Tuesday, November 6, 2012

1000-Fold Improvement in Mobile Bandwidth Requires Multiple Changes

Though some might question the assumptions, many in the mobile industry would argue that a 1,000-fold increase in mobile bandwidth is going to be needed, over time, and some think that will be necessary as early as 2020.

That assumption tends to rely on typical mobile consumers downloading a gigabyte every day. You can make your own assumptions about whether that is a reasonable assumption. 

No single technique is likely to provide an improvement of three orders of magnitude in mobile bandwidth, though. So most think several different approaches will be needed, in tandem. 

One promising example is the “Neighborhood Small cells” model — a network of extremely low-cost, plug-and-play, open, indoor small cells, Qualcomm argues.

What makes the approach unusual is that the subscriber hosting the cell supplies the backhaul, which also bleeds out into the neighborhood to reinforce mobile coverage for other neighbors.

Studies show potential capacity increases of up to 500 times with a mere nine percent penetration of households and up to 1,000 times with 20 percent penetration, when combined with 10 times more spectrum.

Qualcomm is among firms that see three basic ways to get to a 1,000-fold increase
 in effective bandwidth. Virtually all the ways to get to 1,000 involve more spectrum, more small cells and use of offload strategies or better coding techniques.

Mobile broadband trends and data usage





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