Tag Mobile Network

U.S. Pumps $400 million to fund next-gen wireless research 

Mark Cathey Leave a comment

The U.S. National Science Foundation will spend more than US$400 million over the next seven years to fund next-generation wireless research in an effort to bring super-fast mobile service to the country.

U.S. officials hope the investments, announced Friday, will speed up the county’s move to next-generation 5G mobile service, potentially offering speeds of 10Gbps, and allow for a rapid expansion of the internet of things. 

The next-generation mobile services will enable self-driving cars, an “always on” IoT, smart cities, new virtual reality offerings, and video to aid police, firefighters, and emergency medical responders, said John Holdren assistant to President Barack Obama for science and technology.

“Time and again, history has shown us that when we make sustained federal investments in fundamental academic research and in public-private partnerships … we as a nation reap the benefits,” Holdren said at an NSF event in Washinton, D.C., Friday.

The NSF funding, part of a new White House Advanced Wireless Research Initiative, includes $50 million as part of a partnership with more than 20 mobile companies and trade groups to roll out advanced wireless testing sites in four U.S. cities. The testing will include deployment of small cells to boost signals of high-band, millimeter wave spectrum.

Friday’s announcement piggybacks on a Federal Communications Commission vote Thursday to open up nearly 11 gigahertz of high-band spectrum to 5G and IoT services.

The NSF expects to spend $350 million over the next seven years on fundamental research and testing of next-generation wireless technologies, the agency said.

The FCC and other agencies want to focus on making spectrum available so that wireless companies can experiment with the best ways to deliver new services, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Some countries have pushed to set 5G standards before moving forward, but not the U.S., he said.

To read more and the original story follow this link to Network World. 

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Smartphone Battery Life can be Doubled with Better Power Use, According to MIT Startup

Mark Cathey Leave a comment

Startup company ETA Devices, founded by MIT professors Joel Dawson and David Perreault, is working on a system to cut base station power consumption in half and eventually do the same with smartphones.

Device data speeds and data consumption are constantly growing, more now than ever, and the strain this puts on cellphone batteries and base stations has both frustrated users and increased overall power consumption. MIT Technology Review reports that ETA Devices’ new technology could turn that around.

The system works by optimizing the power amplifier, which converts electricity to radio signals in both cellphones and base stations. The amplifier works in both a high-power mode for sending data and a lower-power standby mode, but because making sudden jumps between power levels can distort the signal, the standby mode is kept at a level that consumes far more power than it needs.

“It means you are pulling a lot of energy just to keep the thing on,” Dawson says. “With high data rate communication, you wind up needing far more standby power than signal power.”

ETA Devices installs a system that can choose between different voltages as many as 20 million times a second, selecting the most appropriate one, to make this more efficient.

ETA Devices are developing a version that could fit in smartphones, potentially doubling battery life when using a data connection. There is no product that has been produced as of yet, as they are still in the research stage. But ETA Devices hopes to announce a product for base stations at the 2013 Mobile World Congress in February. The ultimate goal is a version that could work with multiple standards, including CDMA, GSM, and LTE.

US Army Looks at 4G Communication System to Better Help Wounded Soldiers

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In war medics tend to be thrown into situations where wounded soldiers require urgent and immediate attention where a trained surgeon would be most helpful, and said surgeon would be able to better do his job once he has gotten the background information on the injury and the subsequent medical details in order to dispense with the proper care.

With that said the US Army wants to develop a system which is capable of managing patient data from injury site to recovery, where it will include delivering live audio/video communication for medics in the field. This will help the medics in the field also determine who needs to ride the medevac first depending on the wounded soldiers condition and need for medical attention.

This is where the Army says the system will definitely need to fall back on a range of devices as well as 4G cellular networking in order to send vitals to communicate with the doctor, with everything being said recorded for further review. There are no further details on the 4G communication system the Army will be using.