LTE breakthroughs coming

Three simultaneous efforts aimed at bringing about technology breakthroughs in wireless technology. LTE faces an uphill battle, because the shared nature of wireless technology forces upgrades to bring fiber ever closer to subscribers. Unless of course we are having a number of real breakthroughs here. I hope 'breakthrough' is the superlative to 'groundbreaking'.

• BuNGee, as reported here: "The current next-generation technologies LTE and WiMAX support a mere 100Mbps/Km2 in ordinary cellular deployment. This is insufficient, in particular in dense urban areas where the market demand for wireless broadband access is the highest, thereby seriously jeopardising the wide scale uptake of IMT-Advanced technologies. BuNGee’s goal is to dramatically improve the overall infrastructure capacity density of the mobile network by an order of magnitude (10x) to an ambitious goal of 1Gbps/Km2 anywhere in the cell – thereby removing the barrier to beyond next-generation networks deployment. To achieve this objective, the project will target the following breakthroughs: 1. unprecedented joint design of access and backhaul over licensed and license exempt spectrum;2. unconventional below-rooftop backbone solutions exploiting natural radio isolations;3. beyond next-generation networked and distributed MIMO and interference techniques;4. protocol suite facilitating autonomous ultra-high capacity deployment.
• NTU-NI Wireless Research Programme, as reported here: "bring the speed and quality of wireless network communications up to par with that of wired communications…[and] to develop wireless devices that offer ultra-high-speed mobile broadband services at virtually zero cost to the user"(...) "develop the next-generation wireless communication technologies which are cheaper, faster, more reliable and more pervasive." "(...) next generation of wireless communication technologies that are able to relay radio signals and scan for available 'holes' in airwaves without interfering with the incumbent users." "This project will not only bring about a technology breakthrough; it will also have a profound impact on current business models and inspire new designs for various wireless applications for the benefit of both mass-market and military users."
• Alcatel-Lucent announces 'breakthrough innovations in wireless IP' here, for a press conference March 18, "to announce groundbreaking enhancements to its end to end LTE solution".