On The Horizon
We have earned a reputation for solving some of the industry’s toughest technical challenges before others even recognize them. When the rest of the world was working on analog, we were developing digital. When everyone focused on voice, we were working on data. While others pursued narrowband, we were demonstrating broadband. And as most companies are just beginning to wonder where 3G, WiMAX and WiFi will go in the future, we are already delivering harmonizing solutions for seamless mobility between all standards.
LTE and Beyond
Modern wireless systems such as LTE, WiMAX, and WiFi continue to push forward with higher data rates, lower latency, and improvements in capacity and coverage. However, as the recent progress in OFDM, MIMO, Turbo coding, and other physical layer developments are starting to run out of steam, a range of promising new technologies will take wireless systems beyond today’s prevailing point-to-point systems. The drive for reliable mobile broadband communications requires an increased reliance on intelligent communications among multiple network elements, leading to further innovations in signal processing and coding. Radio spectrum around the world is increasingly being reallocated, thereby opening broad swatches of intermittently available frequencies, known as white space, for cognitive radio communications. This also brings about a new set of challenges as the selection and management of a particular frequency band shifts from the network to the terminals. We believe that this trend will continue leading to communication networks with increasingly decentralized and distributed control. Leveraging our ongoing efforts in seamless handover, we are exploring the protocols and architectures that make such networks operate efficiently, reliably and securely. Still at the conceptual stage, we are exploring the challenges posed by cloud computing, and how large numbers of autonomous nodes can continuously interoperate using machine-to-machine communications.
Collaborative Communications
Collaborative Communications is a fundamental premise for tomorrow’s wireless networking, whereby multiple base stations and mobile devices collaborate with each other – for example, through relay stations that function as additional helper nodes – maximizing overall network performance and delivering a uniform user experience.
In this environment, connections are dynamically routed across relay stations, other mobile devices, and base stations in neighboring cells to extend the range of coverage, fill coverage holes, improve in-building performance, mitigate interference at cell edges, and provide a more uniform user experience across the coverage region.
Seamless Connectivity
The growing demand for mobile broadband services is the catalyst for an ever-increasing variety of air interface technologies targeting local area to wide area connectivity. InterDigital envisions that the network of tomorrow will be a “Network of Networks” that enables uninterrupted services when roaming across many different independent radio access solutions – a mega network transparent to the users.
We have been a pioneer in the development of Media Independent Handover (MIH) and helped define the IEEE 802.21 standard for seamlessly connecting to GSM, WCDMA, WiMAX, WiFi, cdma2000, LTE, and virtually any other radio access technology. A typical MIH solution consists of a simple MIH client in the mobile device, an MIH server in the IP backhaul and requires no changes to the existing radio access network. Our seamless connectivity roadmap is rapidly evolving to enable additional services and capabilities that include IMS, Mobile TV, and Cognitive Radio.
- IMS: The IP Multimedia System, IMS, will be the dominant platform for delivery of wireless voice and data services. IMS is access technology independent and MIH provides a standardized solution to enable fast seamless vertical mobility for any multimedia service to enhance user satisfaction.
- Mobile TV: MIH can overcome the inherent limited coverage of current Mobile TV technologies (DVB, DMB, MediaFLOTM, etc.) by enabling seamless handover to other wireless technologies, such as cellular, WiFi or WiMAX, for uninterrupted service.
- Cognitive Radio: Looking further in the future, cognitive radio technology promises to use the flexibility of a smart terminal to adapt both the radio and network configuration to, for example, better utilize spectral white space. In such a scenario, MIH-like technologies can provide central database access and also deliver the protocol for dynamic bids initiated by either the user or the operator on available spectrum in a given location.
Wireless Security
Today’s sophisticated wireless devices increasingly hold more personal data and can perform sensitive transactions, requiring additional levels of security and integrity before mobile commerce can further flourish. InterDigital is on the leading edge of inventing unique enhanced security methods that will protect the data and software in wireless networks and mobile devices from misuse, tampering, malware, and other unauthorized access.
Focusing on security beyond data encryption, we exploit the unique and random characteristics of wireless channels to generate secure unbreakable keys and identify authorized users. Recognizing the trend toward the large, highly-connected Internet of Things, we propose a trusted communications environment that utilizes practical techniques to assess the health of network nodes and effectively combat malicious attacks.
- Physical Layer Fingerprinting: For every wireless connection the channel characteristics are unique, effectively creating a one-of-a-kind fingerprint that can be used to identify and reject malicious users and protect the network against certain types of wireless attacks.
- AirKeys: The wireless channel provides a shared, time varying, common secret handshake between any two communicating terminals. As the name implies, AirKeys denotes a proven practical technique to dynamically generate unbreakable secret keys by extracting common features from physical channel measurements. Any two parties no longer need to pre-share a secret key to secure communications between them.
- TrustShield: TrustShield technology enables trusted wireless network connectivity by verifying a node’s trustworthiness through a process that is analogous to performing a health check. This capability starts by including a trusted processing engine that can recognize unmodified states of the device in a highly secure way. A communicating device or node is given a clean bill of health when the embedded trusted engine indicates a safe state, free of viruses, tampering, or other malware. Devices that are not assigned a clean bill of health can be categorized as potentially untrustworthy and given limited access to the network. The verification process can be repeated frequently and can support several layers, providing various communication activities and levels of protection.
