WIRELESS

How to un-tether your network

Evert BoppCEO, AirAppz

Where did it all start?

• HiperLAN: ratified in 1996 by ETSI as spec. EN/300/652. 5GHz band, speed up to 24Mbps

• WLAN: ratified by IEEE in June 1997 as IEEE 802.11. 2.4GHz band, 1 -2 Mbps.

• HomeRF SWAP (shared wireless access protocol): 1998, HomeRF Working Group (HRFWG). 2.4GHz, 1 – 2 Mbps.

• Bluetooth: W-PAN. 2.4GHz, 1Mbps

Range & throughput

Evolution

• 802.11 evolves as the defacto standard for medium and longer range wireless networks.

• In 1999 IEEE “adds” two supplements, 802.11a & 802.11b. • 802.11b is an extension of the initial 802.11 DSSS operating in

2.4GHz up to 11Mbps.• 802.11a operates in 5GHz at a rate up to 54Mbps (add pinch

of salt here). OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing)

• 802.11g comes along second half of 2003. 2.4GHz up to 54Mbps (again ad some salt).

Performance

Range & throughput

• 802.11/wifi evolved from local area networks to use in long(er) range point-2-point links.

• Grass-root movements started to use it to share connectivity locally as well as over distance (Irish-WAN, Personal Telco project etc.)

• Wifi is easy to use, and un-licensed. • Prevalence of home-brew hardware. Old pc’s running various

flavours of Linux, hacked radio cards, exotics OS’s (Karlnet, Star-OS, Open AP, NoCat).

• Possibility to set-up a long distance (4-5 mile) link for less than 500 euro.

• Large involvement from the HAM-radio groups.• Very little commercial involvement (Vbnets)• Remember wardriving?

• Medio 2002-2003 the first commercial wifi hotspots start to appear.

• Short range, appalling connectivity and hideously expensive. • 2 “streams”; grassroots driven & commercial/telco driven.• Grassroots uses homebrew equipment (lots of innovation),

commercial/telco uses bog-standard wifi AP’s (Cisco, Alvarion/Proxim etc.)

• Expensive to use & expensive to operate.• Quite often limited to large/corporate venues.

2003 -2005

WiFi hotspot market explodes:

• Worldwide wifi hotspot numbers increase from a few thousand to several 100 thousand.

• Municipal wireless networks start appearing.• Almost every device is wifi enabled (laptops, pda’s, phones,

cameras, printers even fridges).• Large increase in the WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) market.• WiFi spectrum (2.4GHz) starts to fill up resulting in

interference.• Increased use of 802.11a for commercial point-2-point links.

Emergence of UMTS & Wimax

• Telcos were looking into options of monetizing their cell-phone network.

• GPRS wasn’t suitable; slow, expensive• UMTS (with HSDPA), maximum throughput 21Mbit/s.

Currently 7.2 Mbit/s available.• Coverage is still patchy outside urban areas.• Costs are still prohibitive, data caps etc.• Dual carrier (DC) HSD; max. Throughput is 42 MBit/s

Wimax

• 802.16d – fixed wimax (2.5, 3.3 & 3.5 GHz)• 802.16e – mobile wimax (5.x GHz)• Uses scheduling algorithm instead of contention access. Each

user is assigned a set “slot”.• Uses licensed spectrum (expensive)• Better Quality of Service (QoS) than WiFi.• Commonly-held misconception is that Wimax will deliver 70

Mbit/s over 50 kilometers.• Reality is either one or the other.• Wimax is NOT a user technology.

4G / LTE• There is no formal definition for what 4G is only certain objectives.• Fully IP-based integrated system.• Capable of providing between 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s speeds both indoors and

outdoors.• Lots of hype, very little common goals.• Applications like wireless broadband access, MMS, video chat, mobile TV, HDTV

content, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), minimal service like voice and data, and other streaming services for "anytime-anywhere".

4G working group objectives

• A spectrally efficient system (in bits/s/Hz and bits/s/Hz/site)• High network capacity: more simultaneous users per cell,• A nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s while the client physically moves

at high speeds relative to the station, and 1 Gbit/s while client and station are in relatively fixed positions as defined by the ITU-R

• A data rate of at least 100 Mbit/s between any two points in the world

• Smooth handoff across heterogeneous networks• Seamless connectivity and global roaming across multiple networks,• High quality of service for next generation multimedia support (real

time audio, high speed data, HDTV video content, mobile TV, etc)• Interoperability with existing wireless standards,and• An all IP, packet switched network.

3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution)

• Peak download rates of 326.4 Mbit/s for 4x4 antennas, 172.8 Mbit/s for 2x2 antennas for every 20 MHz of spectrum.

• Peak upload rates of 86.4 Mbit/s for every 20 MHz of spectrum.• 5 different terminal classes have been defined from a voice centric class up to

a high end terminal that supports the peak data rates. All terminal will be able to process 20 MHz bandwidth.

• At least 200 active users in every 5 MHz cell. (i.e., 200 active data clients)• Sub-5ms latency for small IP packets• Increased spectrum flexibility, with spectrum slices as small as 1.5 MHz (and

as large as 20 MHz) supported (W-CDMA requires 5 MHz slices, leading to some problems with roll-outs of the technology in countries where 5 MHz is a commonly allocated amount of spectrum, and is frequently already in use with legacy standards such as 2G GSM and cdmaOne.) Limiting sizes to 5 MHz also limited the amount of bandwidth per handset

• Optimal cell size of 5 km, 30 km sizes with reasonable performance, and up to 100 km cell sizes supported with acceptable performance

• Co-existence with legacy standards (users can transparently start a call or transfer of data in an area using an LTE standard, and, should coverage be unavailable, continue the operation without any action on their part using GSM/GPRS or W-CDMA-based UMTS or even 3GPP2 networks such as cdmaOne or CDMA2000)

• Supports MBSFN (Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network). This feature can deliver services such as Mobile TV using the LTE infrastructure, and is a competitor for DVB-H-based TV broadcast.

• PU2RC (Per-User Unitary Rate Control) as a practical solution for MU-MIMO has been adopted to use in 3GPP LTE standard. The detailed procedure for the general MU-MIMO operation is handed to the next release, e.g, LTE-Advanced, where the further discussion will be held.

Conclusion

• Lots of thinking, talking and testing.• No-one really knows which standard will win out.• Expect mix & match usage. Multiple standard devices

(wifi, 3G, 4G)

Thank you...