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The vehicle as mobile hotspot (Part 2)
A plethora of new opportunities for wireless communications: in your car, on the road, and in your daily life.
The combination of on-board computers, in-car
displays, and a broadband wireless connection introduce several exciting
services to transportation. Not only do these systems tell you precisely where
you at, but they clue you into what is around you: weather, traffic, lifestyle,
and business services. Point-of-sale transactions can be accomplished by
authorizing payment through a handheld mobile device instead of carrying cash,
credit, or a specialized payment token. Concierge services remotely unlock doors
when your keys are lost, inform a service center of diagnostics errors, notify
emergency services of an airbag deployment, and even locate stolen or missing
vehicles.
WiMAX proponents are demonstrating interactive automobiles that download songs
from Internet music services; place phone calls through online Skype service;
view the latest news, traffic and sports videos; and take digital photos that
are uploaded to photo-sharing sites. WiMAX and similar next-generation mobile
networking technologies bring broadband wireless service to the vehicle, also
enabling distribution of Wi-Fi access by integrating an on-board router.
Vehicles are only one of the opportunities for enabling mobile broadband
technologies in transportation. Additional opportunities exist in Buildings,
Consumer/Professional, Energy, Healthcare/Life Sciences, Industrial, Retail, and
Security/Public Safety (see Figure 1). A new report from ABI Research predicts
that markets for cellular machine-to-machine communication modules - the radio
units providing wireless connectivity to a range of devices that communicate
without human intervention - are expected to ship nearly 80 million modules in
2013.
Source: Harbor Research
A limiting factor to realizing these fascinating applications is a general lack
of wireless network coverage. Modern cellular voice networks exist where people
congregate or travel. This misses many of the rural and hard-to-reach places
where data collection and information gathering are needed, including pipelines,
railways and utility processing centers. A significant opportunity exists to
build infrastructure that connects people and machines into a common network
fabric.
Delivering personal broadband services is on the minds of many a network
operator. Business and consumer applications have us imagining what we could do
with a world of information at our fingertips anytime, anywhere. Enablement of
vehicle and machine-to-machine communications expands that horizon to even
greater gain in a connected global information society.
By Jeff Orr
ORR Technology, LLC
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