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19 megabits on 3G
haligan writes "Bell Labs research arm announced the development of two prototype chips that would allow mobile devices to receive more than 19 megabits of data per second on 3G networks." Power consumption is low enough for cel phone type applications.
now I can stream it directly to my 3G phone, while waiting in line at the video store.
I can't even get 0.056 Mbit (i.e. 56K) on a COPPER WIRE between myself and the ISP.
Wow I would actually be able to host a web site off my cell phone and be able to handle a slashdotting...
All we need now is an infrastructure to take advantage of it!
That'll be what? 10 more years before see anything like it in the U.S.?
That's more than 6 megabits per G. Incredible!
What could you possibly do on a cell phone that could fully utilize a connection with that sort of bandwidth? Uncompressed video?
This would rock for grabbing huge files for your laptop or iPaq, however.
Brain tumors at lightning fast speeds!
funar@multiplayergamers.com
Build this damn chip into laptops and don't charge me an arm and a leg to use it and I'll be the first to buy one
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
With the piece-meal rolling out of 3G phones and coverage, when can I really expect to take advantage of these data rates? My supposed 3G phone gets a good deal less than 128 kbit/s, not to mention the obscene $/data rates. Speaking of, does this not seem to you like the chicken and the egg: Expensive per kilobyte/megabyte rates for 3G phone data downloads won't change until more people sign up... but more people won't sign up until the service gets cheaper! Grrrr.
Bell Labs BLAST Off With New 3G Chips
By Ryan Naraine
Lucent's (Quote, Company Info, News) Bell Labs research arm on Thursday announced the development of two prototype chips that would allow mobile devices to receive more than 19 megabits of data per second on 3G (define) networks.
The Murray Hill, N.J.-based telecommunications equipment maker said the new chips are part of its Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (BLAST) wireless technology.
Lucent, which is working to introduce the multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) technology for commercial use, said the BLAST chops conform to industry standards for size and power consumption and passed lab tests to deliver data on 3G networks at higher speeds.
The fastest third generation (3G) network today offers maximum data transfer speeds of about 2.5 Megabits per second (Mbps) but Lucent said tests prove the new chips can allow data delivery at 19.2 Mbps.
Lucent plans to license the chips' designs to mobile handset, PC card and other device makers looking to integrate MIMO into future 3G products. It also plans to deploy the technology on its family of Flexent OneBTS base stations as part of plans to push commercial implementation.
"The two chips have been tested successfully in four-antenna terminal configuration that also uses four transmit antennas at the base station. These chips, one for detecting BLAST signals and the other for decoding them, are small enough and consume so little power that they could be used in cell phones or laptop computers with minimal impact on battery life," Lucent said.
Bell Labs researchers in Australia and New Jersey designed BLAST, which splits a single user's data stream into multiple sub-streams and uses multiple antennas at the terminal and base stations to transmit the wireless signals at ultra-high speeds.
"All the sub-streams are transmitted in the same frequency band, so spectrum is used very efficiently. At the receiver, an array of antennas is again used to pick up the multiple transmitted sub-streams. Using the multiple antenna technique, the rate of transmission is increased roughly in proportion to the number of antennas used to transmit the signal," the company explained.
19MBps is about exactly what you need for HDTV! Now you can watch HD in all its glory on a 2 inch screen =)
So does this mean we might see phones with 10BaseT RJ45 jacks in them?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
In the article, it says they use multiple inputs and multiple outputs... IE, they give an example of using 4 transmitters and 4 antennas. They also say the 4 transmissions use the same band (ie, still 3G, but different channels).
What happens to the cell phone networks when every phone starts using 4 channels instead of 1? There's a limited number of channels in each band...
With all this development of 3G networks for phones, when might we see a true wireless internet over this network instead of the breadth of DSL and Cable companies? Surely there cannot be that much of a technology gap between making the 3G network accesible to wireless services, it would be a great last-mile solution in areas that have cellular coverage, but are outside of the range of an operations center.
Hey with a phone that has that good data transfer it probably can transfer some high quality realtime audio over the airwaves. So no say I want bootleg a concert (lets say one thats not friendly to bootlegging). They'll check for recording devices but won't think twice about a cell phone. BWAH HAHA thats where you got them.. All you do is have your phone start downloading the audio to your computer's hard drive and voila! sneaky bootlegging.. thats quality recording. Though I guess this might be limited by the quality of the mic on your phone but hey I just come up with these crazy ideas. If you're hardcore enough and a hardware hacker I'm sure you could fix a crappy mic problem pretty easy :)
Who makes you Sig?
Acording to the lecture i attended last year by a very sensior vodaphone engineer this bandwidth is the maximum available. It isnt all used for data in fact they reserve a few channels for voice and a few for data (depending on the area past usage etc) also if you are the only user then things get faster still. However it wtill wont be that fast most 3g implementations relie on doing TCP/IP on top of TCP/IP on top of another protocol or 5 yes there are 2 tcp/ip stacks. This is so the phone network can keep you inside there network
A corrolary of Shannon's theorem on channel capacity is that the greater the capacity of the channel, given an amount of noise, the greater power is necessary for it to maintain a given rate of information transmission. In other words, the faster you want to pump the data, the more power needed to transmit.
Therefore, while these chips may need little power to receive, what about transmissions? Would possibly thousands of 19 mbit/s transmissions floating around in the GHz band possibly have an increased detrimental effect on living things? Sure it's small, but would it be a factor at all?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Why would anyone need 19megabits to a cell phone? In Slovakia cell phone users can watch live TV streams on their phones using "only" GPRS which is .1 megabit which is the first service of this kind in the world. Check out the URL to a http://media.a3boot.com/ta3/16102002/mobilvizia.as f . I dont see the need for 19 megabits. This cellphone would require an insane amount of storage to make this even remotely useful.
-Keep the Trolls out'-
If the new stuff can only receive at such high speeds while still transmitting at low speeds, it's the old broadcast model again, with "producers" and "consumers" of content just like television. Phones were supposed to be so people could talk to each other, not have everyone receive the same stuff from AOL-TW. A fast one-way data phone is just another way for TV to follow us everywhere we go. From a human communications point of view, a device with 1 megabit send and receive is a heck of a lot more interesting than 8 kbps send, 20 megabits receive.
Note that the article only reports the ability to receive at 19 Mb/s. We still need the functionality to actually have a two way connection.
Transmitting at 19 Mb/s is quite a different task. According to Shannon (the mother of information theory) the power level required is proportional to the bitrate. This means that not only will such bitrates kill your battery - it will most likely also kill your brain.
Besides the 19 Mb/s was achieved in a lab environment. Having this technology work with varying radio conditions and handovers in a 200 km/h train is much more difficult.
For the next many years 3G will be a maximum of 144 kb/s when used in vehicles. For low mobility indoor situations 3G will give you much higher bitrates - but then wouldn't you rather be using 802.11a?
A couple of points about this technique:
a.) I'd call this a 4G demonstration. Maximum data rates in the 3G specs/proposals (WCDMA, cdma2000, etc...) are much lower than 19 Mbps. e.g. 2-3 Mbps. e.g. By transmitting at 19 Mbps, they're not using WCDMA protocols.
b.) In a multiple Tx configuration, you're increasing the amount of interference. With 4 Tx antennas, the amount of interference seen by other users just went up by a factor of 4. This means your overall capacity just dropped by a factor of 4.
c.) Tranmitting at a higher data rate in WCDMA limits the number of other users you can have on the channel. You can only have a few users in a WCDMA cell transmitting at near maximum data rate.
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
I keep reading the slashdot comments "What would I do with that on my phone?!".
/me waits for his wireless dsl to put the local telco out of business. :)
Really, the early adopters are public safety and large corporations. To them its worth the money to switch over to the 3G networks. The high speed and location based services are a very good combo for public safety.
Some of the things switching over to 3G data, ATMs, Point of Sale (CC readers), Vending machines, remote cameras, road survey equipment, police tracking equipement, cargo containers, etc.
After the early adopters, its consumer time.
People tend to forget that sending out ACK packets upstream greatly effects the download speed of a connection. Asychronous connections with low upstreams often become saturated and drag down the downstream to unbearable levels.
I'm not going to tell you that you're stupid, just that you misunderstand the technology. 802.11B wireless ethernet is designed for high reliability at high transfer rates over a short distance. The speed isnt really an issue. (hence why 802.11A and g (54 Mbps) have yet to make any kind of showing) The 19Mbps cell phone networking they are speaking of has teh hurdle of distance to overcome, as you may be several miles from a tower, inside a building, in the rain or whatever. To get the range and penetration, a different frequency is used (900MHz I think). At these lower frequencies, only a limited quantity of data can be sent by conventional means. This technology allows simultaneous usage of multiple channels to achieve a higher bandwidth. (somebody correct me if I'm talking out of my ass) In theory, the technology (MIMO) COULD be used for something like WLAN, but there isnt the same need. It takes a LOT to saturate an 802.11B network.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I suppose it could make sense in certain situations. 802.11a can supposedly give up to 72mbps by using the 5ghz spectrum. If you need wireless connectivity beyond 802.11(x) trasmission range, this might work. Mostly, I'd be concerned about latency more than bandwidth. Every noticed a fraction of a second delay while talking on a cell phone? That fraction is an eternity if you are a CPU. Lastly, allow me to kindly tell you to forget the "only a kid/stupid idea" apology stuff. We'd still be in the stone age if it weren't for kids coming up with brilliant ideas. Don't assume an idea is stupid, simply because stale old farts like me have some preconceived notions about how things are supposed to work. Never apologize for thinking.
-- Windows is not simply installed on a computer; it is inflicted.