PROMOTING ENGINEERING EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

WIRELESS
COMMUNICATIONS
TO 2020 AND BEYOND
Professor William Webb FREng, Head of Research at Ofcom,
made a series of predictions 10 years ago for the future of
wireless communications. Now, as we enter a new decade,
many of the developments he forecast have come about
but others have been delayed or not taken up at all. He tells
Ingenia why second-guessing the possible innovations in
this area is important and what trends we can expect to see
in the next 10 years and beyond.
Prince Philip meets engineering students from Imperial College on his visit to the Constructionarium at Bircham Newton in 2006. The Constructionarium enables
students to spend a week building sizeable scale model versions of existing structures onsite © Imperial College, London

As the ever-growing human population apprentice joiner in 1957.
Through night school and day
consumes more and more of the earth’s natural release he obtained an HNC
and HND. During his career he
resources, it is going to take all the ingenuity of has been responsible for great
inventors, engineers and designers to maintain engineering works, including
the construction of Hong Kong’s
the rate of improvements in the developed new Chek Lap Kok airport. His
career illustrates how valuable
societies and to bring better standards of living a combination of academic and
to more and more people in the less prosperous practical skills can be to achieve
success in major engineering
countries of the world. projects.
As the ever-growing human
population consumes more
and more of the earth’s natural
resources, it is going to take
all the ingenuity of inventors,
engineers and designers
to maintain the rate of
improvements in the developed
societies and to bring better
standards of living to more
and more people in the less
prosperous countries of the
world. If this is to be achieved
during the 21st century, the
challenges for the professional
institutions and the Academy
will be to make sure that bright
young people, whatever their
background, who aspire to do
something creative and fulfilling
with their lives, can achieve their
ambition through engineering.
Copyright reserved

16 INGENIA ISSUE 41 DECEMBER 2009 Wireless router © Tor Lindqvist - iStockphoto INGENIA ISSUE 41 DECEMBER 2009 17
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS – TO 2020 AND BEYOND
Multiple devices around the home can be connected together with a wireless network © Celeno Communications
Predictions are essential in many industries;
they are the basis on which investment
decisions are made and business cases
built. They influence the formation of new
companies and the directions of major ones.
This is particularly the case in areas seen as
fast-moving such as telecommunications,
where making the right call about a future
trend could be the difference between a
company succeeding or failing.
Predictions in the telecommunications
industry are seen as particularly difficult
to make because the technology, and the
industry itself, appear to change so rapidly.
In the year 2000, in an effort to show that
clear and accurate predictions were possible,
I authored a book entitled The Future of
Wireless Communications.
After a detailed look at the key drivers,
the book made specific predictions on
how the world of wireless communications
would look in 2005, 2010, 2015 and
2020. The predictions in this book and a
second one titled Wireless Communications:
The Future (published in 2006) were
made taking a range of factors into
account, including network modelling
to understand the capacity and costs of
18 INGENIA ISSUE 41 DECEMBER 2009
underlying communications networks, an
understanding of factors such as Moore’s
Law (see panel opposite), a look back of up
to 20 years to understand what had actually
happened and where predictions had been
in error, assessment of standards currently
being developed, input from six ‘gurus’ as to
their views and predictions from experts in
specific areas such as screen technology. As
we enter a new decade it is timely to review
how accurate my predictions have been so
far and to ask whether we should refine our
vision for wireless communications over the
next decade, to 2020 and beyond.
Predictions FROM 2000
Back in 2000, I predicted that by 2010
homes would become wireless hotspots,
with dedicated home networks likely to
be using Bluetooth technology. Most
homes would be connected via broadband
sufficiently fast to deliver high definition
TV. Mobile phones, which I suggested
might be better termed ‘communicator
devices’ by 2010, would have a wide range
of functionality and would work with these
home networks. Allowing phones to work
in the home and office would bring a need
for work-life differentiation which would
be solved by redirection functions in the
network that reformatted, forwarded or
sent incoming messages to message boxes
according to circumstances and preferences.
I thought back then that by now video
communications would be making up
around 2% of calls.
I predicted that people would
communicate more readily with machines
using speech recognition and machines
would increasingly communicate with each
other. Networks would have packet-based
core networks and public wireless internet
hot spots would become commonplace.
Most of these ideas have come about.
Homes have deployed wireless nodes,
albeit WiFi rather than Bluetooth. Mobile
phone handsets can work on in-home WiFi
networks – although this functionality is
not yet widely deployed, more because it
has not been in the commercial interests
of cellular operators to see this happen
rather than due to any underlying technical
reason. Broadband connections are available
to most homes and are close to providing
high definition TV capabilities; where not
available, recent Government initiatives
suggest that public funding will be used to
address this ‘digital divide’ over the next five
years or so. Public W-LAN (Wireless Local
Area Network) hotspots are now ubiquitous
in city buildings.
Some of my predictions proved
over-optimistic. ‘Redirection functions’,
where messages would be intelligently
re-routed, have not occurred because
they have proven overly complex to build;
instead users have made use of different
communications mechanisms to handle
different message priorities. The prediction
that speech recognition would be perfected
by 2010 and would become the principal
way for people to interact with machines,
rather than using keyboards, appeared
entirely plausible in 2000 given the rapid
progress that had been made in the late
1990s. But this progress slowed and it
proved very difficult to get accuracy up
from around the 98% mark to the near 100%
level needed to make it useful. Speech
recognition is still making slow progress
and is finding more applications, especially
where the vocabulary it needs to recognise
can be limited – for example when checking
a train timetable – but it may be another
10 years before it comes into widespread
usage.
Video communications are more widely
used, from the basic (but free) Skype services
to the advanced video conferencing suites
pioneered by Cisco Systems. However, it
has proven to be of very little interest to
mobile phone users. Nevertheless, the basic
premise that video communications would
grow but would still be a minor part of
overall communications was about right.
While these specific predictions do not
seem far off, and certainly suggest that
predictions 10 years into the future are
possible, more telling was the day-in-the-
life vignette I created to illustrate what new
technology applications might be available
for the modern executive on his or her way
to work. Their electronic communicator
would control the home heating and hot
water and would download journey details
to a car satnav. Personalised news would be
delivered to a car audio and emails would
be automatically read as they drove – none
of these developments is widely available
yet although other predictions were more
successful, such as the widespread use of
wireless hotspots in airports and hotels and
having limited email facilities when flying.
More than guesswork
So what lessons can we learn from the past?
The first point of note from comparing
prediction with reality is that the technology
and networks that underlie the world of
wireless communications change much
more slowly than is widely assumed. Where
predictions were in error it was always due
to predicting that change would happen
more quickly than it transpired.
The second point of note is that the
technological predictions were generally
the most accurate. Predictions of data
rates and device capabilities were rarely in
error. The spread of technology, in terms
of the number of devices in homes, chips
in handsets and so on were also generally
accurate. With many laws of progression
such as the well-known Moore’s Law and
laws specific to telecommunications such
as Cooper’s Law (see panel below) of voice
capacity as well as observations I made
on consistent progressing in areas such as
storage capabilities this area of prediction is
relatively easy.
My predictions of services or functionality
available to end-users were almost always
too optimistic. Home automation of any
sort appears stubbornly slow, although
perhaps energy efficiency concerns might
drive some changes in the future. Even
more in error were my predictions of
‘personalised’ services where mobile devices
made intelligent decisions on behalf of their
owners, covering features from message
processing to automatic re-routing of travel
plans. Further understanding of the social
difficulties involved in the acceptance of
such ideas now suggests these products
Laws explained
Moore’s Law: states that the number of transistors that can be cheaply placed on a
microchip doubles approximately every two years and, therefore, that computer power
also exponentially increases at the same rate.
Cooper’s Law: states that the number of voice calls – or data – that can be sent over the
usable radio spectrum doubles every 30 months.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
may never emerge, with users instead
finding specific solutions to specific needs,
such as applications or widgets that perform
functions like accessing train timetables.
The safest bet when predicting how people
will take up new wireless technologies,
particularly those which involve the devices
exhibiting greater intelligence, is to expect
little.
FUTURE Implications
As we enter a new decade, there are many
exciting developments that surround the
area of wireless communications. Here are a
few that I suggested back in 2006 and some
additional ideas that should have a good
chance of becoming reality.
On a larger scale, I still believe that
telephone networks will gradually be
upgraded to fibre to the home enabling
almost unlimited applications with much
of the deployment being completed by
2021. I see little change in wide-area
cellular networks, except that smaller cells
will be used over most of the UK by 2016,
with a consequent increase in capacity
and small improvement in coverage. I do
foresee a huge increase in WiFi and indoor
wireless coverage between 2011 and 2016,
with wireless increasingly embedded in
many standard appliances from electricity
meters to home security systems and
washing machines. This would then unlock
a rapid growth in home automation and
networking by 2021.
However, as we saw above, just because
an application is possible does not mean
that it will be taken up by the market. It
is clear that most predictions that involve
changes in behaviour are overly optimistic
as to the length of time it takes to introduce
new ideas. Personalised services such as
INGENIA ISSUE 41 DECEMBER 2009 19
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS – TO 2020 AND BEYOND
Launched in autumn 2009, this digital radio streams WiFi. It has a touchscreen keyboard and social
networking plug-in applications including Twitter and Facebook. It screens slide shows from radio
stations, and can provide newsfeeds and weather reports to view © PURE
those that automatically generate travel
plans when there are delays or cancellations
now look as if they may never appear and
instead users will persist in using a range of
separate applications that they select to suit
their needs. This is a social phenomenon,
not a technical issue.
Potential developments
Even given these limitations on the power
of prediction, it is highly likely that the end
user’s experience of wireless will change
significantly over the coming years. For
example, within the next 10 years, we
could see the emergence of the sort of
people locator featured in Harry Potter: a
device that sits on a worktop and shows
the location of different members of a
community – perhaps a family or school
class – at a glance showing locations such
as work, school, home or travelling. This
could be readily implemented today with
location information derived either directly
from a phone handset using its GPS or
using WiFi-based positioning functionality
and sent via standard data networks to a
small display.
With location functionality widely
available on standard devices, getting lost
accidentally will also become a thing of the
past Not only will devices provide directions
but they could provide much more
information. Handsets will show a picture of
what the user can see in any direction but
20 INGENIA ISSUE 41 DECEMBER 2009
superimposed with information such as the
name of buildings or the location of coffee
shops. Specific services could be provided
to the partially sighted such as voice
commands or phone vibrations in certain
patterns to indicate direction changes
needed.
In the world of healthcare, wireless
communications have the potential
to become one of our most valuable
technologies to support our ageing
population with home networks
monitoring the wellbeing of the elderly
or infirm and informing the health service
or carers if there are problems. Wireless
networks can dispense medication and
note if it is not taken correctly. Sensors,
perhaps embedded in a bathroom mirror,
could enable real time remote health
monitoring for the unwell. Entertainment
devices such as the Nintendo Wii can both
entertain and simultaneously monitor
cognitive functions. They could even
help those with memory problems by
monitoring behaviour and prompting
people as to what they were doing and
guiding them home if they get lost.
In the area of transport, wireless could allow
cars to drive closer together, automatically
braking vehicles to avoid collisions and
calling the emergency services should an
accident happen. Wireless devices could be
used to tag travel baggage so that an owner
would know exactly where it was in the
INNOVATION
A FLEXIBLE
system or allow real-time CCTV monitoring
of passengers in train carriages.
Wireless finance could facilitate payment
using a mobile phone – either by touching
the phone on a sensor or by a mechanism
JET FIGHTER
akin to a premium text message. Indeed,
early versions of this are already being
trialled in a number of cities worldwide.
Wireless can navigate us through the
world, not just providing directions but
showing us what points of interest are
nearby and providing further information
or helping with specific functions such as
graphically showing all homes for sale in the
vicinity along with the price and contact
information. The inherently conflicting requirements of high speed, range,
Lessons from the past 10 years suggest
that although technology trends were
manoevrability, payload and short take-off and vertical landing have
reasonably well predicted, the time taken for been optimised in the world’s largest fighter aircraft programme.
new ideas that involved social changes to
lift off was often greatly underestimated. The
Neil Mehta of Rolls-Royce, who is Programme Executive for the Joint
question for the next decade is whether this Strike Fighter LiftSystem® writes for Ingenia about the engineering
phenomenon will continue. The changes
needed in social behaviour to exploit new
challenges involved in producing a propulsion system for the F-35
technologies will always be slower than series of planes.
the technological development itself? Or
is it simply the case that, until now, the
rate of social change has lagged behind
technology for reasons of unfamiliarity or
social convention?
If that is the case, we could expect that
as new ways of using wireless permeate
society and a new generation adapt ever
more quickly to new ideas, the take up of
new technologies could accelerate and even
outpace our capacity to predict and deliver
the engineering behind the idea.
BIOGRAPHY –
Professor William Webb FREng
William Webb joined Ofcom as Head of
Technology Resources in 2003 where
he leads on key policy and research
activities. He previously worked for a
range of communications consultancies
in the UK and spent three years
providing strategic management across
Motorola’s entire communications
portfolio. William has published 10
books, is a Visiting Professor at Surrey
University and a Vice President and
Fellow of the IET.
A STOVL variant, F-35B, pictured on a test flight with lift fan door open. Fort Worth, Texas, August 2008 © Lockheed Martin INGENIA ISSUE 41 DECEMBER 2009 21