/LTE-U co-existence
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/02/wi-fi-alliance-sets-draft-test-specs-for-wi-fi-lte-u-co-existence.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February222016
FierceWirelessTech (FWT) reports that “while the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) is facilitating the development of a co-existence test regimen to make sure LTE-U devices play fair with Wi-Fi, a group of companies – including Google and Microsoft – wants to make it crystal clear that much more collaboration and technical work needs to be done before it reaches a final stage.”
“The WFA held its second major workshop on coexistence [on Feb. 10] in San Jose, Calif., and released a draft test plan for Wi-Fi and LTE-U co-existence on its website.”
“It is important that the industry develop specific pass and fail metrics calibrated to ensure that LTE-U devices do not disproportionately degrade Wi-Fi performance across a range of realistic testing scenarios,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T starts upgrading to 5G wireless networks
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2016/02/at-t-starts-upgrading-to-5g-wireless-networks.html?cmpid=Enl_CIM_CablingNews_February222016
AT&T said Friday it intends to start testing next-generation 5G technology next month with faster speeds coming first to Austin, Texas.
The company unveiled plans to upgrade its wireless systems to the faster technology by the end of 2018, saying it expects to provide its current 46 million subscriber base with 10 to 100 times faster data and web connections.
“New experiences like virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities and more are about to test networks like never before,” said John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president of AT&T Technology and Operations. “These technologies will be immersive, pervasive and responsive to customers. 5G will help make them a reality. 5G will reach its full potential because we will build it on a software-centric architecture that can adapt quickly to new demands and give customers more control of their network services.”