1 Purdue CWSA Workshop 2004 Grand Challenges in Wireless Wide Area Networks (WAN) – A System Perspective Junyi Li Senior Director of Technology Flarion Technologies

Purdue CWSA Workshop Evolution of Wireless WAN From narrowband circuits-switched to mobile broadband packet-switched

Purdue CWSA Workshop Competition in Wireless WAN  Evolution of traditional cellular towards 3G (UMTS, 1xEV DO/DV)  Evolution of WiFi towards WiMax: fixed a-d to mobile e  Emerging broadband mobile access (Flarion, Arraycom, Navini, etc)  In the near future, those systems may co-exist because of technology, political and economic reasons  Challenges: service and system/device integration –Seamless roaming –Overlapping service areas –Flexible programmable platform for development

Purdue CWSA Workshop Challenges in Wireless WAN  Users’ perspective –Full mobility –Always-on connectivity –Predictable QoS throughout serving area –High bursty data rate –Low latency for interactive real-time applications –Transparent support of existing applications: no change to applications, devices, protocols, or content –Low battery consumption –High airlink security  Operators’ perspective –A rich set of IP QoS based services and applications –A large number of simultaneous users each of predictable QoS –IP based standard network architecture and mobility management –Native multicast for bandwidth efficiency and streaming applications –Toll quality voice and “instant on” voice –Significant profitability in a high usage flat fee environment  3G/UMTS fails on economics and performance  WiFi falls short for ubiquity, mobility and competitiveness with DSL and cable – How about WiMax?

Purdue CWSA Workshop Driving Forces  Applications –Web browsing may not be the dominate (killer) traffic Online gaming, streaming, PTT “The most important future uses of wireless communications are unknown” –How to make air interference sufficiently “flexible” to support and mix all kinds of traffic requirement?  Economics –Pricing: how to induce higher network utilization and generate more revenue? –QoS: why does it matter? how to link it with user experience (applications) and pricing?  Devices –How to increase battery life without sacrificing performance? –Always-on connectivity? –How to support a variety of high-end and low-end terminals?

Purdue CWSA Workshop Open Issues  Creative use of multiple antenna –Low cost and low complexity –Mobile environment –Limited feedback signaling –Seamless support of heterogeneous devices –How to fit multiple antenna techniques into overall system picture?  Uplink interference management –How to accommodate or exploit bursty interference caused by bursty traffic? –How to jointly manage power control loop and traffic scheduling?  Scheduling –Downlink: well studied, but has room for improvement Spectral efficiency QoS Fairness –Uplink: widely open Should uplink be scheduled or not? What is “uplink SNR”? How to signal uplink QoS requirement? –Combining MAC state management and traffic scheduling