Bristol boffins blast 1.59 Gbps down ONE 20 MHz channel In what's being touted as a “5G breakthrough”, University of Bristol researchers have demonstrated that MIMO (multi-in, multi-out) antenna arrangements can be scaled up to more than 100 transmitters. The demonstration, as described in a canned statement, used 128 antennas transmitting to as many as 12 single-antenna clients …
A thought occurs:
As this is quite obviously one of the best ways to use radio frequencies efficiently, and that it relies on there being many small antennae, and also that there be a wide range of paths, interference, distance, obstacles, etc. between the sender and receiver...
Is this not something we should expect an alien civilisation to use when communicating between systems?
As the receiver needs "only a single antenna" and a lot of processing, and the sender can send from 128 different antennae, surely that's perfect for a communication system from one star system to another, with antenna on different planets (or different points of the same planet), and any amount of space-stuff in between (even space warped by gravity of other planets etc.)?
Not saying we have any clue how to listen for that, or how to determine how it's arranged, but it would seem to be the no-brainer application of something like MIMO to form the basis of a deep space network from a single original star system
Just needs a very big dish. The efficiency of dish goes up with cube of frequency, hence long distance UHF uses maybe an array 4, 8 or 16 yagi aerials, but microwaves use a dish (MMDS, Satellite TV etc).
Additionally the reasonable range for radio due to power constraints is maybe less than 100 LY. OTH using spectroscopic analysis we could be detected maybe 10,000 LY away due to unnatural signature of gasses in atmosphere.
Latency also becomes an issue for Interstellar radio, with a RTT of maybe 150 years if we are lucky to have a sentient neighbour with radio (if even 100,000 planets with life in Milky Way, then chance is less than 1/4,000 roughly that a neighbour has life and tinier that they have civilisation, tinier still that they they are advanced enough to have radio, tinier still they point a dish at us. Terrestrial broadcasts are not likely to be receivable more than 10 LY distance.
"Is this not something we should expect an alien civilisation to use when communicating between systems?"
What "this"? Radio, transmitted conventionally through free space? Don't think so.
Ask yourself this: Do you really believe that in the next few thousand years we won't invent anything better?
Now ask yourself this: If alien civilisations only use radio on a large scale for a few centuries of their entire history, what are the odds that one of those civilisations happens to be passing through those few centuries at the same time as we are AND is within range for us to pick it up?
No, 5G is about integrating infrastructures.
This is a just a development of MIMO. Likely not much relevant to the real world, where on average MIMO adds a LOT of cost (all those aerials, LNAs, PAs, cables, couplers, band & dublex filters etc) for very little or no extra revenue.
Massive MIMO is widely reported as one of the key technologies behind 5G. Below 6GHz there's no more spectrum available to operators to meet the growing capacity demands of their customers. How will integrating infrastructure provide a 1000 times more capacity? Another option is to use the mmWave bands, but these frequencies won't be available in the UK for quite a while. I agree that Integrating infrastructures is a core part of 5G, with SDN and network virtualisation set to play a major role. However 5G needs a number of things to come together, and a radically more spectrally efficient radio layer for me is one of them.
Prof. Nix "...no more spectrum available..."
Smaller 'cells' is the entire point of cellular.
More and more cell towers, but shorter and shorter.
It's happening in my neighbourhood. They're dropped the antennas about halfway down the original 250+ foot mast, and they keep installing more and more increasingly short towers.
edit: I see your name mentioned in the release. :-)
Question.
"Hence scaling that up to 128 paths demands serious signal processing, carried out by four FPGAs in the Bristol demonstration."
Four total, or four per antenna? Four total isn't much.
Thanks.
There is plenty of spectrum, it just needs operators to use it better. They need to invest more in femtocells and other small cell architectures to off-load capacity at a local level.
In my view 5G is technology m*sturbation, operators need to work harder with what they have.
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This post has been deleted by its author
LoS microwave can already give 10 Mb/s (presuming you mean 'b' = 'bit'), on a good day. One of my sisters-in-law lives in the depths of darkest Powys, 17 miles from the nearest exchange, which means ADSL is about the same bandwidth as a runner with a cleft stick. She's got LoS microwave from Airband (IIRC) which gives her 10-12 Mb/s in good weather and when uncontested. Evening/weekends it drops due to contention, and heavy rain degrades it to 3-4 Mb/s. Still, it's not like you get much rain in Wales, is it? (I'm digging out the oilskins for a visit next week.)
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