Multi-Antenna Technology for High-Speed Wireless Internet Access

With the explosive growth of both the wireless industry and the Internet, it is inevitable that demand for seamless mobile wireless access to the Internet explodes as well. Limited Internet access, at very low speeds, is already available as enhancement to some second-generation (2G) cellular systems. Third-generation (3G) mobile wireless systems will bring true packet access at significantly higher speeds. Traditional wireless technologies, however, are not particularly well suited to meet the extremely demanding requirements of providing the very high data rates and low cost associated with wired Internet access and the ubiquity, mobility and portability characteristic of cellular systems. Some fundamental barriers, associated wit the nature of the radio channel as well as with limited bandwidth availability at the frequencies of interest, stand in the way. As a result, the cost-per-bit in wireless is much higher than in the wired world, wherein an entire generation of Internet users have grown accustomed to accessing huge volumes of information at very speed and negligible cost.