Paul Baran in 1994
- Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really.
- A mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of frequency spectrum that can be made available.
- By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the many.
- Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio
- Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal. And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent lost opportunity.
Some think the AP/STA power imbalance is a good thing, allowing an AP to reach devices at further distances with a higher MCS. I think it's also a design flaw similar to bufferbloat. Many times there has to be an RTS/CTS, shutting down other conversations. so a remote node, typically on a battery, can "whisper" a signal to the AP. Not good.
FiWi, with power symmetry, can fix this (amongst so many other things.)
Some things that help include and keep improving are:
- multiple front end modules (more simultaneous bands)
- multiple CMOS radios (more spatial dimensions)
- multiple antennae or antennae diversity (better spatial powers or eigen values)
- more radio heads (less media contention, much lower latency)
These are some of the "easy" things to engineer and we still have a lot more to do to catch up with Paul's and other's ideas (who were and are way ahead of their time.)
Bob