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Video 1 Like

3-D Without The Glasses

Elena Neira
August07/ 2016

Today 3-D movie and video watching does go with strange-looking glasses. This does not have to be the case in the future if technologies like Automultiscopic Displays are brought to market. These new technologies that take glasses and any other “additional” hardware out of the user experience equation are particularly appealing in a mobile environment. If the user is moving around and has only a device such as a smartphone with him/her, how will 5G provide a 3-D experience?

 

Automultiscopic Displays on a Large-Scale:  MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Weizmann Institute of Science demonstrate are reporting a prototype movie screen system called “Cinema 3D” that lets movie goes experience 3-D without wearing glasses, and does not require the high-resolution that other 3-D glass-free technologies require. The display technology that makes this possible is called automultiscopic display applied in a large-scale area. Cinema 3D “would use a series of lenses and mirrors to allow audiences to see the same 3-D (three dimensional) image from any seat in a theater.”

 

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Standard Approach to The Design of Automultiscopic 3D Displays vs. Cinema 3D Prototype (Source: Weizmann Institute)

 

Aiming for real-world three-dimensional visual experiences:   There is a very active 3-D imaging industry because users are interested in experiencing images and video that exhibit real-world-like properties. For TVs and movie screens, the technology for the future points at holographic imaging technologies which would present images that vary with varying perspectives. In the short term, solutions like this automultiscopic display could emerge if they present a compelling time-to-market cost effective picture.

 

@elenaneira

References: MIT News: A New 3-D Movie Screen Without The Glasses 3-D Cinema Large Automultiscopic Display

Trends 1 Like

Our Reader’s Poll Results Are Out

Elena Neira
August07/ 2016

We regularly pool our readers on subjects are relevant to 5G technologies, and ask them how they impact their work, life, and what trends they see. For the month of July 2016, we are sharing in this post what they told us about choosing their future smartphone, a favorite connected/networked car feature, and playing Pokemon GO.

 

What App Do You Want The Most for Your Connected Car? Self-driving and navigation are the most wanted apps in a connected car according to our pool results.

My Next Smart Phone Will Be a…. The iPhone will be the choice for 40% of our readers. Samsung and Xiaomi, with 20% came number two in the pool. And the interesting fact in the pool results is that only 20% responded that they still do not know or are undecided about the brand of their next smartphone.

Do You Play Pokemon Go? We find out that 80% of our readers do.

 

@elenaneira BETA

Infographics 1 Like

Wearable Technology is in Style

Wearable-Technology-ElenaNeira
Max Loskutnikov
August07/ 2016

Wearable technology is on the rise in both personal and business use. In the consumer space, sales of smart wristbands started accelerating in 2013. Smartwatches are a second high-profile sector and while wearable devices have been around for years, it has only started gaining mass market attention with the introduction of new models by Samsung and later by Apple. The now defunct Google Glass gained a lot of media attention, but the project ground to a halt in early 2015, with Google stopping device sales. In healthcare, wearables have long been used, for example in hearing aids and in detecting health disorders such as sleep apnea. A study in 2014 by MSI and McAfee reported that 70% of people think that wearable technologies will soon send health vitals readings to physicians.

 

Wearable-Technology-Infographic-ElenaNeira

 

5G

Bell, Nokia Complete 5G Pre-Commercial Trial in 73 GHz Band

Elena Neira
August07/ 2016

Canada’s largest communications company, Bell Canada reports the completion of a 5G pre-commercial trial in collaboration with Nokia. The trial used the 73 GHz band and reached “sustained data speeds more than six-times faster than top 4G mobile speeds [1] now available in Canada.”

 

Bell sees Work on 5G is Key to Service Innovation:   In the press release announcing the success of the trial, it is worth noticing that CTO Stephen Howe says that the strategic focus with the trial is “…driving broadband network and service innovation… key to our transformation into Canada’s wireless leader,” and the company reports it expects the commercial 5G to be ready in 5 to 7 years from now.

 

Nokia’s Experimental 5G System Operating in the 73 GHz Band:   The technical details of Nokia’s E-band experimental system were presented earlier this year at an FCC workshop and include operations of one GHz bandwidth single link system using null cyclic prefix (CP) single carrier modulation which communicates using steerable lens antenna with a 3-degree beam serving a fully mobile user device. This system can also support a radio latency of less than 1 milliseconds and multi-user acquisition and tracking. We are assuming that the same or a subset of these technical capabilities could be in use at Bell’s trial.

 

ElenaNeira-5G
Pre-Commercial 5G Trials/Tests By Mobile Operators Continue to Make News

 

Will 75 GHz Be 5G Spectrum in Canada?   The use of the 73 GHz band puts the Canadian telco regulator on the spotlight. Unlike their North American counterpart, FCC, which moved on 5G allocations with the Spectrum Frontiers ruling, the authorities in Canada have not yet covered this issue.

 

Bell Joins Industry Trend to Trial 5G:   We are closely monitoring and exploring how different stakeholders are planning 5G enablement for mobile broadband services. Mobile operators around the world are particularly focused on testing  and trials of future generation 5G technologies in new spectrum bands. This trial comes comes the footsteps of Vodafone‘s and China‘s.

 

[1] Bell Canada has reported that its LTE-Advanced network presently delivers speeds between 12 and 100 Mbps.

 

@elenaneira

Resources: Bell Canada, Nokia’s 73 GHz Trial System Capability

5G 1 Like

How Much will 5G Data Cost?

Elena Neira
August05/ 2016

 

Enabling 5G data-hungry streaming apps like virtual reality, 360 video, and augmented worlds means delivery big volumes of data to our smartphones. Even Today a single video stream needs from 0.3 GB per hour for low resolution, and up to 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD. If multiple streams, multiple devices, 24/7 service and billions of user are to be served, then the feasibility of 5G rests largely on the infrastructure to deliver cost-effectively these large volumes of data .

Increasing network infrastructure capacity to meet increasing data demand is no easy task. But the mobile industry has been doing just that one generation after another. The chart below shows the dramatic reduction in the cost to deliver 1 megabyte of data from 2G to 4G.

Despite the rapid rise in mobile traffic, technology, operational and business process improvements were able to reduce the cost per megabyte of data delivered. On the technology side, continuous innovation, over a number of years in radio access, transmission and core technologies are responsible for these improvements. In 5G, the expectation is to further reduce this cost

 

Cost of Delivering a Megabyte of Data in 2G, 3G and 4G (Source: Telstra)
Cost of Delivering a Megabyte of Data from 2G to 4G (Source: Telstra)

 

The technologies that are being looked at to achieve these efficiencies are on the wireless side bits/Hz spectral efficiency improvements, MIMO transmit diversity improvements, further channel coding improvements for interference and noise management, and multi-radio capabilities. Efficiencies are also in the wire side with improved IP/Transport protocols, slicing the network architecture, densification of deployments, and support for virtualization.

 

@elenaneira BETA [article under development to complete for a coming 5G Magazine issue]

Resources:

IoT 1 Like

New IoT, Wearable Chips Leverage Open RISC-V Platform

Elena Neira
July31/ 2016

Could IoT and Wearable semiconductors be made more cost-effective, and with faster turn around times to fit the requirements of a fast-pace highly innovative ecosystem like 5G? This month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hosted a RISC-V(*) workshop to explore these goals based on the RISC-V open hardware platform. At the same time, startup SiFive is launching the firsts products based on this platform. “The semiconductor industry is at an important crossroads. Moore’s Law has ended, and the traditional economic model of chip building no longer works,…” says SiFive co-founder Yunsup Lee.

 

Open Hardware for Embedded Microcontrollers:   To realize the promise of billions of IoT devices in the 5G ecosystem, both scholars and industry are working to optimize current solutions and/or propose new ones addressing challenges that go from long development cycles, to high power consumption, to expensive manufacturing processes. In the IoT semiconductor industry, embedded microprocessors are being looked at with ongoing focus to define open microcontroller cores. These open cores are worth noting because they redefine the traditional SoC technologies and business models, and reverse the industry’s increasingly high licensing, design and implementation costs and impact commercialization plans. The RISC-V Foundation (*) is coming together together to coordinate academia-industry efforts. MIT hosted its latest workshop this month.

 

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A New Approach to Designing and Producing Custom Chips (Source: SiFive)

 

SiFive Freedom Platforms Benefiting from the Open Source RISC-V Software Ecosystem:   At the same time, products based on RISC-V are seeing the light. SiFive launched two products part of their Freedom FOSS SoC platform  a few days ago targeting the embedded micro controller for IoT and wearable devices in the 5G ecosystem. Their press release highlights that their platform leverages the free and open RISC-V(*) architecture and ecosystem to democratize access to custom, state-of-the-art semiconductors. This has the potential to be a game-changer challenging ARM as well as other existing approaches to IP cores.

One IoT Solution Does Not Fit All:   The markets are coming to the realization that no single IoT chipset solution will meet the requirements of industries as diverse as wearables, enterprise fleet logistics, smart power grids, connected cars and such. Industry efforts such as RISC-V and companies such as SiFive, are responding with new solutions to make product design and development easier and customizable to the requirements of disparate verticals.

(*) RISC-V is a non-profit foundation whose members include AMD, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, Qualcomm, Rambus, and smaller processor IP companies Andes Technology, Codasip, and Cortus.

 

@elenaneira

References: SiFive Introduces First Open Source Chip Platforms, MIT hosts RISC-V Workshop

5G

Vodafone Reports 20 Gbps Speed in 5G Trial

Elena Neira
July31/ 2016

“Working with Huawei we have recently completed a 5G field test in Newbury that demonstrates the capabilities of a trial system operating at 70 GHz. In our tests we have been able to reach data rates of over 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and support multiple users that receive 10 Gbps each.” says Vodafone in a website post that describes the 5G field test at their Newbury Headquarters in the UK.

 

Using High Frequency Spectrum to Achieve Gigabit Speeds: Vodafone reports completion of a 5G field test. The trial was conducted using Huawei’s equipment operating in the 70 GHz band, and was able to reach data rates of over 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps) for single-user multiple input multiple output (SU-MIMO) with a strong reflection path; and also to support multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) for long-range UE that received 10 Gbps each.

 

 

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Antenna Steering and Beam-Forming with High Precision  (Source: Vodafone)

 

There Are Fundamental Difference Between mmWave Communications and Current Cellular Systems: The use of high frequency spectrum is still is still quite new in cellular systems which have been using frequencies under 3 GHz in previous generations (1G to 4G). Writing on the Vodafone Group blog, 5G Research Manager David Lister shares that there are significant engineering challenges associated with using these frequency bands. The radio signal is less capable of penetrating obstructions and the radio beams must be able to track the location of a device that is moving quickly. As a result, researchers are working to address these challenges as part of ongoing to work to determine how best to deploy and operate 5G networks.

 

@elenaneira

Sources: Vodafone uses high frequency spectrum to reach giga-bit 5G speeds, A Survey of mmWave Communications for 5G

IoT

Why SoftBank Bought ARM Holdings?

Elena Neira
July29/ 2016

SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son spent the last weeks selling his important holdings in China’s Alibaba, Japan’s GungHo, and Finnish’s Supercell to buy UK based ARM Holdings (ARM) for $34 B. Read this as indicative that a semiconductor IP block company is as strategic as internet, mobile, e-commerce and game companies for the SoftBank Group.

 

Japan’s SoftBank Bought Semiconductor IP block Designer ARM: When the deal was announced on July 18, 2016 it became the largest ever purchase of a european technology company. The company’s brand name is not big with consumers but ARM is a leader in the industry with major presence in consumer electronics, specially those that require low-power low-cost chipsets. And its strongest presence is in mobile devices with ARM designs in 90% of all the smartphones sold worldwide.

 

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EE Times Magazine Quotes Elena Neira @elenaneira (Source: Twitter)

 

It’s About Future Computing Platforms: Many analysis are leaning towards positioning Son’s purchase of ARM as a bet for the ARM architecture ecosystem, and a bet against the Intel’s x86 architecture. This is part of the story but there is more to it. The other part to consider is that ARM’s designs are in HW made by different OEMs, fab and fabless semiconductor companies. Qualcomm, Apple, IBM, Nokia, Xiaomi, and Samsung – to name a few – use ARM in their designs, and this clearly can be leveraged to develop a platform strategy. In EE Times Magazine, Junko Yoshida wrote a fascinating article analyzing SoftBank CEO Masatoshi Son’s decision to invest billions of dollars in a semiconductor IP design company. “How could this be a good fit for a mobile operator and internet company like SoftBank?” she asks. In a twitter storm, I argued that one can envision a platform strategy where open HW, like today’s open source SW, plays a central role. And in this scenario, the purchase of ARM could be about buying “the Android of HW.”

 

@elenaneira

Sources: SoftBank-ARMHolgings press release, EE Times What’s in it for SoftBank?

Video 1 Like

Smartphone Maker LeEco buys Vizio for $2B

Elena Neira
July27/ 2016

 

 

LeEco’s acquisition of US Vizio signals their sharp focus on extending their devices footprint – smartphones, TVs, VRs – to enable them better and faster distribution of their digital content.

 

LeEco’s Consumer Electronics and Content Ecosystem: LeEco is a conglomerate from China. They make smartphones, TVs, virtual reality, connected electric cars, and they are also in the content, digital services business with music streaming, live sports, film production, e-commerce and video streaming. LeEco is also famous for a billionaire CEO who basted Apple for being “outdated” earlier this year.

Visio is a California-based smart TV Maker: Based out of California, Vizio is a major player in the US TV space creating premium products with the latest innovations and making them accessible for everyone – from budget-minded students to custom home theaters. In the press release his CEO says that “14 years ago, I mortgaged my house to start VIZIO and since then, it has grown into one of the most well-known and respected CE brands in North America.”

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LeEco Smartphone (Source: LeEco)

Making Sense of the $2B Acquisition: LeEco’s strategy has been to expand in every direction – even outside technology and into areas like real estate. Today’s announcement of the Vizio’s acquisition is specially significant because it signals their aim to leverage their own consumer devices such as smartphones and TVs to better and faster distribute the content they produce in house such as TV channels, or purchase from outside produces such as spots events content. It also signals the continuation of China’s direct investment in US which is estimated to top record $20 billion this year. Possible we will see other investments, perhaps also in the consumer electronics and internet business.

 

@elenaneira

Resources: Pioneering Internet Ecosystem Company LeEco Acquires VIZIO for $2B, LeEco CEO says Apple is Outdated and Loosing Momentum

 

Infographics 1 comment 1 Like

Pokemon GO Infographic

Pokemon-GO-Biggest-Game-Ever-ElenaNeira.com
Max Loskutnikov
July26/ 2016

With more daily users than Twitter and bigger engagement than Facebook in under one month, Pokémon GO is a viral phenomenon with unprecedented  growth at global scale. It launched in the US and just 10 days after this augmented-reality multi-player mobile game app reached the same active users that Twitter reached in 10 years. Let’s look at this and record-breaking numbers -users, engagement, market cap- as well as companies and technologies behind it, and the impact in the future of mobile and 5G.

Pokemon-GO-Infographic-ElenaNeira

 

5G

Spectrum Allocations for 5G in US and UK

5G-Infographic-ElenaNeira
Elena Neira
July26/ 2016

Regulators in US and UK make important announcements during July 2016, with positive developments in their efforts to identify spectrum for 5G services. The FCC ruled that over 10 GHz of spectrum across 4 different bands – 3.85GHz of licensed and 7GHz of unlicensed frequencies, across the 28GHz, 37GHz and 39GHz bands, as well as new unlicensed bands at 64GHz-71GHz – are now available for 5G across US. In UK, Ofcom issued a consultation to identify 5G spectrum for fixed wireless services. These actions could speed up 5G rollouts in America and Europe but these could still lag behind South Korea and Japan who said to deploy 5G by the time they host the Olympics, in 2018 and 2020, respectively. These actions by FCC and Ofcom are also key towards ITU’s WCR-19 and IMT-2020.

 

FCC Spectrum Frontiers Identifies Over 10 GHz of Spectrum for Wireless Use: To support the development of 5G networks, the FCC this month moved forward on high-band spectrum issuing an order – Spectrum Frontiers proceeding –  to open over 10 GHz of high-band spectrum for innovative mobile use. The order contemplates both licensed and unlicensed allocations, and creates opportunities for sharing among different kinds of users such as fixed/mobile, federal/nonfederal, terrestrial/satellite; and public/private networks. As far as technical rules in these bands, it is worth noticing that for TX Power at the basestation CTIA, Ericsson, Fiber Tower, Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia, Samsung, Straight Path, TIA, Verizon, and XO’s representatives requested greater than 62 dBm/100MHz EIRP level; it appears that the FCC accepted this requirement.

 

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FCC Allocates Four Bands to 5G Mobile Services:  (Source: FCC)

 

Regarding usage, the FCC is addressing spectrum in the 28 GHz, 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 64-71 GHz bands separately as follows:

  • 28 GHz licensed band currently assigned for LMDS (fixed broadband wireless service) and FSS (Fixed Satellite Services), the Commission authorized use of the spectrum for mobile services and integrated new uses directly into the existing licensing scheme. Incumbent LMDS licensees may begin mobile operations, and new mobile operators can apply for county-based geographic-area licenses in this spectrum.  The FCC expects mobile operations in this band to provide mobile broadband access in dense population centers and along highway corridors.
  • 37 GHz licensed band for terrestrial mobile operations, barring a few federal uses that remain protected.  A portion of the newly-opened spectrum will be available on a co-equal basis to federal and non-federal uses, and will be monitored as a “proving ground” for federal and non-federal sharing in high-frequency millimeter-wave bands.
  • 39 GHz licensed band with co-allocation for fixed, fixed satellite, and mobile services; however, the FCC has always declined to permit mobile operations in this band pending resolution of potential interference issues. In the Order, the Commission authorized terrestrial mobile operations and adopted service rules to minimize the risk of interference between terrestrial and satellite uses, and a “protection zone” free from terrestrial operations in the 39 GHz band.
  • 64-71 GHz unlicensed band available for use by unlicensed RF devices under the FCC’s Part 15 rules.  This band will serve as a place to test and deploy wireless devices, contributing to the development of new unlicensed applications.

 

 

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Ofcom Fixed Wireless Spectrum Strategy Call For Input (Source: Ofcom)

 

In addition, FCC also began of the process, issuing the corresponding NPRM, to bring perhaps twice that much spectrum online above 71 GHz.

OFCOM Issues a Call For Input on Fixed Wireless: UK regulator Ofcom also moved to issue a call for input on spectrum used with fixed wireless and noted that the European Union plans are to look at spectrum up to the 175 GHz band.

 

@elenaneira

Resources: FCC Spectrum Ofcom Fixed Wireless Spectrum Strategy Ofcom Seeks Comment

5G

In China, a 5G Prototype Reaches 9.83 Gbps Speed

Elena Neira
July26/ 2016

Out of the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, steady progress towards 5G with a Cellular IoT demo, a 5G NR sub-6GHz trial system, VR live demos during the 2018 Olympics, and reports that a prototype 5G basestation to be used in Shanghai Mobile’s test network can reach peak speeds of 9.83 Gbps.

 

5G Everywhere at Shanghai Mobile World Congress: 5G was all around the showroom floor in Shanghai, with demonstrations showcasing progress in networks and applications like smart cities, IoT and sensors. China Mobile was demonstrating trial base stations using 5G technology, and a demo next-generation cellular IoT based on LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) standards. Qualcomm highlighted its 5G New Radio (NR) prototype system and trial platform operateing in the sub-6 GHz spectrum bands, which the company says  is a critical part of allowing for flexible deployments with ubiquitous network coverage; the prototype will closely track 3GPP study item as part of Release 14 and will feed into Release 15 work items.

There were reports that Shanghai Mobile and Huawei are involved in the testing of 5G network performance, and that the prototype basestations used in their tests reached a peak speed of 9.83 Gbps. No technical details were available on how and where in the network this record was achieved; from recent reports of advances in radio access architectures, it appears the record is a wireless fronthaul speed record.

 

ElenaNeira10
China Driving 5G Technology Development at Towards Commercialization

Korea Telecom keynote at the congress revealed that 5G services will be available during the 2018 Olympics. These services will offer virtual reality and/or augmented reality including drones equipped with a video cameras enabling viewers to experience the games from the athlete’s point of view, (possibly) live holograms of the athletes, and omni-view camera angles to watch an event from multiple points of view.

 

China Aims to Lead in 5G: These developments underscore China’s commitment to drive wireless innovation, and to incorporate advancements in networks and related application technologies into new applications and  business models. These recent Cellular IoT (LPWA) demo as well as the 5G prototypes show technical progress towards making 5G a commercially feasible by 2020.

@elenaneira

Resources:   China Mobile, Ericsson and Intel Show Complete IoT Demo at MWC Shanghai 2016,  Recent Advances in System Architecture for Radio Access, Shanghai Daily

5G

$400M for Advanced Wireless Research in US

Elena Neira
July26/ 2016

In US private and public institutions are convening a consortium to advanced development of next-generation mobile technologies, some of which promise up to 1000 times speed improvements over Today’s technologies. The consortium will run a 10-year program led by NFS, and will be called PAWR -Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research.

 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Leads the Consortium:  According to US Ignite, he initial topic areas that the NFS-led consortium will cover include mmWave (millimeter-wave) in bands about 26 GHz with a target of 100 Gbps in small-cells; Dynamic Spectrum in sub-6 GHz bands including co-existence and protection; Architectures in data networks; Mobility-at-Scale from transport to MAC layers; Wide-area Whitespace demonstrating 1 Gbps to remote location with mesh networking; Network Metrology, and Applications/Services for cyber-security, IoT, robotics, connected health and big data. Besides NFS, there are more than 20 companies and associations.

 

4 US Cities to host 5G Wireless Platforms: Research in these topics will take the bulk of the budget. Close to $80 Million will be allocated to building 4 test sites with the aim to validate the research quickly and accelerate commercial deployments of 5G.

 

@elenaneira

Resources: NSF to lead Advanced Wireless Access Research, White House Announces PAWR Initiative

Cloud

OpenCellular is Cost Effective Open Source Wireless from Facebook

Elena Neira
July26/ 2016

 

Facebook reports that they have designed and tested an open source and cost-effective, software-defined wireless access platform aimed to improve connectivity in remote areas of the world. They are calling this platform OpenCellular, and asking interested parties to join them to develop and deploy this platform in the real world.

 

 

Open Cellular Aims to Open Source Basestations: Little is known to this date, about architecture, specifications and other technical details. So far Facebook points in their Developer website that this access platform has two major components are a general-purpose base-band computing (GBC) and a radio frequency (RF) with integrated analog front-end. Plans are to open-source the platform enabling telecom operators, entrepreneurs, OEMs, and researchers to locally build, deploy, and operate wireless infrastructure.

 

OpenCellular is Part of the TIP Roadmap: OpenCellular is being added to the ongoing Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP) efforts such as Aries, Terragraph, and OpenR which were announced at the F8 Developer Conference together with the 10-year connectivity roadmap. In February, Facebook announced TIP, an attempt to bring technology companies like Intel, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom together to develop a unified standard for mobile connectivity.

 

Mark Zuckerberg’s Vision: In a post to his Facebook page, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that this is part of their connectivity efforts towards the more than 4 billion people that still don’t have basic internet access and to the 10% of the world’s population living outside the range of cellular coverage.

 

@elenaneira

Resources: Facebook Code, Mark Zuckergerg’s On Our Journey to Connect the World…

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