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Technology’s Pathfinders

Qualcomm Inc. sees a torrent of data in its future — and ours.

The amount of data going to mobile devices is doubling every year, said Rasmus Hellberg, senior director for technical marketing.

Qualcomm anticipates a day when there will be a thousand times more data in circulation, and is planning its business strategy accordingly. CEO Paul Jacobs and Chief Technology Officer Matt Grob are behind this initiative, Hellberg said.

Getting to a thousand times more data — or in Qualcomm shorthand, 1000x — is easy. Mobile data just has to double every year for 10 years and — presto — you are at 1,024 times your start number.

The last three years have seen mobile data double, Hellberg said.

Why the growth?

People are looking at richer content, such as high-definition video. “Every website gets richer,” Hellberg said.

5 Billion Sales

There is also “incredible” growth in smart devices, Hellberg said, citing one forecast of 5 billion sales of phones, tablets and other devices between 2012 and 2015. What’s more, individuals are getting multiple devices.

To prepare for the onslaught of data, and keep costs in line, industry needs to do three things, Hellberg said.

The first is to set up more cell sites.

And those aren’t just large towers by the highway.

New cell sites can be small consumer devices — maybe as small as a deck of cards.

While cell towers have predominantly been outdoors, Qualcomm sees the day when cell providers might take an “inside out” approach, where antennas within buildings can serve users outside the walls, Hellberg said.

The day of the “neighborhood small cell” might be coming, he said.

Indoor cells may be a technology that’s right for the times. Today, 70 percent of 3G and 4G wireless usage is indoors, Hellberg said, and that number is growing.

The second part of the solution is to carve out more of the airwaves, or spectrum. “We will have to look at the higher spectrum bands,” Hellberg said.

Today, the airwaves that cellphones use have good propagation — that is, they are good for carrying radio signals long distances. (Hellberg, incidentally, got his doctorate in electromagnetic wave propagation from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.)

Compare that with higher frequency bands. Those airwaves aren’t as good at throwing a phone’s radio signal. However, higher frequencies become more usable if people start using small, localized cells, Hellberg said.

Governments around the world hold on to some of the airwaves for their own purposes, but Qualcomm has come up with a new way to share, Hellberg added. More on that shortly.

The third part of the solution is to use existing resources more efficiently. Engineers can eliminate interference between small cells so they can work in concert. Hellberg said there is now a phenomenon called the self-organizing network. In some instances, people will be able to deploy 3G or 4G antennas much in the way they deploy Wi-Fi antennas. “The network just adjusts,” Hellberg said.

All of this technology relies on an invisible, natural resource. Like other natural resources, the airwaves are finite.

Sometimes users abandon parts of the spectrum. For example, the switch to digital television in the United States a few years ago freed up some airwaves.

Hellberg said Qualcomm has been investigating ways to share parts of the spectrum that other users, such as the government, keep to themselves.

For example, the U.S. Navy operates radar facilities in the 3.5 gigahertz range. Because of this, others can’t use those airwaves — not even in the Rocky Mountains, Hellberg says, laughing at the situation.

Authorized Shared Access

So Qualcomm came up with something called authorized shared access. ASA is an innovation, Hellberg said, which would give mobile operators the use of certain frequencies at certain locations during certain times — provided they did not interfere with incumbent uses.

Small, localized, low-power cells would be “a perfect fit” for this sharing technology, he said.

The other extreme is unlicensed spectrum, such as that in the 2.4 gigahertz range. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth devices, cordless phones and microwave ovens use that. With those parts of the airwaves freely available for anyone to use, one can’t guarantee great service.

But Wi-Fi should be part of the solution for moving the crush of data, Hellberg said.

“For 1000x, you need everything.”

What is Qualcomm doing to prepare?

Hellberg said there are some companies working on microchips and devices. Other companies are working on infrastructure. Still others are “doing one piece here and there.”

No one else, he said, takes Qualcomm’s approach to tackle the issue from one end to the other.

A holistic approach “enables us to build better products in the end,” he said.

One of Qualcomm’s research projects is a small cell network on its San Diego campus.

In the future, it won’t just be people sending and receiving data.

Machines will be communicating with each other, wirelessly, as well. A home electric meter, for example, can send data to the power company.

Surprisingly, the chatter among machines probably won’t contribute too much to the 1000x problem, Hellberg said.

When machines send data to each other, they don’t send that much, and they operate at low speeds, he said.

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