Intelligent handsets to ‘grab’ spectrum?

The ORACLE (Opportunistic Radio Communications in unLicensed Environments) project focused on making handsets actively manage how and when they use the network. "With demand booming for new services, both in terms of the number of connections and also quality, we need to find better ways of using the radio spectrum available to us … otherwise we will reach a point of saturation," noted Dominique Noguet, the head of the Digital Architecture Design and Prototyping lab at Minatec CEA-LETI in France and ORACLE coordinator. "We are dealing with a finite resource, but one that can be reused in novel ways," he added. ORACLE's approach promises to minimise bandwidth saturation, both in the licensed bands of the radio spectrum, such as that used to carry mobile phone signals, and the unlicensed ISM bands used by WiFi networks and RFID chips. The core technology relies on sensitive sensors in the handset that monitor how the radio spectrum is use by other devices and base stations in their immediate vicinity. Software would then decide opportunistically when and what bandwidth to use when it becomes available. According to Noguet, the approach – known as Opportunistic Radio (OR) – could lead to a 'dramatic rethink' of the way networks are managed. "The techniques go far beyond the capabilities of modern mobile terminals, but they hold the potential to overcome part of the bandwidth problems operators are facing," he said. ORACLE has demonstrated an OR device capable of taking into account both the frequency dimension, by switching channels, and the time the frequency is available. The approach is said to allow people to get connected, even when the network is highly congested. One ORACLE partner – the Technical University of Dresden – has set up a spin off company called Inradios to exploit some of the technology developed in the project.