Growing Demands for Computation Power Taxing Networks, TAC Told
The world faces a major challenge as networks try to keep up with the growing demands for computational power, the FCC Technical Advisory Council was told at its quarterly meeting Thursday. TAC also took on 5G. The computational power working group found a long-term trend of 24 percent annual growth for all data, with wireless data volume growing by 50 percent yearly.
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“Today’s networks are largely designed for broadcast and multicast downstream,” said Lisa Guess with Cradlepoint, co-chair of the working group. “We’re going to see a lot more upstream, a lot more very individual traffic flows. The growth in the traffic does increase up and down through more branching and buildouts closer to the access point.”
The world “is turning wireless before our eyes,” Guess said. “Video is increasingly embedded in content, whether that’s from the ads we may not want to watch or video we do want to go see.” Computing and networking are becoming entangled and are no longer separate, she said. “It will drive change.” Among the working group’s recommendations is that the FCC look at how it will carry out its work as computing blends with networks.
Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp said there are “scary” implications from rapid data growth. “How do you get to things like autonomous cars,” which create huge amounts of data, Knapp said. Another question is how to make sure apps don’t use more network capacity than needed. “You don't want to discourage the applications,” he said. “You don't want to create loads unnecessarily.”
The pending report suggests a “huge challenge,” said TAC Chairman Dennis Roberson. “Things ain’t what they used to be.”
Brian Daly of AT&T, co-chair of the 5G/IoT working group, said all major carriers are planning to deploy the new generation of wireless. “The reality of 5G is it’s close,” he said. “We're going to see it starting the end of this year, and next year is going to bring even more.” Daly warned 5G “will take a long time to get built out into the networks and to become ubiquitous across the nation.”
Daly noted the FCC push to speed infrastructure deployment of 5G. “Everybody wants it” but “not in my backyard,” he said. The working group focus is whether there are things the FCC or other government agencies can or should do relative to 5G and IoT to facilitate deployment, officials said.
TAC member Marty Cooper, known as the father of the cellphone, said new technologies typically take a decade or longer to become the norm. “This group does a superb job at anticipating and planning what the next generation of technology is going to be,” he said. “We don't do so well at the timing part.”
Greg Lapin of ARRL said his working group on antenna technology is focusing on adaptive-phased array antennas and use of metamaterials. The group's concentrating part of its attention on the appearance of antennas, he said. That's been a hot topic at the FCC and is addressed in the pending infrastructure order (see 1809180038).
“Antennas are not exactly the most beautiful things and even if you like the way they look, some of the installations are not that beautiful,” Lapin said. “If it's possible to disguise antennas, it will certainly help to facilitate acceptance of dense deployment of small cells.”