The Future Wireless International Conference (twitter #fwic) held in Cambridge on 27-28 June was a showcase for many leading edge wireless technologies and applications. With wireless technology creeping ever closer to the theoretical limit of performance (a.k.a. the Shannon limit), increasingly novel techniques are required to gain any further improvements in the performance of wireless networks. The number of visitors from other wireless savvy nations (such as South Korea) who were in attendance to examine partnership opportunities with UK companies shows the respect with which the UK's industry is held internationally.

A session on Monday afternoon highlighted some of the difficulties that technology developers are now facing.  Tim Newton of Neul clearly demonstrated how the so-called 'whitespace' (the gaps between television channels) was actually a rather dirty shade of grey splattered with remnants of red, green and blue.  Meanwhile John Haine pointed out the difficulty associated with multiple antenna (MIMO) technology. At around 1 GHz, photons become roughly the same size handsets making it impossible to detect their angle of arrival and thus making MIMO techniques ineffective. A recent study by Ofcom indicated that the amount of capacity gain which new technologies can offer is only just over 3 times, meaning that an alternative solution, such as using diminishingly small cell sites, will be necessary to solve the capacity crunch.

There is still a lot of work to be done to satiate the increasing hunger for mobile data, and techniques such as MIMO and the use of whitespace will all have their role to play. It's good to see that the UK remains at the forefront of such developments.

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