Tomorrow it will happen, I Predict

?List of acronyms used in this article

Cloud of everything (CoE)

Cloud RAN (C-RAN)

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS)

Internet of anything/everything (IoX)

Internet of Interconnect (IoI)

Landscape of everything LoE)

Machine to machine (M2M)

Near-field communications (NFC)

Network functions virtualization (NFV)

Radio frequency identification (RFID)

Software-defined radios (SDR)

Vehicle to grid (V2G)

Vehicle to infrastructure (V2I)

Vehicle to vehicle (V2V)

Editor’s preamble

Futurists have always prided themselves on being able to predict what we will be doing in 10, 20, 30 or more, years out. I think predicting the future of any branch of technology is not something I would bet my full retirement on, but I would risk, say, 75 percent. I say that because I have been doing technology for a long time and unlike those flakey investment company ads where they have the disclaimers that go something like “past performance is no guarantee of future success,” I have gained a lot of knowledge in my 40+ years in high technology and not just in wireless. So in reality, and especially in technology where things are more anchored to laws of math and physics, predictability is not as uncertain as say, the stock market. Often times, we do see it coming, mostly because it is an evolution of what we already have.

The real separator between the successful and unsuccessful futurist is timing. Not if but when, and the one who gets the “A” grade in the class is the one that hits the timing.

Publications editors are in a rather unique position when it comes to attempting to prognosticate. Not that we can invoke special trances that propel us into the future, or have editor-only mind-altering proprietary substances. Or that we are any more intelligent that our peers. But because we are onslaught with data – tons of it – 24/7. And not just in our industries, but from just about every, even remotely related angle and direction. We are lucky, we do not have to find it, it finds us. So we have this wealth of information, and mathematics do not lie – the more data one puts on the left side of the equal sign, the more precise the right side will be.

And, that is my justification for penning about what is going to happen in the next 10 or 15 years.

For a short walk down memory lane, the sippet following is the opening page of an article I wrote at the end of the 20th century (just before I was sure the world was coming to an end, but didn’t tell anyone). I put it in here partially because for nostalgia, and partly because I want to see just how close I got. Much of it was generalizations, but in re-reading it, I am amazed at how close I was – although I did miss the submicron chip gate geometries by a few years.

There is probably no more an exciting time to be in technology, especially wireless, than today. The last five years have seen a number of emerging technologies get a foothold that will change the wireless space (and just wait for 6G). It has also seen a number of new technologies emerge or put on the drawing board (reconfigurable intelligent surfaces - RIS, quantum cryptology). Come with me as we look at what some of those technologies and platforms will look like five to 15 years from now.

It is difficult to resist the temptation to gaze into the proverbial crystal ball and take a stab at what will be coming down the technological pipeline as we enter the 21st century. 

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I have been in high technology since the 1970’s. I’ve seen die sizes shrink to microscopic form factors, frequencies move up to the hundreds of gigahertz, integration blur the lines of analog and digital and high technology infuse its tentacles into every part of our existence. I love it – it is indeed the technological revolution! It is these years of being on the cutting edge of technology that serve as the basis of what I think will be the shape of things to come. Additionally, 1999 has proven to be a banner year for technological information dissemination and prognostications of the future of technology.

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Therefore, this issue of RF DESIGN will take that proverbial look into the future – beyond Y2K, at what the technological revolution may have in store for us.

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IT’S THE CONVERGENCE

It’s pretty obvious that the wireless and computer industries will be leading the way. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – perhaps THE most revolutionary component that will affect (effect) our lives in the next century will be “computerradios.”

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We have already seen some, and we will be seeing many more various renditions of this device in virtually everything we interact with. From automobiles to appliances; from complex communication devices to e-commerce; from real-time, on line stock market trading to smart homes and offices. Computerradios will allow tetherless worldwide communications with anyone, anytime. You’ll be able to have multi-way conversations that present voice, data, audio, and video. You’ll be able to gather, analyze, assess, modify, implement and confirm information in real-time. You’ll be able to organize, order, schedule, and execute routines that involve computers, machinery, products, and people – and this is just scratching the surface. ?

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Voice recognition will come of age, and new memory and storage technologies will put Exabytes of resources on microscopic bits of substrate. We will be wearing computers (likely as fashion items) that are constantly linked to the wireless and wireline infrastructures to keep our finger on the pulse of our environment. We will never arrive at a home or office that is too warm or too cold. We will never have to worry about automobile maintenance – the car will tell us when it is time for service, notify the shop, and schedule the appointment. We will never have to go to the grocery store – the refrigerator will keep track of our menus, order the food, and have it delivered. It will communicate with the oven, microwave and other appliances to have them all ready for the artificial intelligent (AI) robot (which is also in this loop) to place the food in the proper appliance. Maybe the refrigerator will double as the oven, or microwave – is it really that farfetched?

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However, it is the advances in the enabling technology that will sculpt the platform of this futuristic landscape. To the end user, it may seem like magic. But to the technologists it is simply the feverish pace of developing technology.

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Advancements in semiconductor substrates, communications, test and measurement, computer systems, electronic design automation, solid state, and power and energy will lay the roadmap for this next century’s technological marvels. ?Industries like consumer, aerospace and military, medical, transportation and the environment will assume a new perspective. And the lines between industries will blur even more.?        

It’s Now 2030 and the Cloud is All There is, Anymore

Perhaps the number one technology, or platform that will become pervasive is the “cloud.” Whether it is the CoE, aka the IoX, clouds, X-RAN, edge cloud, cloud computing, cloud services of one form or another, or some other cloud, yet to be defined, clouds are where it is going to be. Perhaps not totally encompassing by 2025, but certainly by 2030 when the IoX will be in full bloom.

Except for the few of us paranoid individuals residing at the bottom of old missile silos, the rest of the world will have nothing more to worry about losing than a smart phone, tablet, watch, HUD, ?(all these devices are now called “smart lives”) that connects us to that proverbial cloud where anything and everything important to us resides.

Wearables – You Are Your Electronics

Wearables have splashed on the scene big time, in the last few years. Eventually it will be one of the most prolific platforms. It began with Google Glass, added iWatch, and by 2020 there will be clothing and accessories with built-in, invisible, connectivity platforms. Connected smart sports equipment will monitor your sports activities. The devices will have a myridad of integrated sensors that will detect what the item is doing; speed, spin, strike, ?ight path data, velocity, angle, and more. For example it will instantly relays this data to the miCoach smart ball app on your Apple device, via a Bluetooth link.

source: fashioningtech.com

Wearables will monitor our health, our workplace, and our home. They will connect us to the cloud without any intervention by us. They will monitor our sleep, connect to unseen millions of autonomous IoX devices, send and receive data that will, in real time, adjust our world around us, specifically for us, individually. This will result in increased safety, healthier and smarter living, and a new level of simplicity for accomplishing tasks in our daily lives.

The real piece de resistance will be computer-brain interfaces. Going beyond just sensing what is going on around us and what we are doing, they will be able to link to our brainwaves (the Matrix, anyone)? There are already working devices such as the Emotiv EPOC headset, a high resolution, neuro-signal acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset that uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals produced by the brain to detect thoughts, feelings, and expressions. And do not think they are not working on similar devices for implantation (for better or worse).

Source: rand.org

Wearables have not progressed as quickly as some have predicted. The reasons vary but two prevalent ones are the fact that they are not as transparent (integrated and unobtrusive) as they should be. A second is that the general populous just does not seem to be excited by what they have to offer, yet. However, it is a fairly safe bet that as this decade nears its end, the wearables knee will be hit and we will see a market ramp up in adoption and deployment.

Sensors

Source: Cornell Chronical

There is nothing new about the concept of sensor networks. Sensors have been around a very long time. The paradigm shift came about when they were adapted to ultra-low power and wireless. Power is drawn from sources like batteries, solar, wind, and energy harvesting and they were fitted with low-power RF modules such as ZigBee or Bluetooth.

Tomorrow’s sensor will be what is being termed, “Internet dust.” By 2030 with the IoX is in full bloom, billions upon billions of micro-miniature, untethered sensors located in just about every nook and cranny one can imagine. Based on nanotechnology, many of these sensors will be invisible, sending, and receiving zettabytes of data to the new analytical model, “big data.”

These minute sensors will achieve a high level of sophistication. Micro-scalar architecture integrates an entire system, including an OS (TinyOS) into a footprint currently just over one centimeter – with half that size not far on the horizon. This self-contained package will integrate memory, power a microcontroller, I/O, an OS, and a wireless transmitter and be configured to last years. They will also be agile, in the sense that they will be self-aware and can be updated with ease. The end result of these ubiquitous sensors will be that all of your needs and preferences will be preempted with a priori knowledge as you stride through your world.

?When you walk into a room the lights will know your settings, as will the entertainment center. Your washing machine will be able to tell the difference between sock colors and what item of clothing belongs to whom. You will walk into the shower and the water will be exactly the pressure and temperature you like. Home telehealth will replace much of today’s ugly physician waiting rooms. The list is only limited by your imagination.

?Big Data

Source: Pinterest

One of the things I marvel about, over and over, is the sheer genius of what modern day, edge-of-the envelope marketing schemes can accomplish. For example, the term, the Internet of Things, has become a sexy, interesting, exciting camouflage layer over the dull, boring, and totally unsexy M2M industry. The same is about to happen with analytics. It is getting a new suit, shave, and a haircut, and being called “Big Data.”

The makeover analytics is getting is not changing statistical analytics, per se, but how the data are looked at, and what the expected results will be.

With the amount of data being generated, traditional analytics don’t have the right tools, nor can they process the data efficiently, even with next-generation supercomputers like the Frontier – The Fastest Supercomputer to Date at Oak Ridge National Labs.

The massive amounts of data that needs to be analyzed will choke present analytical methodologies, mainly because the analysis needs to be real-time and transparent. There is also a new vector added – real time.

The future of this segment will evolve to reverse the traditional “large p, small n” problem (in this case we define “p” as the number of variables, not a value). Traditional statistical analysis generally approaches data analysis by using a small number of variables on a large number of data. I.e., the number of variables, p is small and the number of data points n, is large. But in the IoX, that model is reversed. By 2030 there will be multiple order more of data sensors (“smart” anything – appliances, personal communications, vehicles, homes, buildings, malls, etc.) constantly transferring data at unfathomable volumes and in real time.

For example, in a cancer research study, using genomics, the researcher might collect data on 100 cancer patients to determine which genes confer a risk for that cancer. The challenge is that there are 20,000 genes in the human genome and even more gene variants. Genome-wide association studies typically look at a half million “SNPs,” or locations on the genome where variation can occur. The number of variables (p = 500,000) is much greater than the sample size (n = 100).

Classical analytics can handle that but two thing occur. The analysis is painfully slow, and it is hard to determine if anomalies are artifacts or not. Big data analytics use new algorithms that look at the data differently and can burn though analysis. One of the ways this is accomplished is through filters. The explanation is too lengthy for this article, but there are good examples and explanations available on the web.

The final piece to this big data puzzle is time. Most statistical analysis, up to now, has been in two dimensions – n and p. Data will have to be analyzed on the fly and decisions made on the fly. And, these data will be of a whole new type – images, sounds, signals, time-relative measurements, and infinite-space measurements. Again, classical analytics just isn’t set up to do three-vector analysis.

One of the best examples is web analytics. The number of n will be huge (a million clicks, for example). The p will likely be large as well (thousands, or more, variables – which ad, where, how often, etc.). Now, since n is much larger than p, in theory, classical analysis can be used…except for the time factor. In many cases, the algorithms may have only milliseconds to respond to the click, with another click right behind the first one, and so on. Therefore, these algorithms have to constantly adapt to the input variables from the user (rotating ads for example). Such data is not only infinite, but complex. It may require analysis in a geometrical or topological plane, or a three-dimensional paradox.

One intriguing approach to this is to use massive parallel processing across banks of computers, across the cloud. This approach combines the speed of today’s computing hardware with statistical analysis. In the end, such a solution actually works fairly well. Rather than deliver the correct answer every time, which may take too long, this approach delivers the right answer most of the time, quickly. However, the real breakthrough will come when actual quantum computers arrive and can work at room temperature, or close to it.

?Intelligent Vehicles

Source: Semiconductor Engineering

This segment has hit a plateau. Not necessarily the vehicle technology but the peripheral requirements (smart infrastructure) it will be well beyone 2030 before we hit level 5 autonomous vehicle. But slowly, as we approach that tipping point, vehicles will become more and more, an extension of your “smart life” interface. The IoX will finally enable “K.i.t.t,” or evolve to “Judge Dredd” type vehicles. Your car will have intuitive access to your iTunes. iPass for toll roads will be autonomous – no more dash tags. There will be automatic synchronization of your personal and confidential data so it can be used when driving (telephone conversations, meeting reminders, appointments, kid’s soccer, grocery shopping, etc.). The vehicle will be an interactive portal for what is going on with your life – like your smart life interface is when you are out of the car.

Smart cities?will know where each and every vehicle is, its destination and will route it over the best path. ITS, V2V, V2I, and V2G platforms will begin to emerge in the next 10 years to support autonomous vehicles. And, of course, this will just a component of the IoX.

?Sit down, plug in, and enjoy the ride will be the mantra once this hits the mainstream.

Wireless

Source: 6G World

The common denominator in all of this is, of course, wireless. By 2025, every form of wireless communications will be prolific. Various renditions of cellular, Wi-Fi/WiMAX, ZigBee, NFC, RFID, satellite, IR, and of course, mmWave and even some yet to be developed technology.

It is clear that the current wireless infrastructure will not be able to even come close to being able to handle the data tsunami. To the rescue will come bleeding-edge today, mainstream by 2030 technologies such as edge networks, SDN, virtuality, satellites, and 6G beyoned 2030. These will be integrated by the cloud, via HetNets, using SDR and NFV. The globe will be encircled by a wireless fabric that will extend the farthest reaches of our planet and connect everything to everyone, everywhere. All of this will come together to form heterogeneous networks with new and evolving technologies such as LTE-A, Wi-Fi X, VoWi-Fi, Wi-Fi roaming, BYOD/X, SDR, FVN, 5G,?6G and more.

Spectrum issues will have been resolved. Frequencies as high as 300 GHz will be used shortly and one day, terahertz will be able to enable virtually unlimited bandwidth with futuristic 3D holographic platforms. New modulation and compression schemes will make short work of frequency hogs like streaming video and real-time virtual games, events and HD video conferencing. In other words, virtually unlimited spectrum; the panacea for all things wireless has arrived.

It’s Now 2025

As I look back at what I wrote in 2015, I think I got that 75 percent right. With another 10 years of experience and knowledge under my belt. Are you ready for 2035? I am, and I am just as excited about the technology as I was back in 2015.