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How pCell works and why its a bigger deal than anyone realizes
- hop 13y agoWireless power transmission will change everything in hardware if someone can pull it off. I'd bet Apple is waiting until they can do low power wirelessly to launch their smart watch.
- pazimzadeh 13y agoI doubt that Apple is waiting until wireless power to launch the smart watch, but I agree that it will change everything. And it would make sense for Apple to buy pCell. Of course Steve Perlman worked at Apple before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Perlman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Perlman
- ksec 13y agoYes. I would much rather Apple spends billions on this than buy silly things like Whatsapp. Article Point out C-RAN being expensive, surely Apple could help or even host their own C-RAN? Since Apple were Originally interested in MNVO anyway.
- jtchang 13y agoI think the idea of focusing multiple low power radios onto a single point so that they coalesce is simply being rediscovered. While we could do this before the real ingenuity is being able to rapidly update all the parameters when the point you want to focus onto is rapidly changing. Another scary idea: While we could beam wireless power imagine if this was in any way weaponized. With all these stations beaming power to everyone what would it take for an overwhelming number of them to direct it at a target with the purpose of eradicating it? Certainly not a laser in the traditional sense but surely something just as destructive.
- Tloewald 13y agoThe idea of deliberately burning out devices is interesting, and probably feasible, given a dense enough array of powerful enough transmitters (bear in mind that one of the key benefits of pCell is that it uses far lower-powered transmitters). But it seems to me the inverse square law is going to make it a very inefficient weapon.
- darkmighty 13y agoInverse square law does not apply to this as usual (although it does if you fix the beam configuration) -- but you can take your tin foil hats off (I guess this would indeed make a good scenario for tin foil hats) since you need real time channel estimation and feedback.
- Tloewald 13y agoAre you sure the inverse square law does not apply? I think you're just getting a bigger coefficient. You might be constructively interfering signals, but the signals are still diminishing over distance. It's not magic, or they wouldn't need to place the antennas all over the place.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- musesum 13y agoIt doesn't have to be high power to be effective. Google search on "russian microwave US embassy" (not Bing search, unfortunately), which yields some interesting background on the Russian's beaming microwaves at the US Embassy. It was within the US legal limit at the time. Health problem ensued. Making an adversary sick without noticing may be more effective for some situations.
- bri3d 13y agohttp://www.ehjournal.net/content/11/1/85 http://www.ehjournal.net/content/11/1/85 The literature seems to indicate that the Russian microwave campaign resulted in no measurable health effect to the employees at the embassy. This is unsurprising because a wide variety of publications detailing similar microwave exposure from modern electronic equipment like cellular towers, phones, and WiFi access points seem to also indicate a negligible widespread health effect.
- atrus 13y agoDon't you still have large power losses from the inverse square though?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bdcs 13y agoNope (well, yes, as distance -> infinity) Imagine three boats making waves such that the ripples constructively interfere in some spots and destructively at others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming
- kastnerkyle 13y agoThis will not magically be overcome by constructive interference - each beam will still lose a significant amount of power as function of distance. Higher frequency RF signals are fairly easy (especially V/UHF) to beamform into a tight area, which can compensate for the loss, by focusing your power in one direction instead of radially. You still lose power over distance as the beam's energy spreads. I don't believe they will just be able to blob a "networked" 60Hz transmission into a 1cm area - I did not read the patent, but you may be able to do such a thing by varying the phase to induce a 60Hz wave via beat frequencies between transmitting signals, at ONLY the specified area. Having the necessary +-1Hz resolution on a 2.4GHz carrier (especially one that is not using a hardware connected, phase locked oscillator) may prove very difficult if not impossible. I suspect they may try to use one of the lower scientific bands around 900 or less MHz. HF is also a fairly unregulated option, though tight beamforming may still be difficult. Perhaps a smart application of null steering could create the necessary oscillation - I am still working this out in a simulation. If this method is correct, keeping everything tight enough to be within US electrical standards will be difficult - there are specific regulations related to in-band power, harmonics, frequency tolerances, etc. Regardless of all that, this technology is pretty incredible and I look forward to investigating it further!
- marcosdumay 13y ago
- Tloewald 13y agoAssuming pCell works as advertised it's a huge deal. It allows you to cover a city in cells for insanely cheaper than current cell technology and provide far, far better reception and bandwidth to far larger numbers of customers AND it works with existing LTE gear while also affording simpler, cheaper, and lighter-weight new gear and reducing power consumption across the board. What's not to like? I don't think anyone who has heard about pCell thinks it isn't a huge deal, if it works. One example of a major potential problem: how well does it track erratically moving objects (e.g. most cell phones?), in built-up areas with lots of signal reflection?
- ajcarpy2005 13y agoThe answer would largely depend on how large the focus area is or how fast the signal quality degrades the further from the epicenter of the focal point that the receiver is. Maybe the system could apply road map info to fast-moving cell phones which it can assume are in traffic. And this could help it predict possible future locations of your device. For much of the day the majority of devices in a given "cell" will be semi-immobile at a desk or slowly moving when someone's walking.
- pyre 13y agoWhat happens when someone turns on their phone on a plane? ;-P
- ajcarpy2005 13y agoI think an on-board "repeater" would be the best solution. Of course, a high-powered directional antenna would translate to less hopping between towers but also increased costs to the carriers. Something like Google's Loon project might have more coverage and work well with aircraft.
- 3rd3 13y ago> in built-up areas with lots of signal reflection? If there are multiple plausible positions due to multipath, it probably wouldn’t hurt to create multiple cells for one device.
- bprater 13y ago"With this technology, it's conceivable that 5G wireless could displace both cable and DSL connections within a few years, as is claimed in the presentation." A few years?! This statement should give landline data providers, like Cox and Comcast, some serious pause.
- gcb0 13y agoWhy, their wireless counterparts will surely buy spectrum or what not to make happen during a 20yr adoption cycle in the US.
- XorNot 13y agoExcept for the part where you need an huge array of transmitters with backbone bandwidth equal or greater the number of devices they may be serving simultaneously. In which case those companies just start doing fiber installs to wireless stations, not houses, at roughly the same density.
- cincinnatus 13y agoOr just piggyback an antenna into the hardware otherwise installed at each consumer location. There was a theory almost a decade ago that Google would do something like that on top of all the 'dark fiber' it was buying up at the time.
- mrfusion 13y agoI wonder if wireless power like this could be used to provide power for launching spacecraft and this avoiding the tyranny of the rocket equation?
- ars 13y agoThis wouldn't help a rocket. For a rocket you should just aim a laser at it. But you still need reaction mass, and pure energy doesn't work well for that.
- politician 13y agoSpace-based applications could include a network of base stations transmitting power to a cloud of worker drones. Bio-based applications could include a means to power or recharge implanted devices and machines.
- higherpurpose 13y ago> Will it work for WiFi as well? It's protocol agnostic, so it could work in unlicensed spectrum as well. The issue is that you don't have complete control over all the other transmitters, so you can't coordinate them. From the moment I heard of it, the first thing I thought about was: this could make long range Wi-Fi possible (and therefore meshnets and carrier disruption possible). Seeing this tech being used by wireless carriers would be cool, but I really want to see it (or something like it) being used in new mile long Wi-Fi standards. Now the Wi-Fi Alliance only needs to make one for us. Long range Wi-Fi could also make communication between self-driving cars much more feasible (got your attention now, Google?) - although that presents a pretty huge security risk, too, but I imagine the industry already wanted them to be connected to the Internet, so it wouldn't be much worse.
- mbetter 13y ago> Humans use <todo>. Not me.
- 3rd3 13y agoAnother case of application might be localization.
- chacham15 13y agoAs many positive things as I have heard about it I have one question: will we ever actually see this as an actual product? I feel like I hear about so many cool things which never come to fruition and I have a nagging feeling that this might be one of them. Why? Because, as I've read, the companies would need data centers to manage all of these connections. What interest do these companies have to risk all of this money (a recurring cost, might I add) when people probably wouldnt spend more for it? I dont profess to know, so can someone who has actual information enlighten me?
- XorNot 13y agoThat isn't why stuff doesn't turn out. It usually has some problem or another which is being assumed will be "solvable" by the time they release. Never solve it? It's never released. Alternatively, it does come out, but its gains are just evolutionary improvements not revolutionary.
- TheEzEzz 13y agoIf the latency of pCell is low enough then you could have a thin-client phone tunneling into a cloud OS. Now get rid of most of the CPU/memory hardware complexity on the phone (which should lower power requirements for the phone too). If you can wirelessly send energy then get rid of most of the battery. Suddenly you've got a very, very thin phone with infinite battery life and computational power only limited by the server you're hooked up to. It's the perfect mobile device. Do the same thing for a laptop and I'm in paradise.
- jol 13y agoSorry to rain on your parade, but don't you like idea that computing device is independent from others and does not require network connectivity 100% of time when you want something done?
- roel_v 13y agoWell maybe sometimes, but given all the advantages of the envisaged connected approach, I'm not sure any more if the advantages of going off line will outweigh the disadvantages.
- IanCal 13y agoDepends on the device. How about this: An extremely thin tablet that's essentially a touch screen connected to your home computer, aimed for use in the home. Tiny battery, very little computational power & storage, hooked up to your own beefy computer. Edit - intended for use just in the home. I'd want one, certainly.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoNice explanation, does it bother anyone else that you could set up a bunch of antennas such that they could create a lethal 1 cm ball of energy anywhere in the space they can see? Sure they think about powering devices but what about a couple of Watt-Seconds of energy appearing in your frontal lobes? If Perlman can do that its kind of the ultimate 'border' fence is it not? (I'm tempted to write, "All you would need is an unscrupulous engineer to develop a targeting system ...")
- politician 13y agoI just replied to another thread with this exact same thought, then looked down to see yours. And yes, it is scary... If I understand it correctly, the targeting system just consists of normal receivers hacked to offset their targeting feedback by a distance that would park the energy ball inside the victim. In any of the applications where this is deployed broadly, that is, where we cover our cities in transmitters, then we'll have effectively given over this remote kill capability to anyone who can do trilateration.
- nathanathan 13y agoIf this kind of technology were to fall into the wrong hands would we even know? Would it appear as though the victims had a heart attack or stroke?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoYou would know, if you did this to someones brain it would have lesions and damage. Although you would have to give them an MRI to find it. It would appear as if they had died of a stroke.
- yread 13y agoYou would basically already do that with mobiles. When people use for talking they keep them <1cm from their head. And while 70mph is indeed great speed people sometimes take high speed trains (200mph) or don't turn off their mobile on an airplane (~300mph in vicinity of ground)
- TD-Linux 13y ago
- icoder 13y ago"Humans use <todo>" ? Perhaps attention?
- tim333 13y agoSeems we use a variety of mechanisms, not fully understood - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect
- nardi 13y agoIs there any reason this same technology wouldn't work with light? Wouldn't that be a phased light array?
- marcosdumay 13y agoElectronics swithcing speed is the main botleneck to doing this with light. And there are hard barriers that makes this kind of device impossible there. But different devices with the same results are fair game.
- sp332 13y agoLTE (depending on the band used) can be 10cm down to 3cm long. Visible wavelengths are 300-700 nanometers long. That's about 10,000,000 times smaller!
- nardi 13y agoSteve Perlman always comes across as a snake oil salesman, but I didn't think he could do OnLive either, and that technology works fantastically. As a result, I'm pretty excited about pCell, even though it's being preceded by a wave of marketing hype.
- GFischer 13y agoIt still hasn't made its way to my country, but it certainly is an interesting service. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive However, they did overpromise and under-deliver, but it's still very impressive.
- StevePerlman 13y agoA couple of clarifications and comments (new whitepaper is coming with a lot more info): The iPhones (and dongles) we demoed have no software modifications at all, and there is no additional overhead beyond the standard LTE protocol. pCell works with unmodified Android LTE phones, too. (We had wanted to post a lab demo we did of the Galaxy S4 and an Xperia, but we just ran out of time.) Out-of-the-box compatibility is essential for rapid deployment. And, yes, we are meeting many of the core goals of 5G today (e.g. unlimited 4K UltraHD streaming) using Rel. 8 LTE devices in LTE spectrum. pCell is indeed protocol agnostic, and can concurrently support different protocols in different pCells in the same spectrum. For example, we can support unmodified LTE phones in their own pCells, while concurrently supporting lower cost/lower power devices with far lighter protocols (that are lower latency), since we don't need all of the complexity of LTE. For example, there are no cells, no cell edges (and no need for CoMP), and no cell handoff. I'm waiting for something to connect the dots and realize this is a vastly more efficient way to use white spaces than anything currently on the table. White spaces will be full overnight with current techniques. With pCell, they will never be full. More data is coming later. Apologies. We have been utterly overwhelmed in incoming inquiries since launch. But, I will confirm this: pCell is indeed a much bigger deal than anyone has yet touched on. The "tubes to transistors" analogy is not just marketing speak: Compared to cellular, pCell is far more reliable, enables much smaller and lower power device and can be continually extended in density. Tubes had physical constraints that limited their reliability and scalability. Transistors did not. Cellular (and other interference avoidance protocols like Wi-Fi and cognitive radio) have a physical constraints that limit their reliability and scalability. pCell does not (as far as we know). Cellular has stalled in scalability. There is an entire era of innovation in front of us with pCell. - Steve Perlman
- ksec 13y agoBest thing since sliced bread? If Anything this fundamentally solve the Mobile TV problem. or Heck all Internet Connection problem with one go. No more silly ADSL Phone line or Cable Modem which are far worst then today's LTE. It would get rid of Home Router as well, as long as all of our Mobile Devices have LTE. I cant wait to pay for it. And it seems we move the bottleneck to the cell backbone. Which could get saturated easily.
- Dewie 13y agoMaybe it's just me, but that background on the left looks like some monitor that had a seizure.
- redbad 13y ago> Humans use <todo>. Indeed.
- blahbl4hblahtoo 13y agoThis is more WOW than any WOW that I have seen lately. This is really WOW.
- fredgrott 13y agoUSA Federal Communications and other gov agencies EU's for example wanted to move towards telecomms spectrum being a commodity where the device hands off to other carriers seamlessly to handle spectrum scarcity pCell takes a different tact ..seems that the way to get telcomms to move would be through government mandates tied ot say spectrum sales.
- KaiserPro 13y agopCell still requires a license to use out in the open. in the same way a fempto cell does.
- neuromancer2701 13y agoWhile I think charging cell phones and Telsas is a problem, getting cheaper than petrochemical energy is the key. So I have always thought that some sort of space-based energy source was the solution but how do you get it back to earth? 1000's of small solar cell beaming back energy concentrated at one point would be a great solution. How much would this cost would be interesting to find out?
- KaiserPro 13y agoSorry, its just beamforming. Its not new, its just marketing. its not all that different from having an 802.11n MIMO hotspot in your house.
- KaiserPro 13y agoInfact its not all that different from femto cell base stations. You'll still need a license to transmit on that frequency, and you still need a reliable backhaul to dump the data on.
- KaiserPro 13y agoThe other, other thing is that inverse square law still applies. along with propagation loss, and the like. wireless power is literally a waste.
- kristoffer 13y agoIt's different from the MIMO employed in Wifi or "normal" LTE. They do not create a cell per user, neither does a femto cell base station (it only creates a small cell, not a personal cell).
- raverbashing 13y agoThis is a very nice explanation of not only pCell but of what modern communication systems are like (802.11n has MIMO/diversity but also channel estimation, etc) People may find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_block_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space–time_block_code
- sarreph 13y agoI am pretty amazed by this technology and can't wait to learn more about it. Just a note on the live demo with iPhones — aren't they likely to have buffered the video they need before they were stacked, and therefore it doesn't matter if their antenna connection was interrupted?
- kayoone 13y agoWith seemingly unlimited mobile bandwidth and speed, the cloud gets a new dimension too. Perlman has already proven that even the most demanding applications, realtime games, work well in a streaming scenario even today. With something like this, i could see my desktop in the cloud being accessible from anywhere through a mobile thin client in my pocket. Hook up multiple monitors/keyboard/mouse to it or just use the device screen itself, with computing power only limited by the cloud provider. Technologies like OnLive or PCoIP show thats its possible even today, all thats missing is the infrastructure to support it and pCell could be the answer to that.
- bestrapperalive 13y agoAt first I thought the technical challenges inherent in maintaining state for a web of arbitrarily placed transmitters cooperatively targeting thousands of moving devices would make this technology impractical for deployment in the wild, but now I believe. pCell is going to be revolutionary. I can't wait to get rid of my consoles and stream new, triple-A games over it.
- tim333 13y agoThe original Columbia presentation is actually pretty cool ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7274288 ) I thought I'd mention it as it only got a couple of votes and sarky comments at the time but having just watched it all I think it really look like a major breakthrough, maybe the biggest one of the year and could be giving us 4k video all over the place before long. One of the interesting things is it will work with existing unlicensed spectrum, existing handsets and the backhaul can be done with line of site links on rooftops so it can be rolled out pretty much straight off - well they are talking a year or so.
- DonGateley 13y agoOnce you begin exploring the implications and the possible applications to things other than communications it begins to look like possibly the biggest breakthrough in history. Only one in energy could surpass it.
- jessaustin 13y agoSort of reminiscent of ESWL, which breaks kidney stones, except in that case they "aim" the sound waves with an elliptical waveguide.
- jessaustin 13y agoLinked paper: http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf
- frankus 13y agoI like to think of it as that conventional cellular is using a broadcast medium for "narrowcast" communications. If you put it that way it's obvious that we're currently Doing It Wrong, provided there's a practical alternative. It also helps people get over their reflexive "But Shannon says…" reaction.
- DonGateley 13y agoIsn't this also instant and incorruptable net neutrality?
- mseri 13y agoA friend at CERN commented with this: " This is EXACTLY the same procedure we're using to correct experimental data from distortions introduced by detector effects (unfolding) - http://cds.cern.ch/record/1600778 http://cds.cern.ch/record/1600778 "