David Falconer is a Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His current research interests center around beyond-third-generation broadband wireless communications systems. He was the Chair of Working Group 4 (New Radio Interfaces, Relay-Based Systems and Smart Antennas) of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) in 2004 and 2005, and is also a participant in the European 6th Framework WINR (Wireless Initiative New Radio) integrated project. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Air Interfaces for Future-Generation Cellular Wireless Systems
David Falconer
Dept. of Systems and Computer Engineering
Carleton University, Ottawa
Tuesday, May 15, 2007 (Scheduled Presentation Date)
In response to increasing demands for true multimedia telecommunications
services anywhere any time there are concerted efforts worldwide towards the
definition and development of "future-generation" wireless systems which may be
expected to enter service within the next ten years. These will differ from
current and near-future systems such as second- and third-generation cellular,
WiFI, WiMAX and 3G long term evolution systems, in several important aspects:
- The radio system will configure itself and adapt to a users' needs, the
capabilities of the user's terminal, and to the environment scenario. A "user"
may be a person or a device, such as a sensor. The system can easily adapt to
local hot spot, metropolitan area or wide area scenarios, static or
fast-moving.
- The system will support high user densities and a very wide range of user bit
rates - Kilobits per second to hundreds of Megabits per second.
- All this will be achieved with efficient spectrum usage and sharing, low cost,
and acceptably low terminal power consumption.
Such future wireless systems (sometimes called "fourth generation" (4G),
sometimes called "beyond third generation" (B3G)), capable of transporting very
high bit rates in non-ideal radio propagation environments, must be robust to
severe frequency selective multipath. Further requirements include moderate
terminal and base station hardware costs, high spectral efficiency, and
scalability of the cost of terminals with respect to their maximum bit rate
capabilities.
Reconfigurable air interfaces, based on frequency domain transmission and
reception methods, best meet these requirements, by adaptively selecting the
uplink and downlink modulation and multiple access scheme that is most
appropriate for the channel, interference, traffic and cost constraints.
In this talk we discuss a generalized frequency domain-based approach to
next-generation wireless air interfaces, presenting examples and research
results, including channel estimation and power amplifier linearity issues.
Our coverage of the topics is influenced by our participation in the European
WINNER Project and in WWRF (Wireless World Research Forum).
