with 4G on the Horizion is anyone worried about the SHANNON LIMIT/THEORY being true??

[boredandtattooed]

for those that dont know.. the Shannon Theory is in short as follows:
fixed amount of bandwith x fixed number of handsets = a limit point that technology cant overcome....

as the quest for video conference, VOIP, slingbox, mobileTV, mobileDTV, all streaming apps/browsers, etc grows, so does the bandwith the end user is consuming.. and as we make devices that do these things easier and easier, soon most devices will have to ability to chew up some serious bandwith..

My uncle, who now works for R&D for OnStar, and I had a cool talk on Mothers Day.. he explained the Shannon Limit to me.. its very, VERY technical stuff if you get into the documents for it(just google Shannon Limit or Shannon Theory).. but warning, its a HARD READ.. anyways he was telling me about how GM made him and a few other goto a Shannon Theory seminar that lasted several days.. wherein, they were required to study, analize, and interupt the Shannon Theory..

My uncle came up with this and was chosen to Speak with heads(he didnt name anyone) from VZW and Sprint about the ordeal.. my uncle told Sprint and VZW that there claims at speeds were outlandish and very, very inaccurate...

my uncles sites that if a meager 3% of all VZW customers simultaniously used high amounts of bandwith, VZW would crash almost instantly... only about 1.25% of Sprints customer base would it take to do the same thing...

The reason why GM is even looking into this is for OnStar.. especially with VZW, since OnStar and VZW have a partnership.. OnStar wants to know its limits i suppose...

its all very interesting, and Yes, it is called the Shannon THEORY, so its not absolute.. but the info is somewhat undeniable, if you really look into..

for those that have seen the Movie 'Anti-Trust'(which i recommend if you havent lol) you probably remember this crucial line from the movie: "the answers not in the box..... its in the band[with]"...

what do you guys think... do you think were reaching our Shannon Limit soon, if there is one??????

[jbearamus]

i don't know if we're close to that limit but yes i'd agree that there is a theoretical limit but at the same time, yes there's only so much bandwidth but with each move in generational technology we can fit 5 times as much data in the same amount of space.
now yes there will eventually be a generational limit (just like computer processors evolved to a point then they had to go in a different direction, multicore) I don't think 4G is going to be the end of enhanced technology, it could be 5G/7G/9G who knows but I doubt 4G will be the last.

[gTen]

I do not think we are reaching a limit..if anything its the other way around..LTE and wimax for example are much more efficient and can handle more simultaneous users then 3g.

Now as for the actual bandwidth sources via lines and etc, we are not in a bad situation due to hardware limitations but more that the companies being cheap and stingy. If you think about it, korea and japan use up a lot more bandwidth per user then we do in the USA..USA ranked 16th in the world.

It boils down more to economics then it is anything else....

In the future NASA plans to launch 5g with involves using a network of small satellites 110 pounds to provide bandwidth and gigabit speeds.

Edit:

here is the official press release in 2008
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008...s_nanosat.html


Edit 2:
Here is the whitepaper for Intel's wimax efficiency in comparison to other standards today.. it is possible to be a bit biased as Intel invests in wimax(link is below article)
http://www.wimax.com/commentary/blog...ays-intel-0315

[xSD]

Sigh. Theory and practice are very different. Know that.

[ubigred]

Originally Posted by boredandtattooed

for those that dont know.. the Shannon Theory is in short as follows:
fixed amount of bandwith x fixed number of handsets = a limit point that technology cant overcome....

as the quest for video conference, VOIP, slingbox, mobileTV, mobileDTV, all streaming apps/browsers, etc grows, so does the bandwith the end user is consuming.. and as we make devices that do these things easier and easier, soon most devices will have to ability to chew up some serious bandwith..

My uncle, who now works for R&D for OnStar, and I had a cool talk on Mothers Day.. he explained the Shannon Limit to me.. its very, VERY technical stuff if you get into the documents for it(just google Shannon Limit or Shannon Theory).. but warning, its a HARD READ.. anyways he was telling me about how GM made him and a few other goto a Shannon Theory seminar that lasted several days.. wherein, they were required to study, analize, and interupt the Shannon Theory..

My uncle came up with this and was chosen to Speak with heads(he didnt name anyone) from VZW and Sprint about the ordeal.. my uncle told Sprint and VZW that there claims at speeds were outlandish and very, very inaccurate...

my uncles sites that if a meager 3% of all VZW customers simultaniously used high amounts of bandwith, VZW would crash almost instantly... only about 1.25% of Sprints customer base would it take to do the same thing...

The reason why GM is even looking into this is for OnStar.. especially with VZW, since OnStar and VZW have a partnership.. OnStar wants to know its limits i suppose...

its all very interesting, and Yes, it is called the Shannon THEORY, so its not absolute.. but the info is somewhat undeniable, if you really look into..

for those that have seen the Movie 'Anti-Trust'(which i recommend if you havent lol) you probably remember this crucial line from the movie: "the answers not in the box..... its in the band[with]"...

what do you guys think... do you think were reaching our Shannon Limit soon, if there is one??????

I thanked you ....NOT because of your post, but because of you sig

Classic!

[boredandtattooed]

Originally Posted by gTen

I do not think we are reaching a limit..if anything its the other way around..LTE and wimax for example are much more efficient and can handle more simultaneous users then 3g.

Now as for the actual bandwidth sources via lines and etc, we are not in a bad situation due to hardware limitations but more that the companies being cheap and stingy. If you think about it, korea and japan use up a lot more bandwidth per user then we do in the USA..USA ranked 16th in the world.

It boils down more to economics then it is anything else....

In the future NASA plans to launch 5g with involves using a network of small satellites 110 pounds to provide bandwidth and gigabit speeds.

Edit:

here is the official press release in 2008
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008...s_nanosat.html


Edit 2:
Here is the whitepaper for Intel's wimax efficiency in comparison to other standards today.. it is possible to be a bit biased as Intel invests in wimax(link is below article)
http://www.wimax.com/commentary/blog...ays-intel-0315

this would require dramatic, and i mean dramatic improvements in handheld device antennas.... thats why we have Sat Phones.. thats also why we have cell towers, our devices require a closer signal because of their antennas being weak...

sattelite tv and internet are flawed, especially since weather plays factor even more so.. and look at the antenna it takes just to get that signal too lol.... i hope more satellites isnt the answer there going to give us..
----------

also i dont think weve reached our limit with 4G, not at all..... in fact i think itd take years and years more for this actually happen.. its going to take quite an increase in popularity, both in the actual devices and people actually frequently using all these bandwith chewing apps/features to need to worry..

i guess a better questions to ask is:
what do you think our limit will be?
or, will we ever even reach a limit?
or maybe, will our next step(5G/X.G) be our last step then???

[gTen]

I think the ultimate goal will be to eliminate standards such as wifi, bluetooth and etc and have a universal wireless standard where everything acts as a repeater.

Then interference can be prevented by multi-sourcing and comparing bits.


Also, the NASA satellite approach is better then then what direct tv for example uses as it will have multiple satellite sources thus giving signals from all directions.


One thing also we may want to remember is wimax is also very good back-haul of data. If wimax reaches the 2.0 spec of 1gbps it will make a very good replacement for standard optical lines.

This plays into my idea of "ultimate goal" as if you notice wimax and LTE are very similar in specs and can merge later on..it also resembles wifi..and with new 60hz wigi standards will also include wifi compatibility.

Now here is where wimax shines even more...if you remember cable companies signed on wimax..so their goal is to receive wimax signals for video in the future..but at same time they can act as a mini cellphone tower for 500m for example.

Now add the NASA plan of sending data via satellites..lets say new york has rain storms but new jersey is fine, it sends wireless to new jersey and then hops via these miniature cell towers to the source.

The key goal is to add compatibility between the standards and wonders we now have a super network that can have internet all over the world cheap and efficient. Think of making the internet 1 giant cloud network...

[PPCGeeks4ME]

Originally Posted by boredandtattooed

i guess a better questions to ask is:
what do you think our limit will be?
or, will we ever even reach a limit?
or maybe, will our next step(5G/X.G) be our last step then???

I'm no expert in wireless communications, but I doubt there will be a hard and fast limit to the amount of data we can transmit. We'll find ways to squeeze more bandwidth into the same amount of spectrum. Or find ways to pack more information into the same amount of bandwidth. Or enable use of entirely new areas of spectrum (sound waves? light pulses? magnetic fields?).

One idea that immediately comes to mind is to develop collaborative compression algorithms that work across multiple devices. When millions of devices are all asking for data streams consisting of only two alternating states (0 and 1), you'll end up with a lot of repeated transmissions - some of significant length. If a tower could tell 100 devices to tune to channel n for your next 1000 bits of data, for example, that could save some bandwidth. This would require much more collaboration between towers and devices to work.

Another solution would be to figure out how to direct radio waves in a narrow beam, with an adaptive antenna that always "points" at the nearest tower. The tower could have a few hundred of these antennae, each creating a virtual cable between the tower and one device.

Some quantum mechanics phenomena allow for instantaneous communication of information between two points with no transmission of energy in between - obviously this would be very beneficial if we could learn how to do it on a large enough scale.

And those are just my ideas after five minutes of thought. I'm sure someone will always come up with some way to keep our demands for data satisfied.

(P.S. satellites will never work because of high latencies. It's kind of amazing to think that we live in a world where things happen so fast, the cosmic ceiling of the speed of light - enough to circle the earth seven times in one second - is a serious problem. )

[gTen]

Originally Posted by PPCGeeks4ME

(P.S. satellites will never work because of high latencies. It's kind of amazing to think that we live in a world where things happen so fast, the cosmic ceiling of the speed of light - enough to circle the earth seven times in one second - is a serious problem. )

The satellites are slower if you use them for direct satellite to device transfers...not to mention most of the delay is not in the travel time but in actually confirming the data causing latency. If you receive data from multiple sources the speed will increase similar to how bit torrent is...by being able to receive 5 signals at a time, while latency exists the transfer rate would increase 5x fold.

here is an example where satellite will be faster even in regular scenario..china to usa by wire vs satellite, what will be faster? aka there is no reason for satellite if your accessing your neighbors server but long distance data and short distance is where the mini tower idea is awesome, mostly in high populated areas.