An Ignoble Experiment

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Until this week, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) was the newest FCC-approved TV white space (TVWS) database administrator. That title now belongs to Key Bridge Global, which joins Google, Spectrum Bridge and Ericsson's (NASDAQ:ERIC) Telcordia unit as official providers of database support for the operation of low-power, unlicensed transmitting devices on unoccupied spectrum within the broadcast TV band.

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However, the quartet appears close to becoming a quintet, as the FCC is also seeking public input regarding the results from the recently completed public trial of LS telecom's TVWS database system, which, if approved, would set the state for LS telecom to become the fifth approved database administrator.

Upon receiving operating approval, Key Bridge, based in McLean, Va., announced general commercial availability of its TVWS system. "We recognize that FCC certification is just the beginning, and with this important milestone behind us we intend to keep up if not increase our pace of innovation in this field," said company President Jesse Caulfield.

Key Bridge is marketing its white space portal as a hub for a suite of applications that customers can use to "explore their local wireless environment and to better understand the unlicensed operation on the Television White Space frequencies, which range from 54 to 698 MHz and are subject to geographic and schedule availability."

The portal is available to the public free of charge, and user accounts and all basic TVWS transactions are free of charge, the company added.

Meanwhile, the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology last week requested comment on the 45-day public trial of LS telcom's TVWS database system, which was completed on Aug. 8, 2013. Comments are due Nov. 29, with replies due Dec. 6.

Google was certified in July by the FCC to operate a TVWS database for commercial use. Since then, the company has been working on new developments with companies such as GE Industrial Communications, which used the database to explore how it could enable new communication options for its Industrial Internet products. Google announced last week that it is launching a developer API for the database that enables general exploration for any user, as well as a commercial account option for device manufacturers.

The FCC's rules require all unlicensed TVBDs operating in broadcast TV bands to contact an authorized database system to obtain a list of channels currently available for their operation at their specific location, so they know which frequencies they can use without causing interference. The FCC has granted conditional approval to 10 companies to provide TVWS database management services, but each must successfully complete a public trial of its technology before it can win final approval.

The five companies that have not yet entered databases into public testing are Comsearch, Frequency Finder, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Neustar and WSdb.

In a recent interview with FierceWirelessTech, Paul Garnett, director of Microsoft's technology policy group, declined to comment on whether Microsoft is still interested in becoming a full-fledged FCC-approved TVWS database administrator. "We do prototype databases for our pilot projects when we need to. Like in Singapore, we do have a pilot database for that project," Garnett said.

For more:
- see this Keybridge release
- see this FCC notice (PDF)
- see this CommLawBlog post and this post

Read more about: unlicensed, TVWS
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2. Test bed will combine spatial modulation, Li-Fi for indoor wireless capacity

By Tammy Parker

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3. Tier 1 carriers expect 75% of their small cells to include Wi-Fi by 2018

National Instruments and Scotland's University of Edinburgh are partnering on a test bed to improve indoor wireless communications capacity using spatial modulation techniques combined with visible light communications to create what are being called high-density optical attocell networks.

The idea of using light fidelity, or Li-Fi, to complement capacity-challenged Wi-Fi and cellular networks has been touted by a number of industry visionaries, including Harald Haas, chair of mobile communications at the University of Edinburgh. Now Haas contends that combining Li-Fi with spatial modulation will harness massive MIMO gains in both the optical and RF domains for energy-efficient indoor wireless communications

"We've known for a long time that decreasing cell size can significantly increase cellular capacity and user data rates, but it's not been clear how we could facilitate that given current spectrum, energy and interference limitations," said Haas. "RF wireless and optical wireless networks that work together using spatial modulation and massive MIMO approaches could allow us to effectively mitigate interference and significantly increase energy efficiency, coverage and capacity using existing infrastructure."

Haas' Edinburgh team will use National Instruments' LabView reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture for rapid prototyping. LabView RIO is part of National Instruments' graphical system design platform. It combines the open LabView graphical programming environment with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to simplify development. National Instruments says this results in "higher-quality designs with the ability to incorporate custom design."

Using the company's FlexRIO software defined radio Bundle with reconfigurable FPGAs and interchangeable I/O adapter modules, the Edinburgh team is building prototypes that operate beyond the rates of a commercial RF wireless system. The team recently achieved 3.5 Gbit/s from a single color LED.

In addition, Haas and Professor Cheng-Xiang Wang, head of the Advanced Wireless Technologies Lab at Heriot-Watt University, have already used National Instruments' PXI Express hardware and LabView system design software to create a working prototype showing spatial modulation techniques over a wireless RF channel.

"We are excited to collaborate with Professor Haas, who has been pioneering visible light communications and spatial modulation for nearly a decade," said Erik Luther, wireless c communications group manager at National Instruments. "Through the LabView RIO architecture, Haas can rapidly prototype a first-of-its-kind wireless test bed."

For more:
- see this joint release

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By Tammy Parker

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4. Telefonica, Vodafone testing LTE Advanced carrier aggregation

Tier 1 mobile operators are becoming big believers in shifting data traffic from their cellular networks and onto Wi-Fi networks, and they expect 22 percent of all data capacity added during 2013-2014 to come from Wi-Fi offload, according to a new survey.

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The survey, compiled by Maravedis-Rethink on behalf of the operator-led Wireless Broadband Alliance, also revealed that Wi-Fi offload is predicted to contribute 20 percent of additional mobile data capacity by 2018. A further 21 percent is expected to come from small cells with integrated Wi-Fi. In fact, the Tier 1 mobile operators surveyed said that 75 percent of their small cells will have integrated Wi-Fi within five years.

WBA added that in densely populated areas such as transport hubs and cafes 80 percent of cellular data traffic is offloaded to Wi-Fi. However, mobile operators also hope to move beyond Wi-Fi offloading and leverage their Wi-Fi networks to offer location-based services such as targeted marketing, as well as enterprise applications. Nonetheless, 44 percent of survey respondents expressed uncertainty about the return on investment (ROI) from their Wi-Fi initiatives.

More than half of the survey respondents--56 percent being operators--said they are more confident about investing in Wi-Fi to supplement cellular than they were a year ago. The report attributed renewed confidence to increased hotspot deployments and ambitious business plans announced by some carriers, as well as the arrival of enhanced roaming agreements and WBA initiatives such as Next Generation Hotspot (NGH).

The survey showed that 78 percent of those planning to launch an NGH network will do so by end of 2015. More than half the respondents stated that the most pressing driver for NGH investment is the need to increase data offloading, closely followed by the needs to increase customer satisfaction, increase revenues and facilitate seamless roaming.

Maravedis-Rethink predicts the number of Wi-Fi hotspots will more than double from 2012's total to reach 10.5 million in 2018. The firm said 27 of its survey respondents reported having hotspot networks exceeding more than 1,000 locations, while six have more than 1 million. Nearly 10 percent of operators supporting Wi-Fi roaming reported having access to networks exceeding 1 million locations.

The survey, carried out during 2013's third quarter, had a total of 197 respondents. Of the 56 percent that were operators, two-thirds were fixed or mobile operators and one-third were wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) or pure-play Wi-Fi operators.

For more:
- see this joint release and this report (PDF)

Read more about: hotspot, Maravedis-Rethink
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By Tammy Parker

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5. Freescale small cell processor supports simultaneous LTE and HSPA+ modes

Following the lead of EE in the United Kingdom, fellow European operators Telefonica and Vodafone have jumped on the LTE Advanced carrier aggregation bandwagon with testing underway in Germany.

Telefonica is conducting carrier aggregation tests in Munich, while Vodafone is doing the same in Dresden. Earlier this month, EE switched on carrier aggregation in an area of the UK capital called London Tech City and is letting selected companies trial the technology until its commercial launch next year.

According to TechHive, EE is using 2x20 MHz channels to deliver speeds up to 300 Mbps. Telefonica and Vodafone are each combining a single 10 MHz channel plus one 20MHz channel for up to 225 Mbps.

TechHive noted EE's carrier aggregation trial is being conducted with a Huawei router. The UK operator does not expect to receive commercially available routers until mid 2014, with slated for arrival in the second half of the year.

In October, Vivendi-owned SFR said it completed the first trials of LTE A technology in France, achieving download speeds of up to 174 Mbps thanks to carrier aggregation of spectrum in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands.

The first operator in the world to commercially launch carrier aggregation was South Korea's SK Telecom, which introduced the service during June. The operator aggregated 10 MHz of its 1.8 GHz spectrum with 10 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum to form an effective bandwidth of 20 MHz, enabling peak downlink data speeds up to 150 Mbps.

U.S. mobile operators also intend to adopt LTE Advanced carrier aggregation, both inter-band and intra-band. Most recently, Sprint (NYSE:S) said its Spark initiative will eventually employ intra-band carrier aggregation in the 2.5 GHz band to deliver peak downlink speeds reaching at least 50-60 Mbps in that band.

For more:
- see this TechHive article

Read more about: Telefonica, LTE Advanced
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By Tammy Parker

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