The mobile broadband traffic volumes are increasing rapidly and new network capabilities and applications continuously raise the expectations for ubiquitous services with higher data rates in both uplink and downlink.

Creating a heterogeneous network - HetNet - by introducing low power nodes in a conventional radio network is a promising approach to meet these traffic demands and performance expectations. By combining low power nodes with an enhanced and densified macro layer, very high traffic volumes and data rates can be supported. Key for doing this is sharing the same spectrum in the macro cells and the low power nodes. This poses challenges for the interference handling between layers, but it also enables coordination gains. Ongoing research on these advanced techniques show very promising results.

To provide higher data rates and capacity are not the only challenges that need to be addressed. The increased complexity of the networks needs to be reduced by self organizing features in order to save OPEX and optimize performance. To further address OPEX, the energy consumption of the network needs to be reduced. On top of that, there are requirements emerging from the M2M type of applications foreseen in the near future.

As the Research Area Director for Wireless Access Networks at Ericsson Research, Dr Frodigh is responsible for research in radio network architecture, protocols and algorithms. The work addresses WCDMA, HSPA, and LTE including their continued evolution.

Magnus joined Ericsson in 1994 and has since held various key senior positions within Ericsson’s Research & Development and Product Management focusing on 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. Further, Magnus is the holder of more than 20 patents within mobile system.

He is an enthusiastic proponent of next generation mobile broadband services and technology. “The traffic from Mobile Broadband is now increasing rapidly, motivating a continued evolution of the radio access technologies in order to offer high capacity networks to the operators”.

He was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1964. Magnus holds a Master of
Science degree from Linköpings University of Technology, Sweden and a PhD in Radio Communication Systems from Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Demand for mobile data is increasing at an exponential rate fueled by media rich mobile web applications using smart mobile devices. The energy required to power the networks delivering this data is expensive due to the steady increase in electricity costs globally and the increasing demand for energy to power the networks. This increase demand for energy also has a negative environmental impact. Fundamental changes are required in how radio access networks are designed and deployed to address these challenges.

Traditional design of mobile wireless networks mainly focuses on ubiquitous access and large capacity. To meet the goals for a greener network, the focus needs shift to include energy-efficiency oriented design. This new greener paradigm consists of four fundamental tradeoffs: deployment efficiency - energy efficiency tradeoff, spectrum efficiency - energy efficiency tradeoff, bandwidth - power tradeoff, and delay - power tradeoff. The relationship between these four parameters is presented to illustrate how to achieve high network throughput and conserve energy.

Much of the work in 3GPP is focused on improving network throughput through the use of multiple antennas. Both UMTS and LTE use multiple antennas to increase spectrum efficiency. This presentation expands upon these spectrum efficiency advantages by showing network topologies and distributed antenna techniques that achieve the goal of increased data throughput while also reducing energy consumption.

In the future, green design methods will guide engineers on how to build communication networks in much the same way that information theory guides engineers today. The mathematical theories that helped us achieve state-of-the-art communications will be augmented to include new theories focused on how to balance network throughput with the energy consumption required by the network. Radio network performance will consider bits/second/Hertz, but also the Joules/bit when making decisions on modulation methods and protocols.

Dr. Steven D. Gray is a Vice President in Huawei Technologies with the dual role of being Head for Corporate Research and CTO for US R&D. Dr. Gray is responsible for driving Innovation in US R&D build from ground Huawei’s Center for Innovation. Since joining Huawei, he has created strategic work programs to architect the next generation content-oriented networks, media-oriented collaboration tools for next generation telepresence and a cloud services platform. Prior to joining Huawei in March 2009, Dr. Gray was Sr. Vice President and GM for the Commercial Wireless Division at HYPRES Inc where he was responsible for product architecture, marketing, sales and product development of an all digital remote radio head for mobile broadband infrastructure. From 2005 until 2007, Dr Gray was Associate Vice President in the Cellular and Handheld Group which was originally part of Intel’s Mobility Group and was sold in 2006 to Marvell Technologies. While with the Cellular and Handheld Group, Dr Gray was GM of the Convergence Products and Director of Advanced Development. From 1996 until 2005, Dr Gray held several positions with Nokia including GM and Vice President of Corporate R&D US and Head of the Radio Communications Lab. During his tenure at Nokia he started RAN LTE R&D, drove the adoption of WiFi in Nokia’s mobile phones and led the development of Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth. Dr. Gray is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and is a member of the honorary engineering societies Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi. He has numerous journal papers, contributed to two books and given numerous invited presentations on cloud computing, future internet and mobile communications. He holds 12 US patents related to transceiver design and future wireless communication systems.