19 megabits on 3G 166
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.
real time pr0n (Score:5, Funny)
*sob* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*sob* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:*sob* (Score:2)
Re:*sob* (Score:1, Informative)
Some of us live almost 10 miles from an exchange too, don't forget.
Re:*sob* (Score:1)
Reece,
Re:*sob* (Score:2)
Re:*sob* (Score:1)
Want to consider yourself luckier?
The line of last resort for people with crappy phone companies (ie: Bell Canada) is satellite internet -- here, from, yeah, you guessed it, BCE, or "Bell Canada, division #183873873".
$80/CDN per gig, give or take. One way.
Re:*sob* (Score:1)
Reece,
Re:*sob* (Score:2)
Working for an ISP has it's perks.
Re:*sob* (Score:1)
Re:*sob* (Score:1)
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:1, Funny)
imagine a beowolf cluster of mobile phones!
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
i could set up a p60 at work on a university t3, but i don't think it would survive a "slashdotting", since the fucking machine would melt under the load.
idiot.
-4 not fucking funny.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Funny)
Travis
That's great! (Score:5, Insightful)
That'll be what? 10 more years before see anything like it in the U.S.?
Neat (Score:5, Funny)
Wow...but (Score:4, Insightful)
This would rock for grabbing huge files for your laptop or iPaq, however.
Re:Wow...but (Score:2)
Re:Wow...but (Score:1)
Then again, Im probably jumping the gun and starting to sound like one of those people who thinks you can never have enough CPU power.
History has demonstrated that when more bandwidth/cpu power/disk space/memory/etc becomes available to the mainstream, people tend to find more uses for it.
Wow! (Score:1, Funny)
Woohoo! (Score:5, Funny)
funar@multiplayergamers.com [multiplayergamers.com]
laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:laptops (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey I can't dream can't I
Re:laptops (Score:4, Informative)
Re:laptops (Score:2)
Yes, you could pay on your phone bill, but the charge on the phone bill would likely be *more* than the extra charge at the airports.
3G bandwidth is not cheap. Figure a good deal is one that charges regular voice-level minutes. VZW, for instance, offers plan that for $30/month. Another plan doesn't cap minutes but bytes instead, for around $100/month.
These developments (3G, BLAST) are a way to widen the firehose, but they don't reduce the price of the Perrier water coming through it.
Re:laptops (Score:3, Funny)
Re:laptops (Score:1)
Re:laptops (Score:1)
Aside from the email thing, sounds like about 15-20 bytes would do just dandy. What will you do with all those saved nanoseconds? :-)
Huh? (Score:1, Funny)
Spotty 3G (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spotty 3G (Score:1)
Re:Spotty 3G (Score:2)
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.
You seem to misunderstand. There's not some "magic" number that they need. What they do is saturate that price point. Right now they're charging lots, and obviously few people will sign up. But most of those people will sign up for 4+ year contracts.
Once they've gotten as many people for that price as they're going to get, they'll take the price down a notch. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Re:Spotty 3G (Score:1)
In case it gets slashdotted (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Now if I could just cram a hard drive in my phone (Score:1)
Re:Now if I could just cram a hard drive in my pho (Score:1)
I mean, who doesn't move their gamepads when they get excited?!
Do you know what this means? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Do you know what this means? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Do you know what this means? (Score:1)
Coverage (Score:2, Interesting)
*sigh*
RJ45 (Score:4, Interesting)
Using up all the channels. (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Re:Using up all the channels. (Score:4, Informative)
In general it works well, although it's quite nonintuitive for a number of reasons.
For example, you might imagine that you could achieve similar data rates if you just transmitted 4 times the power with a single antenna instead. Unfortunately, due to multipath (reflections off buildings, trees, etc.), the average received power will vary so much that you can't be as aggressive with your data rate. With 4 antennas, the average received power will be much more even; when one antenna isn't coming in too well, the other three are likely not to have the same problem.
Secondly, amplifier costs don't scale linearly with power. So at those power levels, multiple lower-power amps can be significantly cheaper than one higher-power amp. The cost difference can be large enough that it's worth all the extra signal processing.
Finally, FCC rules are often kinder to systems which distribute power across multiple antennas than they are with a single antenna transmitting the same power. I don't know if that's the case with 3G but I can imagine so.
Those of you who study this please forgive the oversimplification.
3G ISPs? (Score:3, Interesting)
new unobtrusive way to bootleg concerts! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is shared (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is shared (Score:1)
I thought that was inherent in any implementation of TCP over TCP. I guess they could do ACK spoofing like satellites do, but that's lame, and means it probably won't ever be compatible with anything but Windows.
From the page:
"Imagine what happens when, in this situation, the base connection starts losing packets. The lower layer TCP queues up a retransmission and increases its timeouts. Since the connection is blocked for this amount of time, the upper layer (i.e. payload) TCP won't get a timely ACK, and will also queue a retransmission. Because the timeout is still less than the lower layer timeout, the upper layer will queue up more retransmissions faster than the lower layer can process them. This makes the upper layer connection stall very quickly and every retransmission just adds to the problem - an internal meltdown effect. "
Re:This is shared (Score:2)
People tunnel IP in IP all the time. It can do ugly things to your routing tables (or it can make them neater), but it works just fine as long as you don't try and throw TCP in the middle. I've even tunneled TCP over IP over UDP over IP (IP in a UDP tunnel to a remote host). Again, no problem since there's only one "reliable" protocol in the mix.
If they are indeed doing IP over TCP over IP tunneling (with a TCP on the top for the final layer), then they could very well be in big trouble unless the underlying network (to the endpoint of that bottom tunnel) is reliable, which I don't believe 3G is.
Um, what? (Score:2, Informative)
1) Top layers from the OSI Model
2) TCP/IP
3) Air-Interface (E.g. TDMA, GSM, CDMA)
4) PDH (E.g. a T1 line from the base station controller to the BTS)
5) The data from that PDH link goes into a SONET network (SDH for us Europeans)
Then onto its destination where the reverse happens to a certain degree and we extract the original data.
So you have 5 layers at least, each of which has some overhead (Packet headers, framing, alignment, synchronisation, various network control data overheads).
Depending on what service you're using, your data may be taken out of the coms network at the PDH level and placed onto a seperate data network such as the Internet. However you may then find that the actual network your data is using is running TCP/IP over ATM over SONET anyway, so thats even more layers.
Telecoms networks are complicated things...
Health issues? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Health issues? (Score:1)
Re:Health issues? (Score:2)
Lets do the maths ... (Score:2, Insightful)
And your phone company charges you say 1 cent per megabyte (I wish!).
10 minutes (600 seconds) online could cost you $14.00
How about: You're an idiot (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets do the math.
320x240 (which is way better resolution than most full color screens) at 24 bit (RGB) is 230400 bytes at 10 f/s uncompressed video thats about 2.3mb/s. If you want to watch full color video at 320x480 on your phone for 10 minuites, then you deserve to pay $14
Re:How about: You're an idiot (Score:1)
Reece,
Cell Phone and bandwidth (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cell Phone and bandwidth (Score:1)
Also how good is the quality as compared to say DVD on a 50 inch high resolution screen?
Re:Cell Phone and bandwidth (Score:1)
With compression though, you can reach around 100Kbits on a 56Kbit GPRS-modem, which is what we have in Canada on the FIDO network. Nothing spectacular.
Re:Cell Phone and bandwidth (Score:2)
It's a regular modem, though. Every little improvement would help. Isn't laptop use the point of mobile internet?
Intranet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Intranet? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Intranet? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Wow (Score:1, Funny)
Is that good or bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is that good or bad? (Score:2)
Nowadays, broadband is becoming more prevalent in the home.
It's easier to receive quickly than to send quickly. This is a neccessary step before next progression -- when you can send fast and receive fast.
er.. (Score:2)
wow! I must quickly right a report reccomending my employers ditch all those expensive ATM WAN links and use cell phones - we'll have U's of rackage full of them! Hell we'll run the LANs off of them too - bits the crap out of 802.11b !
Wait! whats that strange bleeping sound? oh right - it's my bullshit detector...
cel phone (Score:2, Funny)
Only with CmdrTaco
On the other hand, acronymfinder lists [acronymfinder.com] CEL as possibly being "civilian employment level." In context, this would mean that business phones (as opposed to super-duper black-ops slashdot-effect proof military phones) would get this nifty tech.
So, while the possibility of this not being a spelling mistake exists, it is just not likely. Of course, I might just be led to believe that by the super-duper black-ops people who want to keep the existence of their phones, and the correspondingly nifty tech, out of public knowledge. In fact, I myself might be paid off by the military chaps. So take this whole post with a grain of salt
charge by the megabyte (Score:2)
if my cellphone provider charges me 1$ per megabyte like they do now for sms, that means (accounting for overhead) that i can accumulate charges of 1.90$ per minute!
i could get cheaper pr0n by calling a 900 number.
Re:charge by the megabyte (Score:2)
One way transmission? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:One way transmission? (Score:2)
With single-frequency systems, multipath hurts you. With spread-spectrum systems, multipath doesn't matter much. With this new system, multipath apparently helps you. Amazing that it's workable for a handheld device.
Upsteam bandwidth concerns... (Score:2, Interesting)
Back to digging up roads then...
Re:Upsteam bandwidth concerns... (Score:2, Informative)
Reece,
cel, huh? (Score:1)
It's like he's not even trying. :)
Total capacity will be low (Score:4, Informative)
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.
3G is more than phones. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:3G is more than phones. (Score:1)
tcp/ip ack packets (Score:5, Informative)
Re:tcp/ip ack packets (Score:1)
yes, and i'd appreciate it if you stop sending my packets upstream... it's a real hassle to go fetch them!
Whoah - Expensive (Score:2, Informative)
19Mbit per second seems to me like I'd be sucking down a little over 2Mb/s (2 3/8) for a present cost of about 8UKP/s. Sheesh.
I can live with paying 5p per minute for GSM net access, perhaps with 3G for 20p p/m but it's stacking up to (non-sensationalist) about 400UKP/m. Even if I was willing to pay 40p p/m I am looking to massively debt-ridden companies to drop their data rate by 3 orders of magnitude... (I'm actually looking forwards to the arguments surrounding the relative pricing of data access on the networks...)
I realise the public won't stand for the extremes of pricing you get using that kind of math but I fear the pricing for these services are gonna remain on the high side of acceptable for a long time after they are available...
$1,425 per minute @ current rates (Score:2, Insightful)
My penis has more bandwith (Score:1)
Sprint Plans (Score:2, Funny)
Looks similar to Download accelerator! (Score:2, Interesting)
Bell Labs is not what it used to be (Score:2)
no way (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually .. no (Score:2, Insightful)
But how much bandwidth is consumed. how many simultaneous users can there be in a given cell?
Sweet!! (Score:1)
That will be one heck of a phone bill... (Score:1)
I hope we'll see the day when this is going to be implemented over here. (hopefully with a low cost per MB...)
Yeah right! I don't think so! (Score:1)
Lucent is *NOT* telling a whopper (Score:1)
BLAST has only been possible since a fundamental breakthrough by in 1996 by Foschini and friends. Foschini's work showed that the Shannon Law you learnt at Uni was not the full story. In fact, Shannon's Law can be written as a matrix equation and in the presence of multipath interference one effectively has a full capacity channel between each pair of antennae. 'N' Antennas at each end means 'N' times the capacity in the same bandwidth. Read Foschini's paper for a proper, quite readable, explanation:
G. J. Foschini, Layered Space-Time Architecture for Wireless Communication in a Fading Environment When Using Multiple Antennas , Bell Labs Technical Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, Autumn 1996, pp 41-59.
Bell Lab's BLAST site [bell-labs.com] also has more detail.
i honestly fail to see the point. (Score:2)
the only thing i can think of that this would be useful for with our current paradigm of cell phone size and esthetics is video chat, and even then i'd really rather not use the 2" screen of my phone as opposed to the 17" screen of my desktop. maybe if they come out with a palm/phone combo with a reasonably sized screen, and capabilities to use a 19Mbit connection then i might be interested...but until then, i'm perfectly happy with my old-fashioned trimode CDMA phone. hell, i can even get all the data downloads i want (email, news, scores) perfectly well on my phone.
Minor correction... (Score:2)
"cell" is a shortening of "cellular", which itself gets its name from the word "cell" - A cellular network comprises of a number of small cells with low-power base stations used to provide coverage rather than one extremely large high-power base station. (An example of that case - Police/fire/rescue squad VHF/UHF repeaters and amateur radio (ham) repeaters Many such systems operate at 14+ watts/channel as opposed to most CDMA systems operating around 200 mW/channel)
So.... (Score:2)
*rimshot*
more on this (Score:2)
Re:Every time bw related news got posted. this hap (Score:1, Funny)
Re:"cell" you moron! (Score:2)
I rarely see lengthy documents any more without errors.