Some Thoughts and Suggestions About B3G

1 Necessity for China to Pay Attention to B3G
For 2G and 2.5G mobile communication technologies, Chinese telecom enterprises have no proprietary intellectual property rights, so they have to keep suffering from the control of property right owners. As for the industry of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), China has a strong downstream industry with excellent equipment vendors and operators, however, the upstream industry including the provision of intellectual property rights and chip manufacture has completely been in the hands of enterprises from the United States and Europe.

  It is well known that certain standard organizations and big companies in developed countries have made a large number of technical standards and technology systems, and they make full use of their standards and intellectual property rights to earn enormous profits. Besides, with their authorization, chip manufacturers offer equipment vendors with chips, so the chip manufacturers can also make fortunes. Unfortunately, most equipment vendors from China, without the intellectual property rights of core technologies, can only use cheap labor to gain meager money by product assembly.

  Nowadays, the big scale of Chinese ICT industry has made it one of the big fishes in the global telecom pond. However, China still lags far behind developed telecom countries in core technologies and comprehensive benefits, especially in technical creativity and core competence. Current Chinese ICT industry is a big one but not a powerful one. We should fully understand that the change from a big telecom country into a powerful one is our strategic goal. The sustainable development of Chinese telecom industry can only be realized by actively developing core technologies and gaining their intelligent property rights, by improving the core competence and by promoting new product development and technology applications. This is the only road to a powerful telecom country.

  The standards are playing a more and more important role in profiting in the time of economic globalization. In the ICT industry, the competition for standard making is more important than that for technology innovation.

  The research report of "Technology and National Benefits" also says that making the standard strategy is a key step for China to improve its national competence. In the fields of intelligent property rights and standard making, China must develop the cooperation among the government, research institutes and enterprises. With enhancing the technical cooperation between enterprises and making technology alliances, enterprise-led industrial associations and association standards may gradually emerge. With active participation in international standardization and standard making and technical cooperation with enterprises from developed countries, the core competence and international positions of Chinese enterprises may be improved.

  Chinese Technology Policies After WTO Entry: Standards, Software and Change of
Neo-Techno-Nationalism[1], a special report from the National Bureau of Asian Research, points out that "there are techno-nationalism and techno-globalism in today’s world, and the techno-nationalism includes the old techno-nationalism and neo-techno-nationalism. Neo-techno-nationalism means to make use of chances brought by globalization to pursue technology development to the good of national economy and security, serving the nation in international competition. The Chinese standard strategy is different from old techno-nationalism, which requires China to pay attention to existing international standards, cooperate with foreign institutes, and coordinate the relationship between public departments and private companies in a new way."

  Therefore, it is necessary for Chinese enterprises to do research on Beyond 3G (B3G), to take part in international standard making and to draft their own B3G standards as soon as possible. For understanding B3G better, we should be aware of the features of the contemporary infocommunications and the development trend of mobile communications.

2 Characteristics of Infocommunication

2.1 Four Laws Followed by Development Rate
The development rate of microelectronics—the base of infocommunication, is expected to keep following Moore’s Law till the beginning of the 21st century.
Moore’s Law and Bell’s Law:

• The chip integration density is doubled every 18 months.
• The rate of the processor is doubled every 18 months.
• The chip cost is halved every 18 months.
  

  

  However, with a quicker rate, the development of infocommunication networks follows Gilder’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law.
Gilder’s Law:

• Data traffic is doubled every 6 months.
• Bandwidth of backbone network is doubled every 6 months.
  

  Metcalfe’s Law: Network value rises in direct ratio to the square of network subscribers.
25 Moore’s periods have passed since 1965. The integration density and operation rate of microelectronics have improved by 1 billion times, while the cost reduced by 1 billion times, which has made great contributions to improving personal mobile communication systems and reducing the cost and service charges.

2.2 Four Development Trends Driven by Demands
The development of microelectronics promotes the sustainable development of ICT, which may cause 4 "outweighing" phenomena before 2010: data services outweighing voice services, packet switching outweighing circuit switching, software outweighing hardware, and mobile communication outweighing fixed communication.

• Data services are outweighing voice services, driven by information demands.
  With the sharp increase of information demands, data services will outweigh voice services in developed countries in 3 years, and account for 90%, even 95%, of the total services.
• Packet switching is outweighing circuit switching, driven by economic demands.
  With packet technologies, it is unnecessary to provide a special circuit for a call, and the transmission cost of 1 Mb data traffic had been reduced from 37 US cents in 1998 to 4 US cents at the beginning of 2004. Therefore, economic demands may drive the whole next generation backbone network to use packet switching to replace circuit switching.
• Software is outweighing hardware, driven by technology demands.
  Software can be used to implement multiple functions and recommendations of multiple standards. It is the basis of multi-system handsets and multi-functional base stations. It has great openness and flexibility. Therefore, it will replace hardware to become the main part of infocommunication equipment.
• Mobile communication is outweighing fixed communication, driven by personalized demands.
  With personalized demands, the subscribers, service traffic and network infrastructure of mobile communication will exceed those of fixed communication. The mobile communication network is growing from a complement of the fixed communication network into an individual and important network.
  

3 Development Trends of  Infocommunication Networks

3.1 Development Trends of Wireless Mobile  Networks
As the access network of the whole infocommunication system, wireless mobile networks will evolve in the following manner:

• Changing from voice technologies and services into data and multimedia services.
• Convergence of the mobile network and the Internet, two hot networks in today’s ICT field.
• The next generation mobile communication network will be the IP network with high data rate and broad bandwidth, supporting multimedia services and any mobile environments.

3.2 Prospect Analysis of Mobile IP Network

• Communication between humans: the popularity may exceed 70% of the global population.
• Communication between human and machines: the utilization may be beyond 100% of the global population.
• Communication between machines: the utilization may even surpass 300% of the global population.

3.3 Architecture of Future Network
Based on the rapid development of microelectronics technology, optical communication technology and wireless communication technology, a new generation integrated infocommunication network may include:

• An IP-based optical network as the core network.
• An IP-based wireless mobile network as the access network.
  

  Both the revolution of communication mechanism and the development of broadband IP technology make a foundation for the growth of network economy.

3.4 Network in Future
The following pictures will come true in the future after the convergence of the three networks:

• Wireless access available no matter at home or in office
• Online entertainment and online business
• Competition between the Internet and the cable TV network
• Popularity of video telephone after the telephone and TV are integrated
• 24-hour design and development by worldwide research and development institutes
  

    In the future, ICT will make people:

• Wear the computer on head.
• Read e-book anywhere.
• Use the brain as a remote controller.
• Have no way to escape from the network.
  

  The handset in future will become:

• A daily life tool with functions such as connection with electrical home appliances and health monitoring.
• A working tool to pay as a bank card, to take public transportations as a ticket, to position and pilot as an electronic map and to take part in meetings.
• A study tool with functions such as looking up words, computing and accessing the Internet.
  

4 B3G
Only with the understanding of characteristics of infocommunication and development trends of mobile communication can the B3G development be controlled towards a correct direction.

4.1 Definition of B3G
For B3G, there are many different definitions.
One of them defines it as the broadband-based high-rate wireless network that can cover broad areas, i.e., WiMAX, a hot topic in these days. Its purpose is to transport data rather than voice. It can send data to and receive them from mobile equipment with a high rate. With broader coverage and a higher rate, WiMAX is a competitor of Wi-Fi and a wireless substitute of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology, so it is also called "movable broadband" and "personal broadband". The WiMAX system can find a solution to the mobility of IP services by developing the highly effective IP packet transmission technology based on mobile air interfaces, which helps implement global roaming and supports operation in a moving car and real-time online public wireless broadband access technology.
Another definition is the high-rate cellular mobile network based on IP. It mainly handles mobile information. The highest transmission rate may reach 100 Mb/s, 1 000 times faster than the existing network. With 1%-10% of the current transmission power, it won’t cause electromagnetic inference with other equipment. Besides, it supports the interaction of handsets.

  What is the final definition of B3G? The picture is not clear yet.

4.2 Goals of Developing B3G of China
There are two opinions on the purposes of developing B3G in China. One is that B3G will be used to support richer mobile services, including high definition image services, videoconferencing services and virtual reality services. Its users can obtain requested high-level information services at any places. The other thinks that B3G will be mainly used to implement worldwide personal communication. Its services will be gradually upgraded from the voice to the multimedia.

  Which one is better? According to China’s goal to realize an overall well-off society in the first 20 years of the 21st century, it seems better to regard B3G as a means to quickly and efficiently realize ubiquitous information service in China.

4.3 Technologies for B3G Implementation
Man’s blood capillary is about 140 times longer than man’s main blood vessel. Similarly, China has to build thousands of kilometers more of wired local loops to make the dream of "Connecting Every Family by Phone" come true. Therefore, the main factor in hindering the realization of the goal is money.

  However, only wireless mobile networks can realize the goal of "Connecting Every One by Phone" because people are usually moving. Therefore, frequency is a major barrier to realize the dream, and it is necessary to study efficient frequency technology, efficient coverage technology and pure IP architecture.

4.3.1 Efficient Frequency Technology
Frequency efficiencies of various wireless systems in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels are shown in Table 1, and those in random time-varying channels in Table 2.

  An opinion from abroad says that the 1G system adopts FDMA, 2G TDMA, 3G CDMA, and 4G OFDM. Is that true? According to Table 1 and Table 2, we can find that OFDM have no obvious strengths, so it is unnecessary for China to blindly follow unrealistic viewpoints. China should find a solution that is specially fit for itself, and pay its attention to original technologies with own intelligent property rights[2].

4.3.2 Efficient Coverage Technology
Efficient coverage technology includes the intelligent antenna technology, Multi-Input And Multi-Output (MIMO) technology, and Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) technology.

  Communication can be implemented in point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, or multipoint-to-multipoint ways. Only one line is needed to implement point-to-point connection of fixed communication. However, communication from one point to n  points needs n lines. When n  inclines to infinity and such n points are evenly distributed in space, broadcast emerges. It is very difficult for a fixed system to realize broadcast, but, for a wireless system, it is just a piece of cake. Based on the existing intelligent antenna technology, the transmission ways of electromagnetic waves need more research in the future.

  The SDMA technology makes narrow beams light-like electromagnetic lines that can centralize the energy. So with SDMA, information transmission to users with communication demands needs very little power, and bad interferences caused by electromagnetic diffusion can also avoided. Moreover, MIMO of multiple antennas may double the system capacity.

4.3.3 Pure IP Architecture
The telecom network has been adopting circuit switching for over 100 years. It has a switch control center and makes a connection before communication. It has 3 features: 
  connection-orientation, circuit switching and time division multiplexing. However, the Internet works in a completely different way with the traditional telecom network. It packs data into packets and transfers them by the old way to send letters. Routers on the Internet choose routes for transmission according to destination addresses written in the header of packet, which is unconnected. Non-connection, packet switching and statistics multiplexing are the three features of the Internet. It needs only an Internet protocol at the network layer. As for link technologies and media, it doesn’t care at all, which avoid the difficulties in interconnection at the link layer. Consequently, the applications of the Internet have grown explosively.

  However, the dream of developing comprehensive services has not come true yet, since networks cannot be converged. Fortunately, IP provides a chance for network convergence. It is making a mechanism revolution by changing circuit switching of telecom networks into packet switching[3]. Therefore, both the network and terminal for mobile communication in the future will be based on IP, including IP-based network structure, IP-based transmission and IP-based services. In the future, such an IP-based wireless mobile network will be able to access the IP-based optical network that operates as an core network.

4.3.4 Microelectronics Technology
Microelectronics is the basis of infocommunication. DoCoMo of Japan launched 3G services based on its WCDMA network in 2001. However, the services were not attractive and its subscribers grew very slow because the 3G handset consumed much power and dynamic images were not clear. However, the basic reason is that the microelectronics at that time couldn’t meet the demands of 3G services.

  Therefore, China should draw lessons from DoCoMo’s failure when developing B3G. Technology development laws should be followed, and unrealistic quick development of B3G should be avoided. A careful plan for B3G development is necessary. China has the opportunity to catch up with developed countries in ICT within the coming 4 Moore’s periods.

References
[1] Richard P. Suttmeier. Yao Xiangkui. Chinese Technology Policies After WTO Entry: Standards, Software and Change of Neo-Techno-Nationalism[R]. The National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle, 2004.
[2] Li Daoben. The Perspectives of Large Area Synchronous CDMA Technology for the Fourth-Generation Mobile Radio [J]. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2003,(3):114-118.
[3] Li Jinliang. Convergence of Mobile Networks and Internet—Mobile Internet. CTI World, 2002,(9):14-18.

Manuscript received：2004-08-12