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Wireless communications of the future


Moreno

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What will wireless communications look like in 50 years? Is there any new ideas on how is it possible:

1) Reduce amount of the base stations (cellular towers) quite a lot. 

2) Increase the data transmission rates.

3) Reduce radiation.

4) Increase the distance signal travels and reduce power consumption?

Is it possible at least theorize that somewhere in the distant future we may have wireless communication with no need for the base stations and subsequently free of cost, basically?

 

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At the beginning of Internet there used to be just server-client communication. i.e. centralized network, server is providing content, and clients connecting to powerful server, and eventually overloading it, because it has to handle too many requests and physically is unable to do so.

Later programmers invented p2p. i.e. decentralized network, every peer in network is either server and client at the same time (dynamic and private IP addresses being the most troublemakers)

Wireless communication can go this route as well. i.e. every smartphone/device connected to network could be what cell tower is now. For static, the same data, it could be convenient method of decreasing of cell-only communications.

F.e. you watch Internet TV channel, device is downloading 100 KB of data, and informing devices around you (within f.e. 100m), "I have 100 KB of file X from offset Y", if owners of these devices watch the same Internet TV channel, their devices ask machine which downloaded data they don't have yet to give them these missing chunks. and immediately sharing (sending, offering to download) them with other peers.

 

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Mobile phones will use too much energy for retranslation, I afraid, but this method could be tried in the field of stationary wireless internet first. But how users could make a global agreement to create peer to a peer network, and how can they negotiate the rebate from the providers? 

Edited by Moreno
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13 minutes ago, Moreno said:

But how users could make a global agreement to create peer to a peer network, and how can they negotiate the rebate from the providers? 

Users agree to it, by using application which is using p2p technology.. Skype used to be p2p before it was bought by Microsoft.

https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/

Not once, I saw in firewall that Skype was taking significant amount of bandwidth, without me sending or receiving any data through it.

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17 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Not once, I saw in firewall that Skype was taking significant amount of bandwidth, without me sending or receiving any data through it.

The use of "not once" is unhelpfully ambiguous.

Do you mean zero times- which is "not once" or do you mean many times which of course is also "not once"?

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1 hour ago, Moreno said:

What about communication which is based on totally new physical principles? Can we use something different than microwaves?

Not in the sense of "new physical principles", we'll always need light in one form or another.

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6 hours ago, Moreno said:

Mobile phones will use too much energy for retranslation, I afraid

You said "in 50 years" so I imagine that battery technology will have advanced significantly by then. 

Also, mobile phones can already use mesh networks. They use a lot less power to communicate with another nearby device than a distant cell tower.

4 hours ago, Moreno said:

What about communication which is based on totally new physical principles? Can we use something different than microwaves?

Maybe. But as we don't know what new physics might be discovered in the next 50 years, the question is meaningless.

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15 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Not in the sense of "new physical principles", we'll always need light in one form or another.

I think one of the largest problems with modern radio transmitters is that radio wave radiated omnidirectionally. It makes 99.99 % of all the energy lost in vain and only 00.01% of energy reach the cell tower. It would be good to invent something that would allow almost 99% of energy be transferred between the sender and the receiver. It could be helpful for peer to peer networks two. Possibly it could resemble some long-distance electromagnetic resonance? 

Edited by Moreno
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1 hour ago, Moreno said:

I think one of the largest problems with modern radio transmitters is that radio wave radiated omnidirectionally. It makes 99.99 % of all the energy lost in vain and only 00.01% of energy reach the cell tower. It would be good to invent something that would allow almost 99% of energy be transferred between the sender and the receiver. It could be helpful for peer to peer networks two. Possibly it could resemble some long-distance electromagnetic resonance?  

That's what is used by NASA to connect to and receive data from satellites and deep space spaceships. There are used directional antennas. I can't see how it can be put in regular smartphone now.. I used to connect two apartments on both sides of the street via directional antennas, transmission through WiFi 2.4 GHz. It did not work well in rainy or snowy conditions though *). I also used to have HD satellite receiver for a couple of years. 1mm +- in the wrong direction, and you lose the all signal from satellite. Adjustment of antenna is very annoying and troublesome.

*) with non-directional transmission (e.g. transmission in the all directions), in city, because of buildings and trees and other obstacles, you still have chance to get reflection of the original signal, if direct signal did not reach you.

Edited by Sensei
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2 hours ago, Moreno said:

I think one of the largest problems with modern radio transmitters is that radio wave radiated omnidirectionally.

It isn't always. Many systems use multiple antennas so they can do beam-forming so that they can transmit and receive in specific directions. This make them much more efficient. For example, Wi-Fi uses this; I don't know if cell phones do yet, but there is no reason why they couldn't, in principle.

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On 7/18/2019 at 8:04 AM, Moreno said:

1) Reduce amount of the base stations (cellular towers) quite a lot. 

2) Increase the data transmission rates.

3) Reduce radiation.

4) Increase the distance signal travels and reduce power consumption?

Is it possible at least theorize that somewhere in the distant future we may have wireless communication with no need for the base stations and subsequently free of cost, basically?

 

1. I think the opposite will be the trend - much smaller cells (sometimes maybe room-sized).

2. Yes. But unless we find some new 'toy' to spend the bandwidth, I don't see a need to increase it that much more. Our senses have limited ability to absorb information.

3. Yes, because base stations will be closer and no need for mobile phone to use a high power transmitter.

4. Distance signal travels will decrease (denser network of base stations). The power for hand-held devices will be further reduced, of course.

Free of cost? Not really, but maybe governments will decide to 'give for free' (on the budged expense - which of course is not free).

(maybe unrelated, but with high-enough network of base stations, the system may become a serious competitor to GPS systems).

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5 hours ago, Danijel Gorupec said:

2. Yes. But unless we find some new 'toy' to spend the bandwidth, I don't see a need to increase it that much more. Our senses have limited ability to absorb information.

But relatively inexpensive unlimited mobile internet still haven't become a standard even in majority of developed countries? 

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12 hours ago, Danijel Gorupec said:

2. Yes. But unless we find some new 'toy' to spend the bandwidth, I don't see a need to increase it that much more. Our senses have limited ability to absorb information.

IT companies work on game-clouds *) i.e. instead of selling games to end-users, they offer servers sending screen-shots at 30 FPS+ through Internet, together with audio, together with user reactions back to central server. If it's supposed to be real-time at Full HD raw data have 1920 x 1080 x 4 x 30 bytes/s = 237 MB/s. With advanced compression it'll be obviously less, but still tremendous amount of data to send through Internet, if significant (multi-millions+) amount of people will join in game-cloud-network at the same time.. Comparable to YouTube @ Full HD settings, and more, as people are starting to move to UHD.

*) user will not be owner of the game, will be unable to play it off-line, will not need to buy top-notch computer every couple of years, will be able to play the same game on the all devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop) as they will just connect to central server and don't do any specific game specific actions (like web browser, but for games). Hardware companies are not happy. Traditional game industry is the main reason why people buy new high-end computers and high-end laptops.

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9 hours ago, Moreno said:

But relatively inexpensive unlimited mobile internet still haven't become a standard even in majority of developed countries? 

But we are talking 50 years in the future. A very distant future, if you ask me - so I expect that until that time even the lowest-income countries will have better networks than highest-income countries have today.... Hmm., if I think about it again, 50 years in the future is so distant that not much can be claimed. I think 20 years in future is much more manageable to make a forecast.

2 hours ago, Sensei said:

IT companies work on game-clouds ...

It does not surprise me... Latency will also be an issue (today's internet seems to suffer from 'jerking' data rate - video stream solve this by buffering, not sure how will they solve this with games - do they mention this?)... Anyway, when I said that I don't expect much increase in data rate, I meant it 'in comparison to what can be achieved in 50 years if we make this our main goal'. Of course the data rate increase will be significant still.

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4 minutes ago, Danijel Gorupec said:

It does not surprise me... Latency will also be an issue (today's internet seems to suffer from 'jerking' data rate - video stream solve this by buffering, not sure how will they solve this with games - do they mention this?)... Anyway, when I said that I don't expect much increase in data rate, I meant it 'in comparison to what can be achieved in 50 years if we make this our main goal'. Of course the data rate increase will be significant still. 

You can get more info here https://www.google.com/search?q=google+game+cloud

 

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On 7/20/2019 at 3:20 PM, Strange said:

Why not?

1) Mobile users constantly change their location, and it will require constant antennas redirection on the fly.

2) No direction can be perfect. Especially long distance. Can you imagine two small antennas perfectly directed at each other at 1 km distance? 

 

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4 hours ago, Moreno said:

1) Mobile users constantly change their location, and it will require constant antennas redirection on the fly.

That isn’t a problem. It happens already. (Note that his doesn’t require any physical movement of antennas)

4 hours ago, Moreno said:

2) No direction can be perfect. Especially long distance. Can you imagine two small antennas perfectly directed at each other at 1 km distance? 

They don’t need to be perfectly aligned. If you can reduce the spread of the beam by 50% you also halve the power required; if you reduce the spread to 10%, you only need 1/10th the power.

Anyway, we were talking mesh systems with local communications 

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I think wireless technology moves in the direction opposite from desirable, in some aspects. The frequencies mobile devices use constantly increase, but it requires to reduce the distance between communicating nodes. A compact walkie-talkie device which works in 60-100 MHz range allows to communicate in 60 km range without problems. A mobile phone which works on 2 GHz frequency requires less than 500 meters distance to a cell tower. 

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56 minutes ago, Moreno said:

I think wireless technology moves in the direction opposite from desirable, in some aspects. The frequencies mobile devices use constantly increase, but it requires to reduce the distance between communicating nodes. A compact walkie-talkie device which works in 60-100 MHz range allows to communicate in 60 km range without problems. A mobile phone which works on 2 GHz frequency requires less than 500 meters distance to a cell tower. 

Not sure what you mean by desirable...

Higher frequencies enable higher bandwidth, which is why they are increasingly used (as technology develops) for high bandwidth applications. 

Shorter distances also mean lower power. So it’s a win-win

There are still plenty of applications that depend on lower frequency, long distance wireless protocols

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Visible spectrum is a strong contender. Would probably be most useful indoors or outside at night. The ground also represents another good opportunity.

Not wireless, but there is untapped potential in our electrical wiring too.

Edited by Endy0816
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43 minutes ago, Endy0816 said:

Visible spectrum is a strong contender. Would probably be most useful indoors or outside at night. The ground also represents another good opportunity.

Not wireless, but there is untapped potential in our electrical wiring too.

How can we exploit the ground?

Can the "displacement currents" in air or ground be ever useful to transmit data or energy? What if we use the resonant frequency of air molecules? To cause polarization waves of air molecules?

Can some quantum mechanics be useful for data transmission? For example, can we create some kind of "quantum coupling" between two antennas?

Edited by Moreno
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1 hour ago, Moreno said:

How can we exploit the ground?

Can the "displacement currents" in air or ground be ever useful to transmit data or energy? What if we use the resonant frequency of air molecules? To cause polarization waves of air molecules?

Can some quantum mechanics be useful for data transmission? For example, can we create some kind of "quantum coupling" between two antennas?

VLF and ULF waves can travel below ground. Electrical current can also return through the ground(single wire telegraph systems).

Not sure about your second question.

QM requires a second standard transmission channel.

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