CORDIS Archive : RADIONET (23923)

RADIONET (23923)

The main technical objectives of the RADIONET project is to determine the technical and economic feasibility of a multiple access and channel allocation scheme which can be implemented as a new development on top of the state-of-the-art technology to serve transactional data applications (typically and above all, access to Internet) in the wireless local loop.

The business objective is the belief that for any (wireless) technology to have a chance of success in the highly (in the future) competitive local loop, it must be able to support most, or all, of the existing and future services that are or will be provided by a fixed network, thereby including transactional data. This is in contrast with the present technology scenario, in which most existing products are based on telephony (circuit-switching) oriented technology.

The technical approach requires know-how in communications theory, traffic pattern identification and simulation, radio propagation and radio site engineering, business and marketing.

The project will unfold in the following steps:

Acquire more accurate user-generated traffic patterns for data transaction applications which are expected to be applicable in the near future to both home and office environments (for example Internet) and defining classes of usage profiles.
Identify and analyse transactional user and service requirements data user applications.
Define quality of service parameters for the evaluation of the performance of competing systems.
Provide a clear picture of competing technological approaches (state-of-the-art of the market)
Identify a cost breakdown structure for the wireless network and use it as a basis for a business plan.
Identify and specify a candidate bandwidth efficient multiple access and channel allocation protocol which can be built on top of the state-of-the-art RF technology.
Outline a development and implementation path for the protocol.

A positive outcome for the feasibility study will allow the consortium to go on with the next phases, such as development and implementation. The eventual availability of the enhanced technology will allow wireless access operators to offer a broader range of services (notably including Internet access and EFP POS / EPOS) and dramatically increase their chances of success on the local loop marketplace. No system currently available as a commercial product can provide this performance at suitable cost.

Two partners of the consortium are wireless access operators, have identified the need for a more efficient access protocol and have already embedded the exploitation of the results of the RADIONET project into their own business plans.

Start date: February 1997
End date: December 1997

Project Coordinator:

Sergio Bonora
Laboratori Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi
Via Porrettana 123
I-4044 Pontecchio Marconi
Italy
Tel: 0039-51-846900
Fax: 0039-51-846479
Email: serbon@labs.it

Partners:

Laboratori Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi (Italy)
Atlantic Telecommunications (United Kingdom)
Guglielmo (Italy)
Commune di Bologna (Italy)