Ken, thanks for pointing this out.
Department 3G
Lucent's Bell Labs has a head start producing the third generation of wireless communications.
By Blaise Zerega
Red Herring magazine
From the August 1999 issue
Unleashed from AT&T (NYSE: T) in 1996 (along with NCR [NYSE: NCR]), Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) is the envy of wireless-equipment makers. It is the only company that can boast a 75-year tradition of scientific research and development as embodied by Bell Labs, the lion's share of which Lucent retained when it broke from AT&T. Bell Labs has produced multiple Nobel Prize winners, the transistor, the laser, and the communications satellite -- in addition to inventing a portable phone for automobiles back in 1924. (The equipment necessary to power the phone took up the entire backseat and trunk of a car.) Lucent rotates its 24,000 researchers between its Bell Labs facilities in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and its business units throughout the world.
Earthbound
The Red Eye basks in the Sun
Forget brand, the Net's about spam
THE WIRELESS MECCA
These days, researchers at Lucent -- which had an R&D budget of $3.7 billion for 1998 -- are inventing some of the third-generation, or 3G, technologies that will transform broadband wireless services from abstract propositions into commercial products. Though the relationship between pure science and the art of commerce is not always apparent, Lucent has been highly successful both in doing the research to meet commercial needs and in finding practical applications for many noncommissioned inventions. "Sometimes the business purpose of our wireless research may not be obvious," says David Poticny, vice president of strategy for Lucent's wireless network infrastructure group. "But the explosive growth of wireless phones is creating an unforeseen need for things that we are only beginning to explore."
Two years ago, Lucent scientists decided to tackle the problem of call signal interference caused by too many cell phones in a small area. The researchers were inspired by an extreme case: Ramadan, the monthlong Islamic observation during which some 2 million pilgrims travel to Mecca for fasting and prayer. "We estimate that within a 1,500-square-meter area, probably 600,000 people are trying to use their cell phones" during the event, says Mr. Poticny.
Bell Labs' technologies-in-progress range from the practical to the arcane.
Carly Fiorina is the woman behind Lucent's IPO.
Relying on complex mathematical calculations, Lucent scientists developed a method of dynamic channel allocation that reuses low-power radio channels and routes calls over any available frequency. This technology is now incorporated into many of the company's cellular base stations and helps steer calls within, for example, densely populated skyscrapers.
Rich Howard, director of wireless research at Bell Labs, characterizes much of Lucent's innovation as finding ways "to cheat around technological problems." The results, he says, are often smaller, cheaper, and faster applications of technology that "make it possible to rethink everything."
Fifty years ago, for example, a Bell Labs mathematician named Claude Shannon developed a formula that determined the information-carrying capacity of any transmission system by calculating the available bandwidth and the interference, or "noise," at work. Until 1997 most researchers had used Shannon's theory only for transmissions between single radios, but Lucent researchers posed the question, What if a cluster of radios transmitted a divided signal to another cluster of radios? By using a computer to reassemble the divided signal from the receiving radios, the researchers not only got the call through, but also increased the transmission system's carrying capacity.
BLAST IMPERFECT
This research led to a multiple-antenna transmitting system called Blast (for Bell Labs layered space time), unveiled in September 1998, that can pack 10 to 20 times more information on a frequency. Though Blast currently works only for one-way transmissions, there are certainly two-way possibilities to pursue.
Such possibilities are particularly important given the current pricing trends. "What's really changed are assumptions about cost," Mr. Howard says. "Today the equipment is relatively cheap, but the airwaves -- once thought of as free -- are very expensive." As wireless phones become ubiquitous, wireless carriers will rely on data services to make up revenues lost by the expected price erosion in voice services. "The carriers will likely put the price squeeze on equipment makers like Lucent," says Andrew Cole, a principal at Renaissance Worldwide, an IT consulting firm. According to Mr. Cole, however, Lucent will be able to resist pressure to drop prices on its equipment for two reasons: the carriers will need Lucent's equipment to remain competitive, and Lucent's excellent research could likely reduce the cost of equipment while preserving profit margins.
WELL CONNECTED
Earlier this year, for example, Bell Labs scientists perfected a way to put a microphone on a chip inside wireless phones, knocking down the price of microphones currently in use from a few cents to about one-tenth of a cent. And there are other advantages, says Mr. Howard. "Now, instead of one microphone, a cell phone can have many microphones, perhaps one day capable of filtering out sounds like the kids in the backseat, the radio, and traffic noise when you're making a call while driving."
In May Lucent announced a technology that will allow both voice and data traffic to travel more efficiently across packet networks over existing infrastructures that are based on GSM (the wireless-network standard for Europe and much of the world). Known as PacketGSM, this technology processes and sends call signals as data packets and will help service carriers migrate their networks to support 3G multimedia applications and services, which will require data rates of up to 2 Mbps. According to Mr. Poticny, moving data as packets is the cheapest way to achieve this high speed.
At Lucent's Product Realization Center in Milpitas, California, researchers transform broadband wireless innovations into commercial products. In use throughout the facility is a wireless point-to-multipoint broadband access system that effectively eliminates the need for the various proprietary cables connecting printers, monitors, and telephones to a wire-line local area network. The technology, called OnDemand Wireless Access, allows simultaneous wireless voice calls, Internet access, broadband videoconferencing, and narrowband videocast.
The system demonstrates Lucent's view of the interconnectedness of science and commerce. "We're not just making a product that works; we're making a product that we can manufacture," says Mark Dale, director of systems engineering at the center. OnDemand Wireless Access was made available in April and will be used by Advanced Radio Telecom to build broadband wireless networks in Seattle and Washington, D.C.
In the next few years, even as the penetration of cell phones approaches 70 percent worldwide and 3G technologies become commonplace, wire-line connectivity will not become obsolete, Mr. Poticny says. Integrating it, and perhaps satellite systems as well, with tomorrow's new 3G networks should provide Lucent's researchers with plenty of challenges. And building a global network may prove to be their next big thing.
|
