3G and WLAN Friend or Foe a.k.a. why 3G sucks

1
3G and WLAN Friend or Foe? (a.k.a. why
3G sucks)
Jeffrey M. Gilbert, Ph.D. Manager of Advanced
Technology Atheros Communications (a WLAN
company) gilbertj_at_atheros.com
January 7, 2002 BWRC Winter Retreat 2002

• Atheros Communications, Inc. www.atheros.com

2
Profiling the Players
3
Promise of the Pico-cellular Premise

• Wireless is an inherently shared medium
• Need orthogonal spectrum, time, and/or space
• Spectrum is limited (and for 3G costly)
• Time is money
• Spatial reuse must be exploited via smaller cells
• Link budgets determined by cell size and physics
• Large 3G / cellular cells slow, heavy, and
  costly
• 3Gs sharing of 2Mbps over an entire cell is
  inadequate

4
Reconciling Range

• Outdoor range of WLAN technology redefines
  local
• Vanilla 802.11a APs obtain gt ¼ mile range
  outdoors
• Automotive operation of 802.11a to 120mph and
  1300 feet (telematics)
• Additional power and/or antennas give gt 1..10
  miles range
• Inexpensive multi-hop networks further extend
  range
• Combo of wired and unwired infrastructure for
  coverage / capacity
• In-building coverage through local LAN tunneling
• Most offices / buildings will have WLANs and
  Internet connectivity
• Leverage existing infrastructure for seamless
  coverage
• VoIP and WLAN better voice quality indoors

5
Garnering Internet-like Growth

• WLAN technology is inherently scalable,
  infectious
• Unlicensed, low-cost, IP-based, readily
  expandable infrastructure
• Here today
• Path to world domination
• Hot-spot deployments validate public access
  utility
• Guerilla deployments fill in some wide-area
  access gaps
• Seamless in-building tunneling grows from inside
  out
• 3G cannot ride existing wave
• High cost of spectrum needs to be recouped
• New infrastructure and client devices not
  dual-use (LAN / WAN)
• Lower performance, higher power
• Frys not likely to stock 3G base stations any
  time soon

6
Means to Make Money

• Technology choices
• WLAN for enterprise / hotspot / metropolitan
• 3G / 2G / whatever for very wide area
• Last-hop access providers
• Enterprises
• Hot-spot, metropolitan and then suburban areas
• Could be carrier centric or 3rd party
• Trunk providers
• Initially leverage existing Internet access
  provision
• Transition to carrier provision
• Localized content opportunities as well

7
Coexistence Conclusion

• WLAN technology offers the price, performance,
  and scalability required for metro/suburban
  deployments
• Unlicensed spectrum, reuse of soon-to-be
  ubiquitous equipment
• Pico-cellular is the scalable high performance
  solution
• WLAN will grow from the inside out
• Hot-spot access enables high performance apps
  today
• Coverage will increase incrementally
• 3G / 2G / whatever will cover those hard-to-reach
  spots
• WLAN and 3G will coexist much like digital and
  analog cellular currently do

8
July 25, 2001
9
Assorting the Applications
Nomadic(Portable Form Factor)
Mobile(Handheld Form Factor)
LowRate
HighRate