Mathematics and Telecommunications – aspects from an operator’s perspective Michael Walker

Birmingham,15th April 20101

Mathematics and Telecommunications – aspects from an operator’s perspective

Michael WalkerPresident of the IMAVodafone Professor Telecommunications, Royal Holloway, University of London, and Visiting Professor University of Surrey

HoDoMS Meeting 2010, Birmingham, 15th April 2010


Contents

• IMA news

• Telecoms and MathsUsers’ needs

Term

inal

Customer propositions

Service Enabling

Connectivity

Access

Spectrum and regulation


IMA News (1)

IMA and NUMS

• IMA 96% in favour of merger with LMS

• Council accepts LMS democratic decision

• Council continues to embrace the vision set out in the NUMS consultative report

University Liaison• Peter Rowlett

[email protected]

• £400 grants available for any university maths society– http://www.ima.org.uk/student/index.html

• IMA / Greenwich Undergraduate conference– 6 February 2010, with thanks to

Tony Mann and Noel Anne Bradshaw

• Free eStudent membership for 2011


IMA News (2)

• CMath Teach – Launched December 2009

• Maths Careers website– mathscareers.org.uk– launched December 2009– greatly improved resource for students– themes - I love maths; environment;

health and society; business and money; entertainment; science and engineering; sport

– 11-14,14-16,16-19, undergraduates, graduates, adults, teachers

• Essential Modern Mathematics Research – Case Studies– To show to politicians and

scientists the great benefit of current and recent mathematics research

– Nigel Peake to co-ordinate– Two versions: politicians and

scientists– Call for topics and experts– Working with EPSRC


Maths and telecoms – a rich history

• Seminal papers of Shannon– A mathematical theory of communications,

Bell Syst Tech J 27, 1948 – Communication theory of secrecy systems,

Bell Syst Tech J 28, 1949

• Compression coding

• Error correcting codes – geometry, groups and combinatorics

• Cipher systems– symmetric cryptography and information

theory– public key cryptography and number theory

and complexity theory

• IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Users’ needs


Service Enabling

Connectivity

Access



Mobile communications


The Internet

information, entertainment, publishing, communications and social interaction

PersianBlog.Com

http://www.yahoo.com/

http://www.yahoo.com/

http://www.myspace.com/

http://www.ebay.com/

http://www.youtube.com/


AccessAccess Access

TomorrowMulti-service platforms

ContentServices

YesterdayVertical services

Mob

ile

Fixe

d D

ata

Net

Fixe

d T

elep

hony

WLA

N

Services

Transport, Switching & Access Networks

Content

ServicesEnvironment

IP Multi-Servicesnetwork

Convergence of telecoms and the web


Problems of networks

• Sharing resources– radio frequency spectrum management

• Interference management– maximising capacity and coverage of radio

access network – diversity coding and MIMO: quaternions and

Cayley numbers

• Designing and managing networks for IP data traffic

• Securing the cloud

• How can mathematics help?– Don’t expect well formulated mathematical

problems

Users’ needs


Service Enabling

Connectivity

Access



Propagation characteristics – 3G extension bands @ 2.6 GHz and digital dividend UHF @ 800Mhz

UHF3G extension band


Economics of spectrum

20.00%

30.00%40.00%

50.00%60.00%70.00%

80.00%90.00%

100.00%

0 2 4 6 8 10

Operators

Tot

al n

etw

ork

capa

city

30 MHz40 MHz50 MHz

HHI For European Mobile Industry and India

00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9

1

0 2 4 6 8 10 12Number of Operators

HH

I

Equal shareUKNLGermanyAustriaFranceBelgiumSpainItalyIndia


Spectrum auctions

• Allocation by auction

• Gradual move to lighter regulation – –may permit change of use–may be traded

Usage defined by regulators

Allocation by “Beauty Contest”

Barrier to new entrants

•multi-round, multi-object simultaneous auctions

•designed to increase competition as well as achieve maximum prices

•combinatorial auctions

•bid strategies – and what is the best outcome


Coverage and capacity improvement

• Relaying- fundamental work by Kumar on ad-hoc

and sensor networks

• distributed MIMO – mathematics of MIMO elaborated by

Calderbank and others– but not yet for distributed MIMO

BS

RN#1.1 RN#2.1

RN#1 RN#2

RN#2.1.1

RN#2.2

UT

UT

Multihop Network: Treetopology

Access Link

RelayLink

Backhaul infrastructureBetween sites

Terminal jointly detected by 3 base stations


Designing IP data networks


The chaotic nature of IP traffic

• optimisation of data rates– nature of traffic– type of device

• optimisation of routing– early breakout– edge caching

• excessive usage

• offload

• multi-dimensional optimisation


The reason why these problems are important for operatorsC

osts

Time

Voice Data

Revenue

Traffic

Diverging expectations for traffic and

revenue growth

Documents

Mathematics and Telecommunications – aspects from an operator’s perspective Michael Walker