Smart equipment will change cellular industry

The cognitive radio equipment can notice a frequency that is currently available and switch to it automatically, making it possible to share the same available spectrum among many devices. So, why don’t we just start using them?

“To start using cognitive radio equipment, a few things need to be in place: there has to be a serious interest among vendors to produce and sell the equipment, there has to be standard for usage of the equipment, and regulations. Currently, none of these three is in place, but the QoSMOS project has made significant progress towards this” says Dr Michael Fitch.

Fitch is Wireless research team leader in British Telecom Innovate and Design, and Project Manager for QoSMOS, an EU project that focuses on opportunistic use of cognitive radio technology and service neutral spectrum. We met him on the occasion of the QoSMOS meeting at Telenor headquarters at Fornebu, Norway, where Telenor, as a partner and contributor in the project, hosted one of the last meetings of the project team.

 

Regulations and vendors

“We have done a lot of progress on harmonizing regulation and standards across Europe and to open up Europe as a big market, thus making it more interesting for vendors,” Fitch says, “but majority has invested in LTE and LTE advanced development, and is not likely that they will get into the next big investment yet,” he says, explaining that the smaller vendors and start-ups are more likely to begin producing cognitive radio equipment.

EU has the ambition to harmonize regulations, which is also confirmed by the document on spectrum sharing recently published by EU Commission. UK  is about to introduce new regulations in this area, making opportunistic use of spectrum available, while Finland is about to start a trial.

“The cognitive radio is certainly going to be part of the future method of allocation and deployment of spectrum, but it will take time. Not all operators are ready for spectrum sharing,” Fitch says, explaining that cognitive radio brings both opportunities and threats for traditional mobile operators.

You may say I’m a dreamer…

The way he sees it, the coverage is not a differentiator any longer. Having that in mind one could just pull out spectrum and manage it smartly, as a shared resource.

Although in some markets there are examples of spectrum sharing (Telenor and Telia in Sweden), it is still a disruptive model. It has the potential to change the business landscape in the industry and introduce new distribution of roles. Someone could do only spectrum management, while others could focus on competitive services.

For Per Hjalmar Lehne, Telenor’s researcher and participant in the QoSMOS project, this change is inevitable:
“If operators don’t grab this opportunity, although it changes their business model today, someone else will do it,” he says boldly.

M2M as a low hanging fruit?

From their vision for future, to present, Fitch and Lehne agree that there is high potential for use of cognitive radio in the areas that are outside of mobile operators’ main stream, such as M2M. This could be one of the first areas to deploy “thinking equipment” as soon as regulations make it possible.

Beyond 12.12.2012.

The project that currently analyses both technical and business aspects of the cognitive radio is about to end its work after three years this December. On 12 December,  the results will be presented in London.

“What happens after that is partly up to each partner – to find their ways further and deploy the knowledge gained during the project,” Fitch says.

The project also has the External advisory Board – consisting of regulators, vendors, broadcasters, who should help place QoSMOS results in the relevant national as well international bodies (such as CEPT, ITU and SDR Forum) and thus will help QoSMOS yield the greatest influence over future regulation and standardization.

“We have some ideas for new projects related to spectrum management,” say Fitch and Lehne enigmatically. But before they come back to that, we’ll have the opportunity to catch up with them in London, when they will reveal all findings of the project.