Who is doing what in WiMAX?

Wi-Max (Bulging out/ Indulging in)

When Intel launched Wi-Max network in a digi-hospital, Nortel also hurried out with its first WiMAX trial in NCR (National Capital Region that includes New Delhi, Gurgaon - INDIA).

Norton says "First commercial roll out of WiMAX in the first week of December 2006".

This is a demonstration of the abilities of the Wi-MAX Technology. As the big companies and network operators are eyeing at the developments in WIMAX, the roll out certainly has made the technology sell like hot cakes.

Reliance : Migrating from CDMA to 3G

CDMA vs GSM:

Capacity :
Tremendous capacity of CDMA is uncomparable to that of GSM.
Power :
CDMA definitely hogs less power for the same number of subscribers.
Performance :
CDMA caters to users individually than GSM that has a single frequeny with different codes for each user.
Quality :
Sound quality of CDMA is governed by speech coding technique, CELP(code excited linear prediction).CELP is better than its GSM counterpart MELP (Multi-pulse excited linear prediction coding and allows to code speech more efficiently using low bit rates.

So much so far, still...

Why is Reliance moving to GSM?

CDMA typically works at 1900 MHz spectrum for which most of the commercial equipment vendors are present in the US market and the natural migration part is EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized ) from the current CDMA 1X. Whereas in case of GSM operators, the natural migration is WCDMA and that works at 2000 MHz frequency. It seems DoT or TRAI are thinking of the idea that the 3G spectrum will be available at 2000 MHz, for which there are not many commercial equipment vendors for CDMA.

So, if Reliance Communication move to WCDMA, which works at 2000 MHz; they are certainly heading right..as the capex would be definitely higher. Thus, it is better to go for GSM and put a GSM overlay on the CDMA backbone and eventually migrate to WCDMA in the 3G space.

The incremental capex is not going to be large because the inactive portion of the network today costs almost 60-70% of the capex, where the active portion, which is the electronics portion will be new cost, maybe 30-35% of the total network and for that too they will go in a selective manner.

Sensing the future wireless world

Blogjects – effectively a blog generated automatically by wireless sensors.

'This is a device or an object that will create its own blog about its life'

For example, a sensor-tagged cow could ‘write’ a blog detailing its movements around a field, when it went for milking, how much milk was produced, where and what it ate and so on, based on the interaction of sensors and readers. The same could apply to inanimate objects such as a transport container.

Wireless Sensors can be the heart of the living or the inanimate..

Wireless Sensor Age - Gearing Up!

Recent advances in MEMS technology have made SoC(system on chip) very popular. SoC means presence of CPU, memory embedded on a single chip. Sensor node is one that comes under SoC. Each node consists of a microcontroller (CPU + RAM), flash storage, battery, sensors and radio for transmitting and receiving. Collection of such nodes forming a self-Organized network is called a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). These nodes are generally deployed in inaccessible regions where there is a chance of little human intervention. Each node can do computation, storage, sensing and communication.

Every node can measure real world variables like temperature, pressure, humidity, motion speed etc. Flash storage in each node is used to store the data generated by sensing the environment. This data is communicated to a base station which is located at the user end. Base station is a typical desktop computer which collects data sent by the nodes. Every node need not communicate directly with the base station. This is due to presence of radio which has a only range from 10 to 100 meters. The data is moved to base station using multi-hop communication. Multi-hop communication means each node sending data to its neighbors (nodes which are in its radio range) and neighbors to their neighbors and so on till the data reaches the base station. Battery is the power source of every node. Nodes will switch often to sleep mode to conserve their power.

Wireless Sensor Network can be viewed as a distributed data base where each node is a data site. User issues queries from the base station to get the data stored in the network. Nodes process these queries and sends data to the base station. While sending data, nodes aggregate their data with their neighbors to reduce the amount of transmitting data. This is important because transmission operation consumes more energy.

WSN is used in many applications like habitat monitoring, forest fire detection, environmental monitoring, smart homes, supply chain monitoring, health monitoring, surveillance and tracking etc.

Buoy-based Sensing to Monitor Environmental Changes

SENSOR NETWORKS CONQUER SEA

British Telecom has developed a Remote Sensor Network System based in buoys to survey coastal erosion that could help to predict floods and tsunamis.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is backing the project, which is intended to improve the way the Environment Agency (EA) and other bodies monitor environmental changes.

The Self-Organising Collegiate Sensor (Secoas) Network Technology combines low-level artificial intelligence, electronic sensors and wireless radio. Networked buoys decide when and how to transmit the data that they compile.