Lecture Series in Mobile Telecommunications and Networks (1583KB)

Foreword
This compilation brings together the transcripts of the third of a series of lectures on the
subject of Mobile Telecommunications and Networks. The lecture series was established by
The Royal Academy of Engineering and Vodafone to celebrate the enormous social and
economic benefits that mobile communications have given us – a success story brought
about and maintained by excellence in communications engineering. The three lectures in
this series were given over the period between March 2008 and February 2009. All three
were exceptionally well attended and generated enthusiastic and lively debate and
discussions.
The series was opened by Professor P R Kumar, Franklin W Woeltge, Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, at the University of Illinois. His lecture addressed the converging
worlds of communications, computation and control – described through infrastructure -
free wireless networks, and illustrated with fascinating films of model systems created at the
University of Illinois.
The bedrock of all wireless communications systems is radio frequency spectrum, and this was the subject of the
second lecture, given by Professor Linda Doyle of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the
University of Dublin. She entered into the debate of how one should allocate and manage spectrum, covering
approaches from classical ‘command and control’ to dynamic ‘grab what you need when you need it’. Her lecture gave
rise to the most lively debate we have had during the Questions and Answers sessions.
Most lectures on mobile communications nowadays are concerned with subjects like broadband access, convergence,
mobile widgets or the phone as a computing device, so it was refreshing that in the final lecture of the series Professor
Peter Vary of the University of Aachen returned to basics – voice communications. In a fascinating lecture he covered
the history of and contemporary research on speech coding for mobile communications, providing great insight into
what is the most important function of the phone.
Professor Michael Walker FREng
Research and Development Director
Vodafone Group
2 The Royal Academy of Engineering