In Building Wireless: The Next Generation

BY ARUN HANDA

Wireless in the enterprise created a buzz in the last decade and fell short of expectations. Emerging silently however, is the next generation of in-building wireless that has all the ingredients to produce a winner. We circumspect at an exciting prospect of seeing a billion dollar industry take shape with cost-effective infrastructure spun from IP, VoWLAN and Optical RF distribution technologies, about what is new and better this time.

But to shrug off the skepticism of the wireless operators that have long waited for the promise is not going to be easy. Let's take a quick look at the evolution of the in-building wireless solution. We see three generations of in-building wireless that align themselves well to the macro-cellular environments that they augment.

Historically the challenges that in-building wireless had set to solve were seamless coverage indoors and more effective utilization of network bandwidth. In the early days of analog cellular, coverage in building tended to get spotty and thats when solutions of using micro-cellular base stations could help in providing better coverage at a lower infrastructure cost. So FDMA systems such as CT2 and PHP filled in. The PBX world also saw an opportunity and took initiatives to wirelessly enable their PBXs with radio systems. Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and Mitel came out with their solutions during this time.

However, the meteoric rise of TDMA/GSM systems stunted these systems. This started the digital generation and the broad concept was to provide picocellular support via the same public frequency or frequency reuse. So for TDMA networks, it was IS-136 for both outdoor and indoor. GSM networks used GSM for indoors as well or a variant -- DECT for the in-building coverage. Systems such as the Ericsson-MobileAdvantage, Hughes-WOS, AGCS-Roameo and Cisco-MNET came close to delivering great promise but did not sustain.

SO WHAT IS DIFFERENT NOW?
While the networks are converging with GSM and CDMA with the 3G rollouts, the actual impetus has come from the proliferation of both IP and the access technology for wireless LAN access. That encompasses the technologies gaining momentum: WiFi/WiMax, Bluetooth and Zigbee. So conceptually, while all the in-building wireless generations all have similarities, the current in-building wireless generation has by far the greatest asset. That is low infrastructure cost.

Traditionally, in-building wireless systems have faced the following challenges:

• Infrastructure costs, while lower than establishing macro-cellular coverage, were substantially high;

• Integrating with TDM switching was not easy technically or financially;

• Although the value proposition was well understood, the revenue model for the operators was not clearly understood; and

• Frequency reuse and use of the licensed spectrum was an inhibitor for smaller players to get into the game.

Although operators are still waiting for the solutions to mature, it is clear that the new breed is here to shape a new generation of in-building wireless.

MARKET TRENDS
While the market has got a boost from the recent funding of startup companies such as Kineto Wireless ($24M) and RadioFrame Networks ($12M), this validation has given a boost to innovative companies rather than the major wireless players. The market dynamics seem to be settling into two groups of technologies that are active or passive entities in the service network. The entities range from basic repeaters, distributed antenna systems and access points. The equipment makers in this space are Andrew Wireless, LGC Communications, MobileAccess and Spotwave to name a few.

ABI Wireless gives a promising forecast of the market to grow to about $1.3B by 2009.

EXCITING TECHNOLOGIES BUILDING UP
The impact of IP in the enterprise has been the primary impetus for a lowered infrastructure cost. The promise to further enable wireless LANs with 802.11/Bluetooth broadband solutions has brought wireless access to the desktop. This is leading to further lowering of both capex and opex in the enterprise. The integration of optical technology into RF distribution provides an elegant solution to the spotty RF coverage problem even for the licensed public frequency bands. Both WLAN access points and RF-distributors offer a much greater promise over a micro/pico-cellular solution.

VoIP is here to stay and VoWLAN is not far behind. All eyes are on 802.11e to reduce the latency/jitter issues.

The other trend that is taking place is the connectivity to the macro-cellular network. While the second-generation systems would appear as an MSC to the macro-cellular MSC, the operators did not favor this approach. A WOS network was an isolated network private to a control of the MSC and that required allocation of point-codes for each that are not visible to the rest of the cellular network. A signaling gateway to provide this point code isolation solved that challenge. But the issue of providing service interoperability such as voice mail at two locations remained a challenge. However the trend is aligning towards the 3GPP-R4/R5 architecture. A wireless office connects as a BSC or a RAN to the macro-cellular network and connectivity is purely via IP.

SERVICES REMAIN THE KEY DIFFERENTIATOR
In a typical scenario, driving on her way to work, Kathy receives a call on her handheld device -- a PDA phone. Russ needs to close a deal in the next hour and needs a commitment for an additional 400 power supplies delivered by Friday. Walking towards the elevator, Kathy puts him on hold, checks her co-worker buddy list and pushes to talk to Mike, her assembly line manager. Mike, who is currently away from his desk, tells her they can and sends her the current assembly line utilization data. Kathy takes a quick look and gives a green signal. The deal is done. 

No phone tag, no paging, less voice mail and higher productivity. A single device, a single number and a follow-me service. And little did Kathy and Russ realize that as soon as Kathy walked into her office building, the call handed off seamlessly from the CDMA network to Bluetooth and behind the scenes SIP enabled further conversation with Mike.

While the first generation did not even support Caller ID, message waiting and SMS, 2G introduced a rich feature set to the users. This was a blend of best-of-breed services from the cellular network as well as the PBX. So, for instance, a do-not-disturb feature for the handset and call transfers between a handset and deskset became a reality.

But now voice holds little novelty. The new generation has to provide a seamless execution of both voice and data and very soon multimedia services as well. Corporate usage of IM has increased and services that include presence and push-to-talk are required for support in this generation as well.

More challenging are the mandates for E-911 location tracking that have to be supported. The current generation of in-building wireless systems offers an added degree of accuracy to location tracking, which is namely the third dimension. An E-911 call today from a 50-story high-rise can pinpoint the street address, but not beyond.

Seamless mobility, total coverage and a feature-rich service are the key forces to propel mere access technologies to realize the great wireless dream in the enterprise. This concept is nothing new, but seems to be getting better as it ages and this time the timing and drivers seem to have it right. This will remain the differentiator between enterprise wireless solutions.

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