The next step for mobile phones lies with the proliferating masts which support them, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

WHILE MOBILE phones have grown steadily smaller over the past couple of decades, the network architecture that supports them has remained unchanged: bulky and ugly. Nobody loves a mobile phone mast, nor the cabinet-sized metal base station that sits beneath it.

However, thanks to pioneering research and development work for Alcatel-Lucent, largely led by Irish scientists in the company’s Bell Labs research centre in Blanchardstown, that architecture looks set to change, reducing in size while improving service and network capacity.

In a major global announcement, the company said this week that it would launch an entirely new network platform called LightRadio that shrinks the old-style mobile antennas bristling all over mobile masts, and the boxy base stations below, into tiny, energy efficient components called LightRadio Cubes, only a couple of inches across.

Combining a miniature antenna and amplifier, these will typically be clustered into groups of 20 to form a unit about the size of a large cake, which can be mounted on anything from a telephone pole to a building or a bus shelter.

Much of the architecture needed to operate the network – additional processing hardware in the now unnecessary base stations – will be moved into the “cloud”, communicating with processing units consolidated into a carrier’s local facilities.

“This is a radical overhaul of how mobile networks are built,” says Adolfo Hernandez, president of Alcatel-Lucent EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), who was in Dublin recently for a European company event.

“If you look at the way networks are built today, the real estate requirement is quite big. We’ve gone in with a completely different approach. It’s a complete change of architecture; it will do for mobile communications what virtualisation did for data centres.”

He says the small size and cloud-based approach means costs for locating mobile antennas would drop up to 60 per cent, and power needs could drop over 60 per cent. In addition, mobile users benefit because multiple antennas can deliver service to a single person, rather than just a single antenna on a single mast, as with today’s networks. That means calls are less likely to drop and data will download much faster to smartphones. Networks can also more easily adjust to demand spikes for service and direct capacity to where it is needed, Hernandez claims.

“With the intelligence in the cloud, you won’t have a problem with networks being saturated. Instead you will have elasticity which means better use of resources, better service, easier management and networks that are easier to deploy.”

Along with a green dividend, Hernandez argues that the new platform will make it far easier to bring mobile networks and in particular, broadband and data networks to the developing world where it can often be difficult to get an electricity supply.

Because the networks can run off any form of energy – wind, solar or conventional electricity networks – “this approach will lower the threshold to deploy data broadband”.

On the other hand, the platform requires fibre-optic cable to connect, which may be a barrier particularly in the developing world. “Some will see this as an issue and some will see an opportunity to introduce fibre into some areas where it’s not today,” he says.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs research group in Dublin developed many of the major innovations in communications antenna design and energy management that form a critical part of the LightRadio platform, so named because it both has a lighter footprint but also uses fibreoptics.

“This was an Irish-led project,” Hernandez says. “A lot of work was done here.” The platform also includes contributions from research teams at other Bell Labs centres in Europe, the US and China.

Bell Labs, the historic American research lab behind such pivotal technology developments as the transistor, established its Irish centre in 2005 with €25 million in support funding from IDA Ireland. Last year, Alcatel-Lucent said it would add 70 additional research positions at the lab over the next five years. Hernandez says establishing the Bell Labs centre in Ireland has been productive for the company.

“What we look for is communities where we have access to talent, where it is business friendly and easy to operate and where we get support from the environment, either incentives or the overall ecosystem. Ireland fits that description nicely. It’s a great place to access talent and we get great support from the IDA. It’s a good place to do business and we remain committed to the team and the project.”

He expects a gradual adoption of LightRadio’s small cell technology, with “hybrid networks” of old and new in the short to medium term. The point, he says, is to get a new architecture in place for the new demands for bandwidth and access that will come as networks move from 3G to 4G and users want greater access to bandwidth-heavy video.

“In two to three years, the world where this is going to operate is going to be a video operating world – not just downloading, but uploading. At the time of mobile video ubiquity, this kind of network elasticity is going to be a necessity.” He describes this upcoming “video tsunami” as one of three major challenges he sees ahead for the mobile industry.

“Many networks in use now were designed for voice but are going to need to be used for data. There will be new demands and a need for bandwidth. What do you do with content, where do you cache it, how do you manage it? People are going to want pay TV options on all screens, including handsets. What do you do with user-generated content? The whole management of this new video world will require a massive re-engineering.”

The second challenge, he says, is monetisation. “Today it’s hard to see how the old models for monetising can be applied to a new world. We may face a situation where operators have to do multibillion-euro investments but can’t monetise them. So how do you align those things?”

Regulation, particularly in Europe, is the other big issue.

“Particularly from the European prospective, there are way too many issues that are unclear and a lack of clarity is the last thing you want if you are considering investments.”

He cites confusion around unbundling the local loop, requirements to share fibre, roaming charges and spectrum auctions and costs, particularly for operators in multiple countries. Consumers and what they do with their handsets might be added as a fourth challenge.

Operators once tightly controlled which handset models customers could acquire and what they could do with them, notes Hernandez. “Now, there are multiple platforms and millions of applications and no one knows how they’ll behave. They create challenges, but also, I must say, opportunities, because they are fuelling demand from consumers.

“The learning from this is – we have to be prepared to work with anything and have to give service providers tools so they can work with the unpredictable world of handsets.”