On the the evolution of wireless mesh vs. cellular networks - and how the community can make use of software radio techniques

Der Vortrag könnte aus zwei Teilen bestehen.

Der erste ist "Techno-Politisch" und geht auf die (so wie ich es sehe) wesentlichen Gründe ein warum in den nächsten Jahren die "dezentralen" und meist "nicht-linzensiertes-Spektrum-verwendenten" Übertragungstechnologien (vor allem 802.11 Familie) gegenüber den zellulären weiter stark an Bedeutung gewinnen werden. Die Operatoren denken grad intensiv darüber nach wie sie sich Wi-Fi zu Nutze machen können. Auch die Geschichte mit den UMTS/LTE Femtocells will ich erzählen.

Im (optionalen) zweiten Teil könnte direkt von meiner Arbeit an einem Software-Radio 802.11n Empfänger erzählen (und vielleicht auch schon meine ersten Versuche in Richtung LTE Decoder).

Mein Vorschlags-Text für den ersten Teil des Vortrag den ich in Barcelona gehalten habe: (die slides gibt's hier: http://freiluft.theater.univie.ac.at/slideset.pdf)

I'd like to share my views and discuss them with others on the following:

- If mobile operators will increasingly loose control over "their" spectrum, primarily because the customizable air-interface hardware becomes commoditized. Looking at the bigger picture, the concept of licensed spectrum could by approaching its EOL in the next few years. What are the consequences of this trend. What countermeasures will probably be brought up by the current stakeholders to stop it from happening.

- As regulatory bodies continuously fail to stop it, what are the consequences of ongoing wireless operator consolidation.

- On the other hand, what is the bigger picture of the ongoing evolution of "consumer network equipment" (i.e Wi-Fi client adapters and accesspoints) for unlicensed bands (e.g. IEEE802.11ac and beyond).

- How can the proliferation of meshes be boosted. Is it possible to shift from laborious setup of directional-point-to-point-links on roofs to directly meshing between in-house devices. Without running against interference limitations that are currently present using standard Wi-Fi protocols. What needs to be changed and how can we speed up that process.

- How can we secure access to the tools needed for that. Cheap radios with extended capabilities beyond Wi-Fi protocols. Because the conjecture is that these tools will soon be hard to get, legally.

- How can we ensure that community-driven networks can stay/become incubation labs for innovation in this space.

- How to repeat the OLSR success-story all over again once the experimental tools are cheap and fairly easy to handle. Note: OLSR = the main routing protocol at the heart of almost every mesh network currently in operation was born in academia. But it was merely the idea that was born in academia, it was then highly modified to actually produce stable routing tables and become usable in real networks by hackers. But only AFTER the required tools (modifiable linux boxes like the WRT54 from linksys) hit the consumer market which allowed enthusiasts to start testing new routing protocols. It was also NOT the industry that was interested in solving this problem, they came in later. Currently the exact same thing seems possible in other layers of the wireless stack. E.g. innovative wireless signal processing ideas pop up continuously in academia. Those that could help making meshes much more scalable and easy to install than they are now. Currently all of these ideas are going through a "are they useful for being used in cellular networks" filter and if NOT they are almost totally neglected. Not much research money is thrown at them - because funding is focused on the operator business case.

Paul Fuxjaeger is working at the Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (http://www.ftw.at) as a researcher in the field of decentralized wireless network architectures. In this context he is active in several open-source projects that deal with software-radio implementations of current wireless standards (e.g. 802.11 ftwofdmtx). In the other half of his professional life he's involved in projects together with large mobile operators and equipment vendors that deal with heterogeneous RAN architectures. He's also quite passionate about distributed online-social-network architectures and associated socio-technical aspects. Paul majored in electrical engineering at technical university of Vienna. Loves sunsets, hates ignorance. Believes in 'code is law'.