Wireless Waffle - A whole spectrum of radio related rubbish

Maths: Not Ofcom's strong suit?signal strength
Friday 9 May, 2014, 08:02 - Spectrum Management, Satellites
Posted by Administrator
esoa duncesIt seems that following the ESOA submission to Ofcom concerning the apparent errors in the RealWireless study on spectrum demand for mobile data reported by Wireless Waffle on 15 Febuary, the offending report has now been re-issued (note the publication date is now 11 April 2014) with the axis on Figure 44 which shows data traffic density re-labelled from 'PB/month/km²' (PetaBytes) to 'TB/month/km²' (TeraBytes), thereby reducing the calculated data traffic by a factor of 1000 and now making the document internally consistent. Well done Ofcom and RealWireless, though they could have publicly admitted the apparent error, instead of quietly re-issuing the document with no fanfare. Presumably this now makes ESOA look rather silly.

But... even a 10th grade student could complete the sum that is behind the ITU data forecasts and realise that the axis should have read 'PB' all along (and therefore that the internal inconsistencies are not fixed and that the data in the ITU and RealWireless models is still hundreds of times too large). Here, for you to try, are the values - taken from the ITU's 'Speculator' model - and the maths you need to apply. The values are for 'SC12 SE2' which represents people using 'high multimedia' services in urban offices and is with the ITU model in its 'low market' market setting (it has a higher one too).

User density:120,975 users per km²
Session arrival rate per user:3.3 arrivals per hour per user
Mean service bit rate:13.83 Mbps
Average session duration:81 seconds per session

Now for the maths...
  • First, multiply the first two numbers to get 'sessions per hour per km²'. (120,975 × 3.3 = 399,217.5)
  • Then multiply this by the average session duration to get 'seconds of traffic per hour per km²'. (399,217.5 × 81 = 32,336,617.5)
  • Then multiply by the mean bit rate to get 'Megabits of traffic per hour per km²'. (32,336,617.5 × 13.83 = 447,215,420)
  • To make the numbers more managable, divide by 8 to get from bits to bytes, then by 1,000,000 to get from Megabytes to Terabytes (447,215,420 ÷ 8,000,000 = 55.9)
So the traffic assumed by the ITU model for people using 'high multimedia' services in urban offices is 55.9 Terabytes per hour per square km. But the figure in the graph in the RealWireless report is per month, so we need to scale this up from hours to months. We now have the thorny question of 'how many hours are there in a day', which for mobile data traffic is not necessarily 24 as you might expect. If the above figures are meant to represent the busy hour (the busiest hour of the day), it would not be right to multiply the value by 24 to get daily traffic, as this would assume every hour to be as busy as the busiest. As a conservative measure, let's assume that the daily traffic is 10 times that of the busiest hour. So daily traffic per square km would be 559 TeraBytes (55.9 × 10 just in case you couldn't work this out in your head).

The number of days in a month is relatively easy to work out, it's 30.4 on average (365.25 ÷ 12). So monthly traffic per square km would be 559 × 30.4 = 16,994 TeraBytes per month per km².

ofcom maths skillsThis is the monthly data for just one urban traffic type in the ITU model, there are 19 others. Ignoring the others completely, Figure 44 of the RealWireless report should show monthly traffic in urban areas for the ITU model being 17,000 TeraBytes per month per square km, include the other activities that urban office workers undertake and the value should be much higher still. But it now shows as being just over 100 TB/month/square km for the ITU and less for the RealWireless prediction, 100 or more times too low. Oh dear!

RW report page 085

whos stupid nowSo having corrected the figure in the RealWireless report, it is now wrong. It was correct before. And it still does not tally with the total data forecast for the UK that is in the same report.

Surely there are people at Ofcom who own a calculator, have a GCSE in maths, and possess a modicum of professionalism such that they would want to check the facts before blithely allowing their suppliers to fob them off with an 'oops, we mis-labelled an axis' argument. Presumably they thought that it was ESOA who couldn't handle a calculator properly.

Now who looks silly?
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The Porridge thickens...signal strength
Monday 21 April, 2014, 19:34 - Spectrum Management
Posted by Administrator
Following the recent Wireless Waffle piece on Valles Marineris sized chasm in the values used by the ITU in predicting the demand for IMT spectrum in 2020 spotted by the European Satellite Operators Association in their response to Ofcom's mobile data consultation, others have noted similar gulfs.

tim farrarTelecoms analyst Tim Farrar (pictured right) published an article in GigaOm entitled 'Note to the telecom industry: beware of false models'. In it he takes a different view to ESOA. The ESOA response tries to use the values in the ITU's 'Speculator' model to define the data traffic that the UK would experience in 2020 and discover that applying the values in the ITU model yields results that far exceed forecasts. The GigaOm article instead looks directly at the values found in the ITU model and concludes that they are up to 1000 times too high which generally concurs with findings of the ESOA analysis.

ebu logo 144x144Next the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have chipped in. Their document, 'Crystal balls, tea leaves or mathematics' critically examines the ITU's model and similar to the others concludes that there are a 'number of erroneous elements'.

Wireless Waffle has been able to get hold of a copy of the 'Speculator' and so exclusively for you, here are some of the values that are causing people such as ESOA, Mr Farrar and the EBU such consternation:

ParameterCurrent ValueNotes
Spectrum EfficiencyFor GSM/UMTS/LTE: 2 to 4 bits/second/Hz/cell.
For LTE-Advanced: 4.5 to 7.3 bits/second/Hz/cell
These look like highly aspirational values!
Call Blocking Rate1%This represents the chance of not being able to make a call (i.e that there is a 99% chance of success).
Population DensityMaximum of 222,333 per sq kmThis occurs in 'SE2, SC12' which equates to interactive high multimedia use in offices in dense urban areas.
Mean Service Bit RateSC6 (streaming super high multimedia): Up to 1 Gbps
SC11 (interactive super high multimedia): Up to 1 Gbps
Really? 1 Gbps on average!

office workerThe population density figure for urban offices using 'interactive high multimedia' is brain achingly odd. For other uses in urban offices, the population densities are significantly lower, so it is not clear why the use of these interactive high multimedia would be so prevalent in offices compared to other applications. Have the ITU assumed that all office workers do all day is play games and watch videos?

A mean (average) service bit rate of 1 Gbps seems excessively excessive. If this was the peak service rate then, maybe, just maybe, this would be possible (and only possible on LTE-Advanced networks, not on the others). But to assume that it is an average seems just crazy.

Of course the big question is, what would the 'Speculator' say, if the values input to it were more realistic? To try and answer this question requires some kind of estimation of what realistic actually means. Whilst we make no claims for the realism of any of the values proposed below, here are some alternative values...

ParameterNew ValueNotes
Spectrum EfficiencyFor GSM/UMTS/LTE: 0.55 to 1.5 bits/second/Hz/cell. For LTE-Advanced: 1.1 to 3 bits/second/Hz/cellThe values for LTE-Advanced are taken from the ITU's own Report M.2134. Those for GSM/UMTS/LTE are half the LTE-Advanced values (roughly in line with the original ratios).
Call Blocking Rate2%A value that more operators would recognise.
Population DensityReduced so that the weighted average values are the same as those in the ESOA report for the UK (e.g. ~11000 per sq km in Urban areas).This should mean that running the ESOA calculations would at least yield the correct population for the UK.
Mean Service Bit RateCapped at 100 Mbps.Seems a little more reasonable based on the technologies likely to be in use by 2020.

The big question is obviously therefore, what does this do to spectrum demand? The original and revised figures are shown in the table below.

SettingGSM/UMTS/LTELTE-AdvancedTotal
OriginalRevisedOriginalRevisedOriginalRevised
Low440 MHz580 MHz900 MHz480 MHz1340 MHz1060 MHz
High540 MHz660 MHz1420 MHz600 MHz1960 MHz1260 MHz

What does this tell us? Oddly, in both cases, the demand for GSM/UMTS/LTE spectrum has increased. This is probably due to the lower spectrum efficiency that these technologies have been assumed to achieve. Conversely, the total spectrum demand has dropped significantly and all of this reduction has come from spectrum for LTE-Advanced.

But what is most striking about these calculations is not necessarily the differences in the results, but the simplicity with which it is possible to present alternative values and find a different outcome. For example, no effort has been made in the above analysis to check the way in which the ITU model apportions traffic between the 2G/3G networks and the LTE-Advanced network. Could, for example, it be argued that by 2020 major carriers in advanced markets (e.g. USA) will have moved all of their data traffic to LTE-Advanced and that only 2G will remain for legacy voice services. itu outlook gloomyThis would almost certainly serve to vastly reduce the amount of 2G/3G spectrum that would be needed, whilst providing only a modest increase in the amount of spectrum that would be needed for LTE-Advanced, given the technology's improved spectrum efficiency. In this case, the total requirement would probably fall further. Or could it be that we will all be living in a virtual environment, with Google glasses projecting us a view of the world in full HD as we stroll around the office - requiring umpteen times more data than the ITU model predicts.

The fact is that any model of this kind, no matter how many brains were employed in developing it, can never be more than a 'best guess', especially when looking 7 to 10 years into the future. Weather forecasters struggle to predict the level of precipitation 7 to 10 days into the future and no-one in their right mind would decide if they needed to carry an umbrella a week next Tuesday based on their forecast. Nor should the vast wireless community take decisions based on this one forecast, it would be irresponsible of them to do so and if the weather changes, they may end up getting soaked!
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The full Gravity of the situationsignal strength
Friday 14 March, 2014, 14:28 - Spectrum Management, Much Ado About Nothing
Posted by Administrator
For those who have not yet seen the Oscar winning film, Gravity, please note that although there are no spoilers (in the traditional sense) in the ensuing text, for those who are regular readers of Wireless Waffle, reading what is to follow before seeing the film may leave you with the same level of bemused bewilderment that it did us, and may spoil your enjoyment of the film! So a spoiler that's not a spoiler.

The movie begins with a few astronauts on a space-walk (a.k.a EVA) to add some new equipment to the Hubble space telescope. They are communicating with each other using radios built into their space suits and also, at the same time, are able to communicate seamlessly with ground control in Houston.

Following the 'disaster' around which the film's premise is based, the astronauts lose communication with Houston, and, for that matter, any ground based people. According to the film, this has been caused by the loss of the communication satellites that were handling the signals. In addition, their space suit radios seem incapable of communicating with each other over ranges of just a few hundred metres.

Let's first examine the space suit radios themselves. According to a document provided by NASA the range of the communication system between suits is just 80 metres in the worst case (though could be much greater). Given that this system took US$20 million to develop and operates in a 'free space' environment, the poor coverage performance is lamentable. However, it appears that this element of the story might just be feasible. Note that the Russians use a much more off-the-shelf technology for EVA voice communication that has a much greater range!

Could a ground station communicate directly with a space-suit. Based on NASA's paper, and on typical UHF communication systems, no. But with a little ingenuity, for example the use of a high power transmitter and high gain antenna on the ground, it is not beyond the wit of man.

space shuttle legoAs for a loss of Earth-space communication being caused by the loss of a communications satellite, there are satellites used to relay data from space to Earth (for example, the TDRSS), however full data communications with a space shuttle could also be accomplished directly from the shuttle to a network of ground stations at S-band frequencies around 2.2 GHz (and voice-only communication at VHF and UHF frequencies). Although in theory, these ground stations could be connected back to Houston via satellite, the chances are that there would be a terrestrial, fibre-based connection that could do the job just as well. So whilst passing over such a ground station, there is no reason why Earth-space communication could not have been re-established. Of course a space vehicle (such as the shuttle) is then needed to relay these signals to any astronauts on EVA.

tdrss space links

There is then a moment when one of the astronauts finally receives a signal from the ground but it appears to be from a Chinese man whose dogs and baby can be heard to be barking and crying (respectively) over the air. Whilst tuning into these transmissions, the astronaut in question says 'you're coming in on an AM frequency'. What is an AM frequency when it's at home? AM is a modulation scheme and not a frequency. And why would someone sitting at home in China be using any kind of frequency that is shared with Earth-space communications? And the communication seems to be full duplex as the astronaut can communicate with the man on the ground concurrently with listening to his transmissions. None of this makes much sense.

landing module re entryAnd lastly, communication with the ground is finally re-established when a landing module descends into the atmosphere. The range of the types of frequencies used for Earth-space communications at atmospheric altitudes is limited by the curvature of the earth, (e.g. at 30,000 feet, the range of communications is roughly 300 km). This would mean that those on the ground would have needed to be aware of the location where the landing module was coming down (odd that they could do this if they had had no communication with the landing module until that point) and thus be in the neighbourhood for communications to be possible.

Whilst the film may have excelled for its special effects, the way in which the radio communications were portrayed will be a real 'spoiler' for anyone who knows anything about the radio technologies or radio propagation. Still, science-fiction, by its definition, doesn't need to be scientifically accurate!
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Goldilocks and the ITUsignal strength
Saturday 15 February, 2014, 14:01 - Spectrum Management
Posted by Administrator
When Goldilocks visited the house of the three bears, she tried their porridge and found one bowl too hot, one too salty but the third one just right. It seems that the ITU may have employed Goldilocks to help them put together their forecasts for mobile spectrum demand. Why? Read on...

esoa logoLeafing through the various responses to Ofcom's mobile data strategy consultation, one particular response raised more than an eyebrow. The response from the European Satellite Operators' Association (ESOA) points out that the model used by Ofcom to calculate the demand for spectrum for IMT (mobile broadband) services has a great big, whoppingly large, error in it. The model is based on that of the ITU which and is snappily titled 'ITU-R M.1768-1'. It was originally used at the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) to set expectations on how much spectrum would be required for mobile broadband services up to, and including, the year 2020.

At the time (2007), the ITU model predicted that by 2010, between 760 and 840 MHz of spectrum would be needed for IMT services. In reality, in most countries, little more than 400 MHz was actually available. And yet, ironically, the amount of data traffic being carried was far in excess of that which the ITU predicted. Not deterred by this apparent flaw in their logic, the model has been updated this year and a new set of results published. These new results show a demand for spectrum by 2020 of between 1340 and 1960 MHz.

real wireless logoWhat ESOA have spotted, is that if you apply the traffic densities which consultancy RealWireless have assumed in their work for Ofcom, or those developed by the ITU, the resulting total traffic for the UK would be orders of magnitude greater than the actual traffic forecasts. Figures 40 and 44 of their report clearly repeat these errors. The ESOA consultation response illustrates it quite nicely, as follows:

TypeArea
(sqkm)
Traffic Density
(PB/month/sqkm)
Traffic
(PB/month)
Urban21030 - 1006300 - 21000
Suburban419010 - 2041900 - 83800
Rural2386000.03 - 0.37160 - 71600
Total23400055360 - 176400

What this shows it that the total monthly traffic for the UK, as calculated from the RealWireless traffic assumptions is between 55,360 and 176,400 PB (Peta Bytes) per month. Compare this to their traffic forecasts which show the total UK traffic reaching around 1000 PB/month by 2020 even in the 'high market setting' in the chart below.

realwireless traffic predic
Source: Figure 40 of 'Study on the future UK spectrum demand for terrestrial mobile broadband applications', 23 June 2013

So if the ITU and Ofcom models assume traffic levels of 100 times greater than reality, why is the resulting demand for spectrum which it outputs in line with many other industry predictions? Without digging deeply into the model (which is immensely complex), it's difficult to say, but it stands to reason that there must be some assumptions that have been 'adjusted' to make the results seem believable - fiddle factors as they're normally called.

goldilocks and the ituThis is where Goldilocks comes in:
  • If the ITU model produced a result which said that 20,000 MHz of spectrum was needed for mobile broadband by 2020 (which it ought to given the high data traffic it is trying to model), no one would believe it - too hot!
  • If it had said that 200 MHz of spectrum was needed it would equally have not been believed - too salty!
  • But as it produces a result around 2000 MHz it is seen as just right!
As the traffic forecasts are so far out, there must have been some tweaking of the fiddle factors to get the believable response. The model must be fusing the ridiculously high values of traffic with some other ridiculous values to produce the seemingly reasonable answer it does - there's no other logical explanation. Of course, it is in ESOA's interest to find a way to reduce the demand for mobile spectrum and take pressure off the push to use satellite spectrum (L-Band, S-Band and C-Band) for terrestrial mobile services but nonetheless, their logic in questioning the model seems sound.

Indeed the ITU themselves seem to recognise that there is some fiddling going on in a note they provide hidden deep in the annexes in their paper entitled ITU-R M.2290-2014 which says:
The spectrum efficiency values ... are to be used only for spectrum requirement estimation by Recommendation ITU-R M.1768. These values are based on a full buffer traffic model... They are combined with the values of many other parameters ... to develop spectrum requirement estimate for IMT. In practice, such spectrum efficiency values are unlikely to be achieved.

charlie eppes numb3rsWhat a 'full buffer traffic model' is, is anyone's guess but it seems to suggest that this factor, and others, may not be values that mobile operators or anyone else for that matter, would recognise. The problem with any complex model of this type is that it is difficult to understand except by the academic elite that prepared it (or by Charlie Eppes on Numb3rs), and equally difficult to sense-check. It seems that the sense checking has not taken place and what is left succumbs to the old computing law, "garbage in = garbage out". Many countries have done their own calculations and in many cases these have shown smaller figures than those espoused by the ITU, some have shown higher figures. Where such figures are based on the ITU model itself, they should, of course, now be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

verizon wireless logoTo take a real life example, Verizon Wireless in the USA claimed in June 2013 that:
57 percent of Verizon Wireless’ data is carried on its 4G LTE.

Putting this in perspective, Verizon has around 40% of the US market and is using just 20 MHz of spectrum for its LTE network. This means that with an LTE network using 5 times as much spectrum (i.e. 100 MHz), it ought to be possible to carry the whole of the US's mobile data traffic today. Allowing for growth in data traffic of 33% per year (a figure which both Vodafone and Telefonica have cited as their actual data growth in 2013), and by 2020 the US would need a total of 740 MHz of spectrum for mobile data, a far cry from the 1960 MHz being demanded by the ITU. And the 740 MHz figure does not take into account any additional savings that might be realised using more efficient technology such as LTE-Advanced.

The inexorable growth in demand for mobile data is not in question, though at some point it will become too expensive to deliver the 'all you can eat' packages that people expect. Who is going to pay US$10 to download one film on their mobile when the subscription to Netflix for the whole month is less than that, and they could use their home WiFi and do it for next to nothing? What is now in question is how much spectrum you need to deliver it. Maybe a good starting point would be to stop where we are and wait a few years for things to settle down, and then see what the real story is. Maybe Goldilocks will have run into the forest to hide from the ITU, and a new bowl of porridge will have been made that tastes a whole lot better.
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