Frequently Asked Questions
Live: Thursday, November, 11, 2004;
11 am-noon PT/2-3 pm ET
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The following question & answers are from the November 11, 2004, NetSeminar, the second in EE Times Cult of the Consumer Series entitled "Wireless Standards: Opportunity or Obstacle" brought to you by EE Times Freescale Semiconductor and CMP Media. Patrick Mannion, Section Editor, Corporate and DSP Technology for EE Times is the moderator.
Discussing today's topic will be Ken Hansen, Technical Fellow and Director of Advanced Technology, Wireless and Mobile Systems Group of Freescale Semiconductor Inc.; Ben Manny, Director, Radio Communications Lab, Corporate Technology Group, Intel Corp., Andy Rappaport, Partner, August Capital and Sean Wargo, Director of Industry Analysis, Consumer Electronics Association.
The first topic is Wi-Max, what's your take Ben?
Ben: Clearly Intel is coded with a strong, affirmative vote Wi-Max, we believe this is a needed technology to increase the need for mobile data. The current cellular networks were optimized for voice and that is why you can deliver data using those networks, they weren't optimized for it-- Wi-Fi was optimized for data, and so what Wi-Max attempts to do is to take some of those technical optimizations that were done for the Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum, and I think this is a prime example of how unlicensed spectrum is going to fuel innovation that is needed here, to really get mobile data going, when you have the licensed spectrum people are certainly willing to pay for voice calls. The service providers have a hard time trying to figure out how to charge them enough for data calls, to support the technology. I think the way you accomplish that is you open up the spectrum, make it unlicensed, then innovation will occur and the people will figure how to make money when it is easier with the technology permits. So clearly Intel is very interested in any technology that enables the computing devices that we really care about to have better connections, because earlier on for consumers, if it gets to the point where you have enough ubiquitous connectivity, it really will continue to change lifestyles and make people use devices.
Andy what's your take on Wi-Max?
Andy: So, I don't believe that Wi-Max is going to really have any meaningful traction. I was trying to think, is Wi-Max the fiber to the home of the current decade, is it this MMDS of the current decade, is it the satellite telephony of the current decade? You know you can invent a reason why at a technical level there are some advantages to any particular scheme that you think of, but I have been unable from an application point of view and an economic point of view to make an argument for Wi-Max, and the reason is that I think we have two maturing infrastructures. One represented by the existing cellular players and cellular schemes that are moving towards capabilities that may not be as highly optimized for data and higher speed and other kinds of services, but they are certainly getting better and they are out there and they are supported by companies that aren't going away, and they will continue to invest in these kinds of infrastructure.
At the same time then, we have Wi-Fi, which is becoming increasingly prevalent, it is becoming very cheap, it is delivering services at an acceptable level of quality. The issues that where it still represents compromises you know quality of service, power consumption and overall energy consumption, things like that, there is now such a large infrastructure addressing many of those issues that I think they are going to evolve at a terrific and I think stunning rate, and so when I think about how Wi-Fi can approximate and there are already people out there who are developing extensions to Wi-Fi, that directly approximate some of the aspects of Wi-Max, as I think about how 3G will evolve and some of the 3G attached kinds of things will evolve, you know neither one will be as highly optimal for A class of traffic or A class of services as Wi-Max might be but I think at the end of the day, what we are going to find is the value of that optimization is very, very small relative to the cost and inconvenience of building and maintaining a third infrastructure.
Ken, your take?
Ken: It's unclear whether Wi-Max is going to fit in or not. From Freescale's prospective, we continue to pursue it. I think it is too early to call, and so a lot of things Andy was saying we see too -- and it is really competing on the wireless side against the CDMA technology with Linux, EVDL, increasing its data rate that is going to provide from where it is today, competing on the 3G side and wide band CDMA with HSDPA and HSUPA which are evolving their data rates at a fairly fast pace, while Wi-Max is trying to come into birth.
At this time, there is really no operators that have strongly backed Wi-Max, so it really is questionable as to whether it is going to become a technology of the future or not, but there is many of these other ones that you might have said the same thing three or four years ago, that are finding their way into the market place today. One good example of that would be UWB. So on top of that, there is a wire line piece playing there too with fiber to the home and the DSL technology that those guys have got to make some decision on how to deliver into the home and the question is will they pick up and move to a wireless solution versus the manner they have got going today? It seems uncertain that they likely will, everyone of these guys, wire line and wireless have got an installed infrastructure that they have paid for that they are improving on a daily basis, and the question really is will Wi-Max be squeezed out or not, but I guess too early to call.
Sean: The thing that I wonder too, is how we sell it to the customer, because let's face it, they are already really confused by a lot of the acronyms that we have out there with Wi-Fi, 3G, CDMA, TDMA. I just wonder how it fits. So it comes to me down to the application and differentiating it by application. Will there be enough differentiator there to really position it to the customer in a way they are going to understand? That to me is one of the fundamental questions too, at the end of the day beyond the technology and the power of it and its abilities, how do you bring it to market to a consumer who is already confused in many respects?
Ben: I feel I need to respond to a few of these comments. I think the usage here is basically connectivity, and what Wi-Max does as it fills in some of the gaps today that where connectivity is not there, and I am actually a little surprised in some of Andy's comments. We have a little controversy going here because he makes some pretty strong statements in support of unlicensed spectrum and what it enables.
Wi-Max is designed to work both unlicensed and licensed spectrum, and I think he mentioned that the cell phone companies need to be worried and I think they do need to be worried and I think they need to be worried about things like Wi-Max that take advantages of some of this unlicensed spectrum and provides the same type of data connectivity at a lot lower cost to the user. In terms of the availability and the user's choice here, Intel has stated that they are committed to putting Wi-Max on laptops. We will put it into our chipsets, we believe it's an important technology that the consumers will have to actually decide. They basically get this device and it's already got the capability in there. Of course, they need to decide which services to subscribe to and so on. But we certainly have a lot of interest from a number of carriers, not the big carriers that have a lot of spectrum today, which you can't understand why they might not be as interested because in some ways, they are probably worried a little bit about what Wi-Max could do to their business models, but I think that we certainly have seen a lot interest in the smaller carriers that are really trying to push the innovation curve here and look for new technologies that they can deliver data services to, that are just beginning today.
Andy: I don't want to make the rest of the time about this particular debate, but I can't resist. I think one of the things to think about, and I was thinking about this in preparation for this panel today, where the title of the panel is ýStandards, opportunity or obstacle?ý I don't think that standards are either/or. I think standards are something you wrestle with when you think about how do you move new technology into the market place and how do you make money with the application of these technologies, and provide reasonable user experiences, etc.
I think the issue about standards and how new things evolve, is that they provide some materially different utility, and that there is enough additional utility associated with that which requires the new standard or which is promoting the new standard, that we are willing to create a new standard and create a new infrastructure along with that standard. What you tend to find then is that new standards get created around things that are truly innovative.
Wireless LAN, the productive use of unlicensed spectrum for data, was truly innovative. UWB in terms of the way it co-exists with licensed traffic and spectrum is truly innovative. You know the problem with Wi-Max is although it is smart, it is intelligent, it solves some real problems in some perfectly reasonable ways, it does not really represent fundamental innovation. So then what you is the battle between something which is incrementally better and not dumb, against something which is huge and supported by a very large infrastructure and already generating lots of dollars, and I have already expressed how I bet in that battle.
Ken, can you talk about the influence of software-defined radio?
Ken: Well software-defined radio as implemented in a subscriber, or portable type device has still got a long way to go. It is a direction that a lot of research is being poured into and should continue to be poured into, but going back to comment Sean made, I don't think consumers buy based upon whether that's a GSM phone or CDMA phone or whether it has got Wi-Max or wireless LAN. What they buy on is what is the function or capability that it brings to me? And they don't really care what's behind it, and in order to get that added function or capability, we may be looking at two or three of these types of technologies being integrated into the same portable device.
Moderator: What two or three technologies?
So one is cellular, probably GSM being the biggest one there, wireless LAN would be likely other one, and in our view, I think video is the big thing. So you would see something like DVDH or one of the digital video standards being implemented and probably Bluetooth is another one that will go in there. Today, Bluetooth would be the single biggest adoption connectivity solution which you find in a phone type device.
So how do you put those things all in there? There is a couple of ways of doing it, but start out with each of them separately being developed in the two or three chips kind of solution format moving then to a single chip CMOS solution. From there you go embedded, and you can embed by taking the digital pieces of all those connectivity solutions and shoving them into the base band and the processor and similar on the RF side of things, or you can embed by taking a single chip solution and shoving that into your applications processor if you like, or you can embed by combining some of those connectivity solutions together in a single chip format. And when you do that, you want to do it in a smart way. And if you look at on the RF side, there are things like the synthesizer, the analog based band processing, the data converters, some of the mixers can all be combined and be reused for all four of those things if you will, and therefore getting them for the price of one.
On the base band side, there will be similar things which will be a CPU ARM platform that can be re-used across all four. You can build probably a flexible modem that has got a simple DSP coupled with a vector processing unit to do the high speed intensive kind of things, coupled that with some accelerators that are parameterizable for some encode and decode functions. Then use common peripherals for the peripherals set, and then you can get a factor of two to three reduction in the dye area required for combining that many things together. So SDR in that sense, I think will come and play in order to enable us to add more things into the phone. Each of those things cost five to seven bucks on average, and some more and some less. Each of them consume 35 to 50 external parts. Each of them will take a 100 square millimeters of board space or so. So to combine those things altogether and get them down to where it's only 100 square millimeters, it is only 50 or 60 parts and only five or six bucks, requires high level of integration, smarter ways of doing it in a flexible manner to where you re-use as much as you can for each of those different models. So I think that's how SDR will find its way into the radio, which is not full SDR but a step in that direction.
Moderator: Does the concept of RFM, wide band filters or flexible filters play in there as well?
Ken: RFMs can play in there. They still have got ways to go before they really are a good solution. One of the big problems that you are left with is the RF selectivity and the antennas, and the RFMs can address that, but they still are not really there to where you can tune them overall with the different bands that you might need to tune, it is a possibility. They certainly will not be used for switches, because they don't have enough reliability to last.
Moderator: Andy your take on SDR?
Andy: Yeah. I think I agree with Ken. I think the way to think about software defined anything is that it makes sense when you can afford to give up hardware efficiency in exchange for the value that the software definition brings so we have for example, software defined databases but we don't generally have software defined graphics, and if we think about where radios exist on that spectrum, we are still much more towards the graphics end of the spectrum, where especially in terms of link robustness and power consumption, we are not achieving what we want to be able to achieve even with dedicated hardware design. So I think that our willingness to give up hardware efficiency in order to get software defined radios, is going to be minimal for a while. Eventually we will get there and eventually we will have an excess of hardware capability and hardware architecture knowledge to then be able to do this. I agree with Ken think there will be places where we will have adaptability. I think the analog chain is a place where there is room for great innovation and how you adapt to multi mode, multi use kinds of things, but true SDR are ways off.
Ben: If you look at what Sean presented earlier the driving factor for consumers is cost. I think SDR is largely motivated by that. I heard a presentation two weeks ago by one of the senior technical scientists at Nokia. He was predicting, and I think he is a little optimistic, but by the year 2008, the Nokia handset would have like 11 different radios on it. And clearly at some point, it's just going to be too costly to bundle together all these different ASICs, which are pro-optimized to provide the level of connectivity. So you need to have some level of flexibility, and I know a large number of companies are looking at this problem. How do you retain the power advantages of customized ASIC circuits, while having enough flexibility that you can connect to different networks.
Quite often, you don't need to have these connections simultaneously, but you do need to have the flexibility to change the way you process the data coming in, for the various protocols. So I believe the problem will be solved, economics and the marked opportunity will solve the problems. It's a very interesting problem, both at the base band. Actually, I manager group at Intel has been working pretty hard on this for a number of years. We are also looking at the front end. How do you have the analog pieces be adaptable so that they can also connect to different bandwidths, different spectrum, etc. And technologies like NIMS are certainly being looked at as a possible solution there.
The other aspect of SDR that we had not talked about is currently these radios are largely illegal right now because when the SEC certifies a device, it certifies that it operates in a certain way and if you are able to change that operation, they are very, very sensitive to that. So there is a lot of work being done also in that front to clarify how you can certify these radios that operate in different ways, that has not been actually done much in the past in terms of certifying these devices.
What is the future of OFDM? It seems to be converging along digital video or digital video on phones and Wi-Max and wireless LANs. Is that the future of wireless OFDM and its variants?
Ken: I think so. We see both the CDMA camp and the wide band CDMA 3G camp moving to their next generation, considering OFDM as the technology of preference. It is in virtually every other new standard with the exception of notably one, which is UWB, which is still going through the standards process. The position that we take is both should exist and they should fill different applications, in the direct sequence high data rate, low range space, we think it has the biggest value. But in general, the OFDM technology across the cellular domain or across the LAN space, it's the LAN space that is going to be the dominant technology for high data rate transfer.
Andy: I'm betting on OFDM as the wireless of the present. I don't know what the wireless future will be, but for now, I think that OFDM represents the best possible way of exploiting technology and know how as it exists right now. So I think that increasingly we are going to see things converge for the time being on the OFDM.
Moderator: Why, why OFDM.
Andy: Because I think the OFDM represents a reasonable balance between theoretically how would one go about creating the services that we want to create today independent of technology, and the capability of technology as it exists today. It is a little bit like CDMA ten or fifteen years ago, when it was possible to advance the argument that given the state of technology and given what could be reasonably implemented, it was hard to imagine something which embodied a better set of trade offs. I think that is where we are right now, and I think the reason why it is hard to say what the next step will be, is I think we have to wait and see how you know how technology evolves in the next set of steps.
Ben: I agree with Andy that it is the technology of today, and I think that one of the main reasons why, its properties are being fairly robust interference, and as we talked about the existence of unlicensed spectrum has really spurred this innovation on. I am sure that most people know that Intel and Freescale have different opinions about how you to implement it. We picked OFDM for partly that reason, and it also has some other very attractive properties. The reason why it didn't catch on earlier is because it's actually fairly complicated to process digitally, and we are at the point now where the digital processing costs have come down to the point where this type of technology is very feasible and I am sure these costs will continue to decline and that opens up some possibility for other types of protocols that might even be more robust interference in the future, more adaptable, but I think its current birth was largely motivated by the need to mitigate interference in some these unlicensed bands.
Is the 802.50.03a redundant? And will the DSWB camps and the MBOA camps go their separate ways and let the market decide on ultra wide band?
Ken: I don't think the camps will necessarily go their separate way in the standards committee. The position we are taking is support both sides, so if that's going separate ways, yeah we used the common Mac the 15.3 Mac has been specified in the standards process to interface to both Fis and choose the Fi that seems to be most appropriate. We see the two Fis having application in two different spaces. The Fi that Freescale backs will give us very high data rate in short range applications, so that we can do these file transfers from hard disk drives or portable to hard disk drives. Do them to fill up a 40 gigabyte hard disk drive that is in a portable device. We see that the problem with OFDM technology is that while it is good for interference mitigation, it is for the data rates that we have been talking about today which are very low compared to a gigabyte per second. What you want for interference mitigation is bandwidth, and that is the single biggest thing working in your favor, and that is what we are taking advantage of with the approach that we have taken. This then simplifies the design, and lowers the power drain which is ultimately what is going to be important for these very high data rate transfers.
Moderator: Thanks Ken. Andy can you brief for a couple of seconds.
Andy: It is Betamax versus VHS. There is no reason for two standards to exist. There is no economic justification. The market is going to decide, it's going to be one of them. I believe it is going to be MBOA, but it will at least be only one.
Ben: Yeah, I go with Andy there. The opportunity for standards is, that you have one, and it will settle out. The bandwidth issue, I am really kind of surprised, but this could be a whole other debate and I didn't want to come here to debate the merits of this, but it is really dependent upon how much spectrum you use, and in the multi band aspect allows you to also scale up and have as much data rate as you need for these high speed connections.
Moderator: Last question. Zig-Bee, is it the future of wireless connectivity, wireless Internet networks?
Andy: Zig-bee has a place for the home and industrial control and that's where you will see it come about. I think that you will find that there will be more and more remote control of devices in the home over the future, and Zig-bee will be likely the technology that will be bringing back the information from the sensors from which decisions will be made.
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