Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Mobile Communications for Anything that Moves

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 07:53:07 -0400

Mobile Communications for Anything that Moves

Nim K. Cheung

In the June issue of the Emerging Technologies Series, we covered topics ranging
from the interplanetary Internet to the future of multimedia. In the current
issue, we present visions on the evolution of mobile communications by Keiji
Tachikawa and Ted Rappaport, two of the leaders in this field.  The first article
is entitled "A Perspective on the Evolution of Mobile Communications" by Keiji
Tachikawa, president and CEO of NTT DoCoMo, a leading mobile communications
company in the world that launched the highly successful i-mode® service in Japan
in 1999. The i-mode service provides continuous connection Internet access and
email service via mobile phones, and had grown to a subscriber base of 36.5
million as of January 2003. This article is adapted from Dr. Tachikawa's keynote
speech at ComSoc's WCNC 2003 Conference held in March. In this article the author
presents his vision for future R&D directions from the perspective of NTT DoCoMo
with special emphasis on the market in Japan. Perhaps the most interesting aspect
of the article is the technology trends of 4G mobile communications systems, and
the author's prediction that ubiquitous services enabled by mobile communications
will be expanded beyond human to anything that moves! There will be a surge of
non-voice traffic in person-to-person, person-to-machine, and machine-to-machine
communications. Dr. Tachikawa forecasts that the total number of mobile
communications terminals connected to wireless networks in 2010 will exceed 500
million units in Japan alone, even though the country's population is estimated to
be just over 127 million at that time.  The second article is entitled
"Cross-Layer Design for Wireless Networks," and is authored by Sanjay Shakkottai,
Ted Rappaport, and Peter Karlsson. Ted is a member of ComSoc's Emerging Technology
Committee and is one of two members responsible for wireless technology for the
committee. This article covers an emerging idea of optimizing network layer
performance based on physical (usually RF) conditions. This is an idea not
commonly used by network designers because they often think about "protocol
layering" with minimal information passing between layers. The authors pointed out
that currently there is insufficient differentiation between congestion related
losses and wireless channel related losses. By doing away with the firm boundary
that currently exists between the PHY and MAC layers and the higher layers of the
network protocol stack, significant gains can be accrued by cross-layer
techniques.  As an ongoing activity of the Emerging Technologies Committee, I
would like to introduce our readers to the informative Web page of FISTERA, which
stands for Foresight on Information Society Technologies in the European Research
Area.  The project and Web page are sponsored by Telecom Italia Lab, and is under
the direction of Roberto Saracco, ComSoc's Vice President of Membership Services.
The main goal of the project is to provide an outline of technology trends and
identify topics in emerging technologies that are of interest to the technical
community. Another goal is to present decision makers with an overall picture and
assist them in prioritizing their scarce research investments. The underlying
technologies are considered in terms of a four-layered hierarchy: technology,
functionality, services, and environments. For each layer, the Web page provides a
list of topics of current interest, and links are provided to the other layers to
highlight their interdependencies. The Web page also includes buttons like "Keep
an eye on ...," which provides a list of forward-looking technologies and a
summary of key players in each area. The timeline starts from today, and snapshots
are provided for 2008 and 2020. Visitors to the site are encouraged to provide
comments to the team. We will provide links to this interesting Web page from the
ComSoc Web page. We will also invite Roberto Saracco to write an article in this
series to highlight the rationale of the project and present their results in more
detail.

http://www.comsoc.org/livepubs/ci1/public/2003/oct/ciguest_cheung.html

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/