|  By
Dennis Fernandez, Tim Huang,
Peter Su
The
“classical” period of wireless technology began with
the emergence of cellular systems. A cellular system differs from
a radio system in that multiple base stations are used to reuse
the precious natural resource of wireless bandwidth. Cellular systems
are often classified in generations (e.g., 1G, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, and
4G). 1G cellular systems such as AMPSs are analog telecommunication
systems. 2G cellular systems include digital telecommunication systems
necessitated by an increasing number of cellular phone users. Time
Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and in recent decade the emergence
of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) are multiplexing technologies
developed with the digital cellular systems in mind.
Various wireless technologies were developed in response to the
problems arising from designing various facets of the digital cellular
systems. For example, advances in technologies of encoding/decoding,
encryption/decryption, channel coding/channel decoding, and modulation/demodulation
were spurred by the problems of digital cellular systems. An entire
industry of digital signal processing (DSP) was created because
of digital cellular systems.
The “classical” period of cellular systems extends from
the 1960s to the present. As such, technologies in this period have
been increasingly dominated by the telephone manufacturing companies.
Due to the maturity of their technologies, innovations in cellular
systems are likely to be incremental – not to mention dominated
by them.
One of the most pressing challenges in cellular systems is to harmonize
or unify the various formats/protocols of cellular systems around
the world. Innovations are likely to be along the lines of Systems-On-a-Chip
(SOC ), for better integration and lower power consumption, more
efficient algorithms, and efficient manufacturing techniques. In
addition, because of technological maturity and saturation, a business
model of a start-up in cellular systems naturally gravitates toward
volume selling to the system integrators. Thus, for a start-up working
in this space, the Intellectual Property landscape appears to be
full of patent land mines. Building an Intellectual Property portfolio
is likely to require careful thinking about possible cross-licensing
issues even at a formative stage.
Accordingly, a viable patent strategy in this space should emphasize
defense against prior art. That is, patenting inventions related
to cellular systems requires extensive prior art searches in preparation
for drafting claims. Without adequately researching prior art patents
and possible licensing options, a start-up is likely to find its
novel ideas drowning in a sea of prior art patents. A viable patent
strategy thus involves extensive due diligence in avoiding patent
land mines and aggressive searches for partnerships/licensing possibilities.
Fortunately, several legal options are available to a company to
actively reduce the legal risk of patent infringement in this crowded
space. For example, a company can ask a patent attorney to render
an opinion letter stating non-infringement of prior art patents,
or an opinion letter arguing for invalidity of prior art patents.
It’s interesting to note that although cellular systems and
the Internet were both created around 1969, for years there was
no interaction between them. Only in recent years did they converge
to generate sophisticated PDAs which entice people to access the
Internet wirelessly. In other words, in the developing period of
wireless technologies mobile devices are the main players. A market
has formed in this developing period to ameliorate the never-ending
thirst for data – any time and anywhere.
The boundary between the “classical” and developing
periods is somewhat blurred; nevertheless, this discussion will
be based on the simplification that the developing period began
with the emergence of a wireless Internet (circa 1998). Moreover,
a distinction will be made between a wireless Internet allowing
portability and a wireless Internet allowing mobility. We should
then suggest that the transition from a portable wireless Internet
to a mobile wireless Internet is non-trivial, requiring drastic
changes in wireless infrastructure.
Fortunately, the wireless market is neither mature nor crowded.
Various standards have yet to find the acceptance required to reach
maturity, and ample room exists to allow companies big and small
to seize business opportunities with patents. Advances at various
levels of network granularity are yet to be standardized. However,
rather than taking the well-beaten path of dissecting the various
technological advances in this developing period of the wireless
Internet, we would like to focus on some of its less publicized
weaknesses and problems.
Specifically, the wireless Internet infrastructure today is largely
portable but not mobile. “Portable”, in Internet terms,
means that a user must sever his connection session before moving
to a new location, then later reestablish another connection session.
For example, a portable device such as a laptop needs to access
the Internet through an access point having a fixed location and
IP (Internet Protocol) address. When moved to a different location,
the laptop needs to access the Internet through another access point
having a fixed location and a different IP address. As such, the
user can access the Internet anywhere but not anytime.
On the other hand, a mobile connection means that, regardless of
the location, a user can be connected anywhere, anytime and all
the time. However, the wireless infrastructure in the developing
period thus far is designed to support commerce through portability.
The wireless infrastructure such as TCP/IP protocol, software, routers,
and switches is inadequate for supporting a mobile wireless Internet,
wherein a mobile device does not necessarily connect to the Internet
through fixed-location access points.
More specifically, the infrastructure of the Internet and specifically
the Web (using the HTTP protocol) has been mainly based on the client-server
model (see Figure 1A). With the rise of the Web and HTTP, and with
explosive numbers of people connecting to the Web, e-commerce has
emerged using the infrastructure of an n-tier model wherein the
client interacts with a database through the intermediary intervention
of multiple servers (see Figures 1B-C).
Moreover, e-commerce infrastructure has become increasingly sophisticated
wherein two databases, each as part of an n-tier model, can exchange
information (see Figures 1D). For example, two companies in a supply
chain can access each other’s databases to efficiently coordinate
purchasing and inventory control. In recent years, companies have
added wireless capabilities on top of these infrastructures (see
Figure 1E). However, even as the Internet underwent a recent and
ongoing “wireless facelift” to enable wireless Internet
access, the wireless access mode still supports portability rather
than mobility. The industry has not yet implemented a major infrastructure
overhaul needed for a mobile wireless Internet.
Presently, fierce battles are being fought between Microsoft’s
.Net technology and Java/XML (J2EE, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition)
technology to become the infrastructure for e-commerce applications
spanning multiple n-tiers. Successful software vendors such as BEA
have placed their bet on the J2EE platform rather than the .Net
platform from Microsoft by developing application servers using
J2EE technology. However, both .Net and J2EE technologies rely on
a portability-centric wireless Internet. As such, both .Net and
J2EE might become out-dated for supporting the emergent m-commerce
(mobile-commerce) because these two technologies are designed for
portability rather than mobility.
Conceptually, the technological problems encountered thus far in
building a portability-centric wireless Internet are straightforward.
They are considered “solved” in the sense that similar
solutions are being provided by various companies. Thus, problems
in portable wireless technologies are well understood. There is
a discernible direction to find solutions, and people try to solve
the problems with straightforward techniques. As such, various solutions
are likely to be proposed without fanfare, and boredom can quickly
set in.
On the other hand, arguably, the real impact of wireless technology
has not yet been revealed in this developing period of wireless
technology. As mentioned above, even as the Internet is moving toward
wireless, its infrastructure is limited to supporting portability
rather than mobility. Thus, the exciting thing about the developing
period is the phase transition that the Internet is about to undergo
from portable wireless to mobile wireless.
Specifically, proliferation of mobile devices connecting to the
Internet will be the dominant driving force of innovations in this
developing period of wireless technologies. However, the Internet
infrastructure will have to be profoundly changed to accommodate
mobility rather than just portability. A entirely new set of problems
will be created when people demand mobility when accessing the wireless
Internet. This is a wide-open area where large corporations and
start-ups can compete on equal ground in pondering what happens
when the wireless Internet reaches entropy (see Figure 1F). Naturally,
many technical problems related to mobile (rather than just portable)
wireless access of the Internet need to be ironed out first. Still,
these problems create a fertile ground of opportunities. Entrepreneurs
with the ingenuity to solve these problems will be handsomely rewarded.
At the moment, these new problems in developing a mobile wireless
Internet with mobile nodes are not well understood. In fact, with
the proliferation of PDAs, the layout of the Internet will be continually
shifting. It is not even clear which network infrastructure will
be relevant to build mobility into a wireless Internet. The comfort
of using multiple n-tiers model (such as .Net and J2EE) will vanish.
TCP/IP based protocols need to be modified. Web caching and P2P
(Peer-to-Peer) can take on a higher order of complexity. Many have
begun to consider these problems, but no real conceptual breakthrough
has been proposed yet.
For the time being, some developing techniques such as mobile IP,
mobile software agents and satellites have been offered to address
certain problems of a mobile wireless Internet.
Mobile IP is an attempt at achieving a mobile connection by maintaining
one IP address for the mobile device while moving around. However,
mobile IP has not been satisfactory because its behind-the-scene
processing actually introduces latency and overloads the mobile
connection.
Mobile software agents might be worth a second look. In the early
days of the web, mobile agents didn’t gain support partly
because the premise of the web is to attract users to stay connected
to a site. As such, major portals didn’t see the value in
a technology that allows a user to spend less or no time at a site.
Now, with precious little wireless bandwidth available, and with
the shift from e-commerce to m-commerce, mobile agents might begin
to play an increasingly important and inevitable role.
Satellite systems can be used to guarantee the anywhere aspect of
the mobile user in a location outside of a cellular system. Satellite
systems have not caught on so far because of their high cost. However,
with the proliferation of mobile consumers, the high cost of maintaining
satellite systems can be offset by the vast number of users and
becomes economically feasible.
Whether providing innovations for portable or mobile wireless Internet,
a startup needs to have an offensive patent strategy in aggressively
building its patent portfolio. Translation: even the various components
auxiliary to the major innovation of a start-up need to be patented
comprehensively.
In this space, a start-up must quickly establish a niche with patents
by taking advantage of an often-overlooked leverage in the patent
law. Specifically, patent law allows a person to patent an idea
without actually having implemented the idea in physical form. Thus,
a start-up can aggressively patent ideas not yet materialized to
leverage its innovative concepts.
In practice, while implementing nothing in practice, a start-up
would anticipate possible applications of its innovations in both
the vertical and horizontal markets by incorporating its innovations
into patents. In so doing, a start-up can quickly carve out a niche
in the market and increase market share.
Special thanks to Behfar Bastani for providing us with this article.
SiliconIran
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