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Warum hat man eigentlich zig-Milliarden für UMTS-Lizenzen ausgegegeben?

Code Controlled Air Waves

Software defined radio has variously been described as the `holy grail` or the `Swiss army knife` of mobile communications. The vision is of reconfigurable hardware, resulting in - among other things - reduced capital expenditure for the operator, and increased flexibility for the user. The challenge is going to be delivering on that vision, as Pamela Clark-Dickson reports.

Imagine a world where installing a new mobile communications net-work was as simple as downloading software into the existing base station infrastructure, and where end users could swap from GSM to CDMA and back again as need, or desire, dictated. This is the premise of software- defined radio (SDR), a technology that builds on the existing software deliver-ables for radio communications. For example, telecommunications equip-ment vendors have from an early stage been able to deliver the ability for remote software downloads to base sta-tions. Likewise, it has been possible from an early stage for network opera-tors to remotely change frequencies using techniques such as frequency hopping; and to change the power transmitted in order to boost signal strength. More recently, much of the work that enabled General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) over existing GSM networks was achieved via software upgrades.

The gap between ideal SDR and the current state of play, is that the features delivered in software to date tend to be air interface-specific rather than enabling the delivery of the dif-ferent air interfaces themselves. SDR has been around for about ten years, with the US Air Force`s Rome Laboratory working on developing the technology from 1992, with sponsorship from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US Army and the US Navy.
SDR was first demonstrated in 1995, and in March 1996 the Modular Multifunction Information Transfer System (MMITS) Task Group was formed - the predecessor to the MMITS Forum and ultimately the Software Defined Radio Forum (see http:/ /www. sdrforum.org).

The MMITS Task Group was "an outgrowth of the SPEAKeasy radio program" (a US Air Force project), that was "oriented toward establishing hardware and software interface stan-dards for use in the development of an open system radio architecture". The SPEAKeasy initiative had three key goals, all of which were tar-geted towards assisting the US Depart-ment of Defence to reduce its costs. These goals included leveraging the commercial base, encouraging the use of dual-purpose technologies, and to encourage said use from the outset (which implies being involved in the development of such technologies). The first meeting of the Task Group was held on 13 March 1996, and attracted 100 individuals representing the US DoD, defense contractors, and commercial organisations including Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, Hon-eywell, Hughes, Bell South Wireless, Boeing and Motorola.


The MMITS Task Group became a Forum and then changed its name on 8 December 1998, to the SDR Forum, the aims of which are to promote "the development, deployment and use of software defined radio technologies for advanced wireless systems". It is a non-profit organisation that has more than 100 members, which conducts meetings five times a year. The most recent meeting was held in Tokyo, Japan, in late April, and included keynotes on topics such as the impact of SDR on spectrum man-agement, and presentations from archi-tecture working group members including NTT DoCoMo, Siemens, Motorola, Sun, Mitsubishi and KDDI. The SDR Forum also works closely with other mobile communications standardisation bodies such as the Third Generation Partnership Project`s (3GPP), Mobile Station Application Execution Environment (MexE) work-ing group and the Wireless Applica-tion Protocol Forum.

The SDR Forum has proposed a num-ber of terms and definitions in an attempt to clarify the use of the term, `software defined radio`. It has determined five tiers: Tier 0 being hardware radio (no software control of system attributes at all), Tier 1 being software -controlled radio (no software control of system attributes such as modula-tion and frequency band), Tier 2 being software defined radio, Tier 3 being ideal software defined radio and Tier 4 being ultimate software radio.

The Tier 2 definition allows that SDR "provides abroad operational range under software control without hardware change". Features would include separate antenna system, wideband filtering, amplification, analogue-to-digital and digital-to -analogue conversion; communications security; the ability to store a range of air interfaces and add new air inter-faces; and to download new features and bug patches in software.

Tier 3 SDR would retain the charac-teristics of Tier 2 but would eliminate analogue sources of distortion and noise; and Tier 4 SDR would be a lightweight version specifically for hand-sets. It would feature a single connector to deliver and accept information in the format desired by the user and support the delivery of control information that would reconfigure its existing software; the ability for users to switch from one air interface to another; and features such as GPS, smartcards and video.

The SDR architecture, as defined by the SDR Forum, comprises "seven independent subsystems (see Figure 1 on page 52) interconnected by open interfaces". Each subsystem will con-tain hardware, firmware, an operating system and software modules - albeit the Forum admits that Figure 1 is generalised for the purposes of illustration. The Forum also compares the SDR implementation in wireless handhelds with that of the PC model (see Figure 2 on page 54), with the baseband implementations directly interfacing with the hardware layer in an attempt to eliminate performance constraints on execution and power consumption - using microcode or assembly code. Motorola` s regional manager, Federal Government and Defence, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Jim Hendrickson, describes SDR as "fundamentally a computer with specialist software that controls the DSP componentry which provides the RF output, and all of the other things that you would normally associate with the radio are generated in software". This includes the frequency, the emission envelope, the data rate, encoding, error correction and encryp-tion and security features.

While frequencies range from 2Mhz up to 2Ghz for military appli-cations, in the commercial arena those ranges might be limited to, for example, the PCS ranges of 900Mhz and 1800Mhz. At present, a military-strength SDR box that would support three or four channels at once would probably weigh up to 60kg. While that sounds somewhat over the top for a radio base station, when you consider that the US Navy is replacing 17 racks of equipment with two racks of SDR, the statistics suddenly become a little more impressive.

"Whereas previously they had to carry around 20 different radio types for all the tasks they had to do, they can now carry one type of radio, but 20 different software loads to emulate [the different types of radio, for example, UHF radio, or ship to shore radio]: Hendrickson said.

The advantages of SDR could be legion. To start with, SDR could potentially reduce the cost of ownership for the net-work on several levels: lower labour costs (no need to hire or train staff for the support of a particular network); the holding of inventory for one type of net-work rather than several - likewise with R&D expenditure; and network upgrades would not be contingent on significant capital outlays. Also, upgrades may be delivered to all base stations simultane-ously, rather than in increments.

"The cost of ownership is significant-ly cheaper than existing systems: Hendrickson said. And while that might sound counter-intuitive when you start thinking about a channel costing around ,000 to deploy, the US Navy will now have just the one radio on its ship. Another advantage for military applications is the fact that security and encryption is held within the device itself, as opposed to being a stand-alone box attached by cables -long regarded as a point of failure. Then there would be the ability to change the type of network being offered, or to offer two different air interfaces in two different parts of the same network, in response to changing business models.
It could be supposed that as a conse-quence of deploying an SDR mobile communications network, commercial operators would achieve a degree of future proofing, in addition to backwards compatibility with their legacy networks. This interoperability also has rele-vance to the military arena, where not all the ships within a fleet may be operating the same type of radio system. It would be possible, on the part of the network equipment manufacturers, to develop a product or a feature once, and to then be able to port the product to the different air interfaces, rather than develop different products for different air interfaces.

Also, as discussed in a Motorola white paper, Software Defined Radio -the Defining Tool of Future Informa-tion Services, SDR could also deliver functionality such as simulcasting, bridging and routing. For instance, to enable simulcast-ing, an SDR system would be able to combine the transmission capabilities of several modems to deliver informa-tion from a single Source at high speed over a number of radio frequen-cy (RF) or wireline channels, using something called a Compact Personal Computer Interface (CPCI). The CPCI would interconnect the central microprocessor of the black box itself, with modems and other inter-networking devices.

The SDR Forum claims that radios built using SDR concepts will offer the following:
. A standard architecture for multiple communications products;
. Non-restrictive wireless roaming; Uniform communications across commercial, civil, federal and mili-tary organisations;
. The potential for significant life-cycle cost reductions; and
. Over the air down loads of features and services, and software patches.
"SDR gives you increased capability - it is a hybrid between a computer, a radio and a network device; it can do high speed communications where legacy radios just can`t: Hendrickson said.

It’s also a technology that could be used as a device for interoperability on the edge of an operators cellular net-works, supporting multiple cellular stan-dards and triggering a migration back to the core, or conversely, being deployed initially in the core and enabling carriers to migrate their older equipment on the edge of their networks.

SDR could enable carriers to deliver quality of service at the wireless layer, according to Advanced Communications Technologies` Chief Technology Officer, Simon Cleary, because these attribut-es would then be defined in software.
"So you could have the generic low end user who is willing to accept that their mobile phone call quality is not great, but most of the time they get a signal and a voice channel" Cleary said. On the other hand, high end users, who are willing to pay more, can be provisioned to receive higher QoS. "The other thing that SDR should include by its nature is scalability", Cleary added. "If you have a frame-work of generic software modules doing the modulation and you reach the capacity limit because you don `t have the processing power, you should just be able to add more processing power."

Once an operator deploys SDR, it opens up the possibilities for network management styles, for example, spa-tial improvements on the receiving of information - something that is already possible in the GSM world through the deployment of software that sits in the network stack to enable pseudo fast handover. This feature helps to elimi-nate the effects of signal loss through building shadow, for example.

SDR might find its market niche sooner rather than later. For example, SDR also enables whatever branch of the military might be involved in international operations to plug into the local communications networks. Then the fragmentation of the 3G standards activities, particularly in the US, might also prove to be a sell-ing point. While some of the goals of 3G may still be realised by UMTS and IMT-2000 and the various other ini-tiatives, SDR could very well realise the global roaming objectives. In future, it`s likely the technology will take hold in the base stations initially, where its current weight and size is not an impediment.

While Hendrickson considers SDR to be at too early a stage of development for it to be included in the current round of moves in the commercial market, Cleary disputes this. He maintains that SDR offers no greater risk than 3G and that SDR "can offer a very real, attractive solution in the very near future".
Very few companies are willing to go on the record about their SDR development activities. All the big names in mobile communications handsets and networking are members of the SDR Forum - Nortel, Ericsson, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, NEC, Qualcomm - as are a number of carriers, including NTT DoCoMo, Orange PCS, Sonera, Sprint, France Telecom and Telefonica.
But it’s the smaller companies like Advanced Communications Technolo-gies (Melbourne) and AirNet Commu-nications (Florida, US), or companies like Motorola that have an immediately addressable market in the military, that are doing all the early running.

For companies the size of Advanced Communications Technologies and AirNet Communications, the inertia of the traditional telecomms equipment
vendors in the area of SDR is working to their advantage. "It`s clear the operators want the technology ," AirNet Communications president and CEO, Dr Lee Hamilton said, supporting his statement with the information that his company has five large operators in Asia, Africa and North America, trialling AirNet`s AdaptaCell base station.

However, ADC Telecommunica-tions` vice president, Global ConsuJting Services, David Hislop, commented that SDR has not seemed to develop a high profile even though the technology started to attract mainstream attention about 12 months ago. "It sounds great from a hardware vendor point of view - make simple handsets, put a lot of effort into soft-ware that can be configured, that is modular and can be downloaded into the handset - but I cannot help the feeling that there are a lot of infra-structure issues", Hislop said.
ADC`s interest in SDR lies in the technology being what the vendor terms a "Horizon Three" opportunity -an area where the business opportunity is yet to be determined. "The reason it has an impact on us is that there are some fundamental changes happening in wireless technology - some of which have resulted in the 3G standards", Hislop said. "In order to avoid implementation problems for us and our customers one of the things we need to look for was that it makes our implementations more difficult and our sales more difficult if every 3G vendor we run across has significantly different operational requirements and inter-oper-ational requirements."
And if SDR can eliminate that kind of complexity, ADC would be interested in it - even if it is at this stage a Hori-zon Three opportunity.

Motorola representatives attended the very first MMITS Task Group meeting. Ten years later, the vendor has commercialised SDR technology as the Wireless Information Transfer System (WITS) product line. It has also won two contracts with the US Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) for its AN/USC-61 Digital Modular Radio, worth a total of .6 million, and a third system has been ordered by the Australian Depart-ment of Defence, which is evaluating the technology. While Motorola`s target markets for SDR are at present the military, possibly extending into emergency services, the vendor has also done work with GSM, AMPS (US) and also with I-Den, its integrated digital enhanced network technology - which may take it into the commercial sector. "The WITS is ready to go in the commercial market now", Hendrick-son said. "All that would need to hap-pen is the commercial waveforms would have to be written."

While Motorola is initially targeting the military and emergency services markets, Advanced Communications Technologies - an Australian company that has developed its own SDR sys-tern, called SpectruCell - has the commercial sector firmly in its sights. SpectruCell comprises a hardware platform, support for a number of air interfaces through a generic air inter-face, and an application framework which Cleary says will enable develop-ers to build their own air interfaces. The company has not announced any contracts with customers nor will its equipment be type approved or commer-cially available until the end of this year. "We are in production and develop-ment of equipment for third parties and developers and later this year we will be into test networks, carrying live data for customers", Cleary said.

AirNet Communications has been shipping broadband software defined base stations since May 1997, targeting the GSM market rather than supporting multiple air interfaces, chiefly because more than half of the world`s mobile phone users ,subscribe to a GSM ser-vice, according to Dr Hamilton. Its technology provides for a soft-ware upgrade to full speed GPRS, with software for EDGE and adaptive array antennas due for release later this year. The deployment scenario is incremen-tal, rather than tear-out, with operators able to deploy both the full-speed GPRS and later, the EDGE software on their existing hardware. The com-pany is also planning the development of a software upgrade to Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) which is the 3G migration path for GSM.

AirNet Communications is com-pletely focussed on the base station business, with SDR handsets being a kettle of fish the vendor is unlikely to stir. Its strategy has been to gain a foothold in the market via sales to
smaller, more nimble and entrepreneur-ial telcos, build up the reference sites, then go into trial with larger operators, turn those trials into customers and thus "leverage our way into being a serious player in the marker`. "Along the way we are going to be taking a big enough chunk of the [base station market that the bigger vendors are going to try to get into the market" Dr Hamilton said.

But SDR still has away to go. There are the infrastructure issues that Hislop alluded to, including unforeseen prob-lems with response times resulting from the changes in network hardware that will be required in order to properly distribute software. Then there is the seeming lack of support among the traditional telecom-munications equipment suppliers, and a general softness and uncertainty in the telecommunications market as a whole that has created an environment where risk-taking is anathema - and taking the plunge into SDR might be construed as a risk. The SDR market may be at an early stage of development, but it`s a market worth watching

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Wahnsinn!

Advanced Communications Technologies Inc. -- 3G Shared/Virtual Networks Utilizing SpectruCell SDR Base Stations
MONDAY, JULY 30, 2001 9:55 AM
- BusinessWire

LOS ANGELES, Jul 30, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Advanced Communications Technologies Inc. (OTCBB:ADVC) (ACT-US) today confirmed that the company`s Australian affiliate Advanced Communications Technologies (Australia) Pty Ltd is currently negotiating with several major U.K. and European carriers to provide SpectruCell based Virtual or Shared Networking infrastructure for the rollout of third generation (3G) networks.

ACT`s software defined radio (SDR) SpectruCell technology is ideally suited to provide common infrastructure for multiple network operators. In planned 3G network rollouts, carriers can both minimize network establishment costs as well as remove technical and compatibility issues that up until now have prevented network operators from sharing a single mobile wireless network infrastructure.

ACT`s SpectruCell SDR based Virtual/Shared networking will be able to provide major cost savings and crucial competitive advantages for network operators as telecommunications regulators globally seek to implement sharing of network infrastructure as a means to speed up and ensure the roll out of 3G mobile services.

SpectruCell lowers infrastructure costs for network operators by allowing them to share common equipment and backhaul services and provides next generation management and accounting facilities to ensure quality of service between carriers. These features significantly lowers the total cost of ownership for a network provider.

This key ability is derived from SpectruCell`s SDR operating system (patent pending), which allows network operators to simultaneously support multiple communications standards (GSM, CDMA, W-CDMA, 3G etc) on the one network infrastructure. Importantly, this support can be achieved using the same or different bands of radio spectrum over the one SpectruCell based infrastructure. Unlike present hardware based 3G solutions, any additional protocol support requires relatively minor software upgrades to the SpectruCell SDR Base Station.

"The planned rollout of 3G networks is placing an incredible financial burden on network operators around the globe," said Roger May, Chairman of ACT-US. "As a consequence, concerned industry regulators are increasingly turning to infrastructure sharing to reduce the cost and ensure the rollout of 3G services. ACT`s SpectruCell SDR base station is the only known technology that will be available in early 2002 that has the ability to provide secure seamless simultaneous support for multiple communications standards for several competing carriers on the one network infrastructure."

This unique proprietary capability of the SpectruCell base station is particularly suited to the massive U.S. market where regulators are encountering many 3G rollout difficulties and also in the European market where network operators have outlaid tens of billions of dollars for 3G spectrum.

One major European mobile carrier plans to implement some 40,000 base stations in their 3G rollout, compared with the 10,000 in their current 2G network. This global requirement to increase the number of cell sites in order to roll out 3G services is requiring both regulators and operators to move to a shared network model for 3G network rollouts. The company believes that SpectruCell is the only technology, expected to be available in early 2002, that can support planned 3G shared network infrastructure and that has the ability to comply with proposed FCC standards.

"The pressure on the U.S. market to secure 3G spectrum is immense with everything from Presidential directives to specialist FCC reports being issued to combat the problem. SpectruCell`s ability to be dynamically reconfigured in real time provides the ideal solution in that it could simultaneously support 3G services in existing spectrum that is presently used for a 2G service like CDMA or GSM," said May.

Recent statements from both the U.S. Department of Commerce`s National Telecommunications and Information Association, NTIA and the U.K. regulator for the telecommunications industry, OFTEL, have confirmed that infrastructure sharing will be increasingly championed as the solution to expensive 3G network rollouts. This powerful industry pressure and high cost of existing hardware based solutions is providing ACT with an exceptional opportunity to generate substantial revenues from the increasing global demand for next generation 3G network upgrades.

ACT is also currently negotiating with one major U.S. carrier to implement SpectruCell SDR base stations in their current mobile network and their planned provision of third generation services.

ACT`s SpectruCell technology is supported by several patent applications and the recent securing of development alliance with RLM Systems, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) and Tenix Australia.

About Advanced Communications Technologies
Advanced Communications Technologies Inc. (ACT) is a world leader in the development of software-defined radio (SDR), an innovative technology that allows for exceptional flexibility in commercial and military wireless communications. The company`s flagship product-SpectruCell, is a SDR multiple protocol wireless base station consisting of hardware and software, that enables network providers to install a single base station and configure it to any or all protocols (GSM, CDMA, UMTS, W-CDMA, etc).

Without SpectruCell, network providers would need to install separate base stations for each desired protocol. SpectruCell is supported by several patent filings that bypass 90% of Qualcomm`s (NASDAQ:QCOM) patents on CDMA via hardware solutions. ACT holds the exclusive rights to SpectruCell throughout the North, South and Central American markets and to other current and future products developed by its Australian research and development affiliate, which is 20% owned by ACT-US.

The foregoing contains forward-looking information within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties. The actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements even if experience or future changes make it clear that any projected results (expressed or implied) will not be realized.

CONTACT: Advanced Communications Technologies Inc.
Roger May, 61 3 9672 8888 or 61 411 189 931
[e-mail]
or
Jason Webster, 61 2 9327-2579 or 61 403 199 811
[e-mail]