Connectivity Technology Blog

As we have started converting more wind, solar and other forms of energy to electricity, there is more supply that ever available previously.  Similarly we are also consuming more power than ever. Electric cars for example consume a lot of energy. In addition we have more electronic gadgets that we keep connected to chargers, regardless of weather they need charging or not.  At every instant of time, the power fed in the grid has to be consumed or stored somewhere. In addition, it has to be ensured that the amplitude, frequency and phase remains constant. This is where Synchrophasors come into play. The video below, explains it in a simple way what they are:  u-blox has a nice write-up on this topic explaining why this is important.  Improvements in terms of timing accuracy have come in lock-step with improvements in positioning accuracy. The u‑blox F9 GNSS receiver platform, which brought scalable and affordable high precision positioning – down to the decimet...

The technology advancement has reached a stage where it looks like everyone is trying to outperform others in communications from stratosphere. The latest in line is this announcement from Deutsche Telekom and Stratospheric Platforms Limited (SPL).  The DT press release says : Deutsche Telekom and its technology partner Stratospheric Platforms Limited (SPL) conducted the world's first successful demonstration of LTE/4G voice and data connectivity over a platform flying at the edge of the stratosphere and fully integrated into a commercial mobile network.  Beginning of October, several test flights were carried out in Bavaria with a remote-controlled aircraft system at an altitude of approximately 14 kilometers (Flight Level 450) to establish voice and data connections via the antennas installed on the aircraft. This enabled voice over LTE (VoLTE) calls, video calls, data downloads and web browsing on a standard smartphone. During the test, the smartphone was connected to ...

We have been writing about Wi-Fi for a long time, weather it's to do with indoor connectivity , competition with 5G or just a name change to something simpler. When we last wrote about WiFi 6, a.k.a. 802.11ax, we were expecting a quick adoption of the technology in the industry. We are still not there yet.  You know what's strange? None of the new @madebygoogle gadgets from yesterday support Wi-Fi 6. Not the Pixel 5, not the Pixel 4a 5G, not the Nest Audio, and not the new Chromecast. pic.twitter.com/QtJ8iB9FeO — Ry Crist (@rycrist) October 1, 2020 Take for instance the new iPhone 12 supports Wi-Fi 6 in all their models as one would expect but none of the new Google Pixel phones (4a, 4a 5G and 5) support it. In fact none of the new Google devices support it. Which is rather bizarre. While we are still looking forward to Wi-Fi 6 becoming widespread, IEEE has already started working on the successor of 802.11ax, 802.11be - Standard for Information technology--Telecommunicati...

Back in summer, Telecom Infra Project (TIP) published a Playbook for Smart Cities. For people who may not understand, you can think of a Playbook as a case study but playbook is much more than case study. A case study shows how a company did something but it may not be relevant for anyone else or any scenario. If a scenario is repeatable then a playbook can be created with a complete process, workflows, procedures, communication needs, strategies, etc. Other companies can then follow the playbook to provide similar results and outputs. The Executive summary of the playbook states : This playbook is an output of the Smart City Connectivity sub-group within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) mmWave Networks Project Group. It’s the result of a collaboration between TIP Members —operators, infrastructure providers, system integrators, and equipment vendors—to provide guidance to key audiences (especially municipalities) about the deployment of communication services at the street level. Coll...