Engineering & Technology September 2013 www.EandTmagazine.

com
82 COMMUNICATIONS MOBILE
C
O
R
B
I
S
,

G
E
T
T
Y

I
M
A
G
E
S
Theorem (Shannon, 1948):
1. For every discrete memoryless channel, the channel capacity

has the following property. For any coding error > 0 and coding rate R < C,
for large enough N, there exists a code of length N and rate R and a decoding
algorithm, such that the maximal probability of block error is .
2 .If a probability of bit error P
b
is acceptable,
rates up to R(P
b
) are achievable, where

3. For any pb, rates greater than R(pb) are not achievable.
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83
www.EandTmagazine.com September 2013 Engineering & Technology
THE CELLULAR INDUSTRYS generation
game could now be coming to an end. At
each point in its evolution cellular radio
has found itself leaning increasingly
on previous generations. When the
first digital systems were introduced
they effectively replaced the older,
less-efficient analogue cellular systems.
When telecom operators spent big on
spectrum licences that would allow them to
deploy 3G networks, 2G systems such as
GSM were pushed into the background, but
remain even today important parts of the
network because they have such wide
coverage. The 3G parts of the network,
meanwhile, remain focused on population
centres.
For years to come, the 4G networks now
being installed based on the Long-Term
Evolution (LTE) protocol will lean on the
older 2G and 3G networks to support voice
calls. LTE will be reserved for
high-bandwidth data and video. It will almost
certainly take a long time for 4G to extend
beyond major conurbations, but it is a system
that is meant to cover both urban and rural
environments, so could, in principle,
eventually push 2G and 3G out of the mobile
communications picture altogether.
So now operators are thinking about the
next step forward but this will be a different
kind of network evolution. Rather than being
an enhanced replacement for 4G, operators
see it as a merger of many different
technologies. A new radio standard is only
part of the picture. And yet some of the
changes being proposed could reshape the
way cellular networks operate.
Although Samsung claimed to have
demonstrated the first 5G-capable systems in
Q2/2013, any network that legitimately lays
claim to that name is some way away.
Nonetheless, Professor Rahmi Tafazolli, who
heads the Centre for Communication
Systems Research at the University of
Surrey, says it will evolve: It will be at least
seven or eight years before we have a
complete specification, he believes.
We are looking at new systems coming in
around 2020, predicts Lauri Oksanen, head
of research and technology at equipment
maker Nokia Siemens Networks, but we do
not talk about 5G as the overall network
evolution. We dont want to label everything
5G. Our view is that 5G will really be about
better local-area performance, with lower
latency and higher bandwidth in
high-density hetnets.
Oksanen refers here to the industrys
contraction of the term heterogeneous
networks, in which different types of radio
technology co-operate and interoperate.
Further development to LTE is the most
likely way to go for macrocell, wide-area
coverage, he adds. A new 5G radio would be
more of a complement to LTE evolution.
Prof Tafazolli also maintains that 4G is a
very good technology: It provides good
speed, and when it offers national coverage
people will have a much better experience of
Internet usage on the move... The problem is
that the way that we use the available radio
spectrum and the way we have developed the
standards is not efficient, Prof Tafazolli
adds. We are running out of radio spectrum.
Before 2020, with all the spectrum that we
have, most Western Europe capitals and
cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and
Tokyo will run out of capacity. In short, we
have to come up with revolutionary ways of
using the spectrum.
Shannon canon
In 1948 the American mathematician
and electronic engineer Claude Shannon
(1916-2001) developed a key piece of
communications theory that asserted, for a
given level of noise, there is a limit to how
much data a channel can send. Nick Johnson,
CTO of basestation maker Ip.access,
says that existing radio technologies
are operating as close as makes no
difference to their Shannon limits.
The University of Surreys Prof Tafazolli
agrees with this assertion, but adds: Its
wrong to compare everything to the Shannon
capacity limit because that is defined for
point-to-point connections. The metric that
really applies to cellular communications is
capacity per metre squared... and thats what
we are going to be doing with 5G.
Increasing the data-communications
density will mean finding new spectrum and
being as smart as possible about using
existing frequency bands. The mobile
industry and its confederates has already
started down that road with 4G, by
introducing small-cell basestations or >
5G searches
for formula
to shake off
Shannon
Experiments in so-called 5G mobile communications have begun, but early indications suggest that its
going to be a fundamentally different kind of cellular network that emerges.
ByChris Edwards
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Engineering & Technology September 2013 www.EandTmagazine.com
84 COMMUNICATIONS MOBILE
< femtocells that work alongside
macrocells, which cover much wider areas
[Feeding time, E&T, April 2013]. These very
short-range basestations are designed to be
packed into city streets in dense meshes,
possibly hanging from street lamps or even
deployed in users homes where they double
up as Wi-Fi access points.
The FON network, now owned by BT,
provides an indication of how private access
points can be used to provide a high degree
of public wireless coverage the service was
rolled into the BTOpenzone service several
years ago. Standard Wi-Fi itself provides the
possibility to offload traffic from the 3G and
4G services.
One option is to move these basestations
into hitherto unused parts of the radio
spectrum. As part of the 5G innovation
work, we will look at new frequency bands,
confirms Prof Tafazolli.
Frequencies above 20GHz ten times
higher than those used for 3G and Wi-Fi
communications offer massive potential
data-rates, because the bands themselves are
much wider. If you go up a couple of orders
in frequency you can go up a couple of orders
of magnitude in bandwidth, explains
Professor Ted Rappaport, director of the
NYU Wireless research centre at the
Polytechnic Institute of New York University.
Attentuation issues
The millimetre-wave bands they range from
around 3mm to 30mm in wavelength are
also practically unused for commercial
wireless communication. There is a reason
for that. Absorption by rainfall climbs
rapidly from 2GHz to 100GHz, making
this region of the spectrum unattractive
for long-distance radio communication.
It is also a difficult region of spectrum to
serve. Only recently have low-cost silicon
processes reached the level of development
where they can be used in handsets
that support such high frequencies.
Prof Rappaport contends it is a matter
of distance. If you restrict the use of
20GHz-plus signals to relatively short
distances, some of the problems go away.
It is a common myth that rainfall and
oxygen absorption will attenuate these
frequencies too much, says Prof Rappaport.
Weve performed measurements to
show it in one of the toughest radio
environments we have: New York City.
Over distances of a few hundred metres,
there is some loss but far from enough
to wreck the technologys chances. Says
Oksanen: In densely populated areas,
that is already a long distance. Even
macrocells are less than 400m apart in
urban environments. There are also sweet
spots in the spectrum, such as 28GHz and
38GHz, where Prof Rappaports group
has conducted experiments. We will be
measuring 72GHz this summer, he says.
Although there is a steady rise in
absorption towards 100GHz, a number of the
candidate frequencies lie in troughs between
very strong peaks. One area that is badly
affected is around 60GHz, a frequency now
earmarked for automotive radar and indoor
wireless networks. But either side of that
range are frequencies that are far less
affected by air absorption.
One issue with higher-frequency
transmissions is that they are highly
directional and work best where the handset
has a clear line of sight to the basestation;
but Prof Rappaports group found the waves
bounce off buildings providing multiple
paths to a user even if they cannot see the
transmitter. Weve done research that shows
you can get range extension to 400m by
combining antenna paths, he reports.
To steer radio transmissions towards a
receiver, Prof Rappaport envisages the use of
beam-forming with multiple antennas,
which are already being introduced on
handsets on much lower frequencies to
improve reception quality.
More spectrum required
As wavelength is inversely proportional to
frequency, higher frequencies will make
it easier to pack more antennas into the
handset. Although designers are struggling
to squeeze multiple antennas for sub-2GHz
bands into extant designs because of
the need to use structures appropriate
for them, the wavelengths above 20GHz
are at least ten times smaller. So-called
massively MIMO antennas, such as the
64-element structure used by Samsung in
its 1Gbit/s transmission over 2km at 28GHz
Spectrum is not the only limit on the
growth of cellular comms. Energy
consumption is a problem as operators try
to push datarates from a few megabits-
per-second to a gigabit, and users buy
increasingly advanced handsets. Lauri
Oksanen of Nokia Siemens Networks says:
If you have 1,000 times more
performance, you cant have the system
consuming 1,000 times more energy.
Even without the speed advances, the
overall power consumption of the mobile
Internet could grow very quickly.
If the data load on the network is
doubling every year or so, the energy
consumption will double every year or so
if nothing is done and we cant allow that
to happen, says Professor Tafazolli of the
University of Surrey. The major cost
component of cellular communications
will be the energy. Use of millimetre-
wave bands may not help that much.
Professor Rappaport of the Polytechnic
of New York, says: Its kind of back to the
future. Its like going back to the very early
days of wireless where systems werent
interference limited, as they are now, but
power limited.
There are approaches that will limit the
amount of actual power millimetre-wave
systems need, but it is far from the only
change that will be needed.
We have a good idea of how to
increase traffic hundred fold without
increasing energy, claims Oksanen.
Some of the changes are at the system
level: for example, shutting down
elements when they are not needed.
Another area is good network planning
and traffic engineering, so you are using
that energy properly.
Because they do not suffer the same
space constraints as handsets, advanced
beam-steering can be incorporated into
macrocell basestations, in effect directing
as much RF energy as possible at each
active user. Oksanen says. There will be
active antennas with beam steering. We
have already demonstrated that.
Other changes are coming in at the
radio level. Oksanen points to
improvements in power amplifier
technology that have been developed that
are now making their way into
basestations. The good news is these do
not have to wait for a generational change
in infrastructure to be implemented.
JUST JUICE
POWERING NEXT-GEN
CELLULAR COULD COST
Theres more online...
Feeding Time
http://bit.ly/eandt-4g-rollout
Standards net gains
http://bit.ly/eandt-weightless-standard
Smartphones gear up for antenna changes
http://bit.ly/eandt-smartphone-antenna-changes
We dont want to label
everything 5G. Our view
is that 5G will really be
about better local-area
performance, with lower
latency and higher bandwidth
in high-density hetnets
Lauri Oksanen, Nokia
Siemens Networks
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85
www.EandTmagazine.com September 2013 Engineering & Technology
experiment, have become realistic. As they
introduce higher frequencies for small cells,
the industry will have the opportunity to
reallocate spectrum to make best use of
existing bands. In general, the lower the
frequency, the further it tends to propagate.
Its clear that the industrys
direction is to have macrocells at as low
frequencies as possible, says Oksanen
at Nokia Siemens Networks. The lower
end, however, is the most precious area
of the radio spectrum and reallocation
will not completely fix the problem.
We are working on the spectrum front
with customers and regulators and other
industry stakeholders to find new spectrum
in the low bands, Oksanen adds. That is
one of the important things about the future.
Its not just about higher spectrum. We need
new low-band spectrum.
Prof Tafazolli says: We are really short of
spectrum. We should not be limited to
licensed, we could also use unlicensed
spectrum. One way for cellular operators to
use unlicensed spectrum, which allows
anyone who keeps within power limits access
to a band, is to use cognitive-radio
techniques, in which transmitters constantly
monitor other active radios and attempt to
use the spaces between them, hence the term
white space radio.
The Weightless Special Interest Group is
promoting this use of unlicensed spectrum
for machine-to-machine communications,
offering long-distance communications at
low datarates (Standards net gains, E&T,
June 2013). Such spectrum may not suit
cellular operators, Oksanen points out: Its
difficult to invest in and use a band where
you cannot guarantee quality of service to
the end user.
Bandwidth re-allocation?
There may be a middle way between
dedicated and unlicensed spectrum.
Oksanen says that he is already working
with industry stakeholders on how we can
maximise low-band spectrum, and adds
that there are current users who have
spectrum who dont use it all the time.
There are bands allocated to radar and
wireless microphones, as well as other
bands reserved by governments, that
are not in use for 90 per cent of the time,
according to Oksanen. We are working
on a regulatory regime and developing
a mechanism whereby operators have
guarantees that when they use it they
can use it in the same way they use
licensed spectrum, but the primary user
can claim it back when they need it.
For sub-10GHz urban radio, as well as
adding extra bands there could be changes to
the way the data is transmitted. 4G uses
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) already used in Wi-Fi and wired
broadband to spread multiple data bits over
a single band. One way to improve data rates
is to have multiple basestations
communicate with a single handset on the
same frequency band but synchronising
them is tricky.
OFDM requires a lot of management
but there are other potential solutions, says
University of Surreys Prof Tafazolli. We
dont have that technology yet, but Im more
in favour in other types of waveform that do
not require strict timing and frequency
synchronisation because they would reduce
the management load.
Oksanen says: There are some proposals
for new coding methods But when we look
at whether we can do better than OFDM,
there doesnt seem to be any significant
improvement with these new methods. You
find you can improve power efficiency, for
example, but the spectrum efficiency goes
down. We believe that OFDM is the best way
to go forward and it looks to be the most
promising way for local-area 5G radio.
The industry has a while before it has to
make a decision on what 5G means, but
individual radio standards are only going to
be part of the picture. Cellular architecture
needs to change. The legacy structures that
we defined in 2G need to be revised, Prof
Tafazolli concludes. We need to have a better
way of structuring communications between
the basestation and devices. *
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