What is wwi?
WWI provides a framework maximising the critical mass and global impact of the proposed technical work and ensuring the transfer of results into the global market by building on the work of the WWRF.
The concept of the Wireless World Initiative builds on the work of the Wireless World Research Forum. The focus of WWI is to build a path to the vision of the Wireless World developed in the Book of Visions 2001 of WWRF. This path is based on evolving current systems, enabling continuous evolution and innovation in applications and services, as well as investigating new concepts and technologies, which prepare the way for a range of new international standards and products.
WWI has, as its major objective, to sustain the European position of global leadership in wireless technology while addressing key social challenges to enable the knowledge society. All the technical developments will be based on user needs and demand. This point is well illustrated by the MultiSphere Model, described in the WWRF Book of Visions 2001, which places the user and his needs in the focus and develops the technology needed to serve his needs.
Figure 1: MultiSpere Model
In the context of keeping the user in focus, our key strategic objectives are to provide the user with the best possible user experience while maintaining the lowest possible cost of purchase, use and ownership of the systems, the shortest possible innovation cycles especially for service creation and by providing both users and application developers with the best tools.
This approach results in operational research objectives for the ambient wireless world:
Developing open, shared and horizontal software architectures, platforms and tools to enable the widespread development of applications for the ambient wireless world
Developing appropriate ambient networks
Developing a compatible family of new radio interfaces supporting the full range of terrestrial networks from body/personal area networks to wide area public networks
Developing advanced techniques for delivering mobility, service continuity, end to end security and QoS
WWI will focus on developing the personal environment and will liase with other IST projects to ensure the development of compatible systems for different environments, including those of the home and car. The result will be a major competitive advantage for European actors, in having developed new concepts and interfaces for the seamless interaction of services across a range of currently distinct and disjoint technology domains, each of which currently has it's own standards for service control. Hence, we are presented with the unique opportunity in the IST programme to put European actors at the forefront of global information society technology development through the co-ordinated actions of Europe's strongest industries with a user centred approach.
In order to support the personal environment, ambient networks will be needed to enable the seamless transition from one network to another in an ad-hoc manner. The user's services, applications as well as their data and preferences will always be available and will function with the same user interface from almost any environment including the vehicle, the home, or the office. Communication and entertainment services will become context aware as communicating sensors and actuators link the user's preferences to their environment as they move around, automatically taking advantage of whatever radio interfaces are available.
The development of a new family of radio interfaces, as a complement to available and evolving access systems will require a large-scale effort to develop a new wide area radio interface for beyond 3G systems, and to provide for the optimal use of new and existing bands. New spectrum allocations and revised spectrum regulations and allocation mechanisms, will be needed on a global basis. ITU-R WP8F and ITU-T SSG are currently the only international standardisation bodies working on the vision and basic requirements of systems beyond IMT-2000. The activities of ITU-R are a prerequisite for the identification of new frequency spectrum at WRC'06 and/or WRC'09 (World Radio Conference).
International standardisation of beyond 3G wide area systems is expected to start after the identification of new frequency spectrum at WRC'06 (World Radio Conference meeting of 2006). The time scale of Framework Program 6 fits to this time schedule permitting more than two years of research before WRC'06, and the continuation of the research activities in parallel to the international standardisation process. Such research is a prerequisite for Europe's participation, in a leading position, as a major player in this global development, providing guidance to the WRC on spectrum allocation, and ETSI/CEPT on spectrum regulation, and being positioned to best exploit the decisions. This will ensure spectrum identification based on the evolving user needs, technical and application oriented facts and will enable the development of an international consensus regarding the major concepts before standardisation and roll-out of new technology around 2010.
Other regions, other than Europe, have started research processes, similar to those of the European Union, on systems beyond third generation. Examples include the activities in Japan in mITF (mobile IT Forum) and in China in the state funded research project FuTURE within the Chinese framework program 863.
In designing the WWI project structure and operation, care was taken to embrace the need for:
Critical mass and common objectives, and
Industrial interests of competitiveness, flexibility and low administrative overheads.