19 Apr 2011

Rendering the impossible, possible. That’s what Bell Labs does.

Tod Sizer, Head of wireless research, Bell Labs

Tod Sizer, Head of wireless research, Bell Labs

By Tod Sizer, Head of wireless research, Bell Labs

Challenging the possible.  Questioning the “impossible”.  That’s what scientists do. We take an idea and challenge our scientific minds to find a way to make the theory, a reality.  Sometimes it just takes clearing your mind and imagining an end result.  And, challenging a team of people to try to reach the end result.  If they get halfway there, we’ve made major gains.

The challenge that I set was to envision new uses of multiple antennas.  Envision a modular radio and antenna that could be arranged freely – like Lego™ blocks.  To do this would require compressing all of the radio hardware and the antenna into a cube with a 60mm x 60mm dimension.  This would be extremely hard to do.  But, if we could achieve this size and modularity, we could use the cube all by itself as a small cell, so small that it becomes almost invisible. Then, if you stacked eight of these together you would have a different functionality, a functionality that could point a beam in a particular direction to provide coverage indoors. Or, you stack two of these by ten high then you have a macro cellular, for an outdoor antenna. Or other arrangements of antennas that we haven’t thought of yet!  So that was the dream and it was really just the start of a dream of what you could do if you had something physically this size.

So down to my woodshop I went in March of last year, sawing up a small cube of wood with exactly the 60mm dimension and gluing on an aluminum plate as a fake antenna.  I put the challenge on the table, physically. This little wooden block, this physical representation allowed the team to see the vision touch it,   stack it. Now they understood both the challenge AND the opportunity.  They said it was “impossible”.  But, understanding the opportunity our Bell Labs teams in Germany and Ireland stepped up to the challenge and three months later with many new innovations, came back with what is now the lightRadio cube.  They rendered the “impossible” possible.

lightRadio™ is not just a single innovation. It is not just the “cube”.  It is a suite of innovations from across Bell Labs, integrating wireless and wireline networks in a way that will solve mobile operator future connectivity and capacity challenges.  This is an architecture for the long term that includes advanced CPRI compression, network MIMO/CoMP, fully connected telco quality cloud capabilities and baseband SOC algorithms. At Bell Labs we are really excited about the opportunity to trial these innovations with mobile operators later this year and beyond.

 
 

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