Broadband Wireless Access

Broadband wireless access technologies (BWA) that have the potential to enable BT to re-enter the mobility market and deliver broadband wireless access services are evolving rapidly and in such a way that it is unclear what the best options for service delivery will be or will become. To be able to better assess the opportunities/threats that the evolving BWA technologies will create for BT, an increased understanding is needed of the performance/capacity limits of the various licensed/license-exempt systems. The systems of particular interest currently are WiFi, WiMAX, 3G and their continued evolution. The particular research topics, which also draw upon Mobile VCE activities and other collaborations as necessary, fall into the following three categories:

Advanced Antenna Technology

This activity is aimed at verifying both theoretically and experimentally the potential benefits of using advanced antenna techniques in future wireless communication systems, with an emphasis on the practical benefits that can be achieved.

License-Exempt Wireless Systems

This activity is researching performance and operational issues of using license-exempt spectrum to provide ADSL communication speeds in high density urban deployments. The emphasis is on forming insights into the fundamental performance barriers and those that could be removed by appropriate changes to current systems.

Future Co-Operative Wireless Systems

This work activity is more exploratory than the other two and is researching into the potential future benefits of using advanced co-operative control techniques to enable wireless systems to dynamically co-exist in ways that are impossible today. An aspect of particular interest is how advances in this area might impact future approaches to spectrum regulation.

The Broadband Wireless Access research theme is led by Terry Hodgkinson.