4th Generation Wireless Technology and Its Effect on Daily Lives
Requirements to Realize the Expected Benefits Based on the expected benefits for each category introduced, the requirements that need to be explored more deeply are roughly extracted, as they are considered to hold the key for expanding usage opportunities going forward.
Please take note that qualitative changes in the technical requirements due to the evolution of services are not particularly mentioned in detail, although they are important because of the expected growth in needs for higher reliability and safety as the services take root and play an increasingly important role in the society as a life infrastructure.
This is because these items have already received great consideration in general.
- Enhancement/Establishment of Interoperability (Particularly from the Viewpoint of Interface) If of a disaster, coordination of basic communications functions, for example, across different carriers are required.
There are also strong requests in higher-layer services, like medical applications, to enable an operator to gain access and make reference to the precious data that had been set and input by another operator after converting them into a standard format.
As described above, there are expectations for enabling interoperability of basic features in the infrastructure and to share and commonly use services and information in the higher layers.
If this is enabled, it could be possible to provide a mobile service infrastructure that serves as a more important lifeline for people's lives, which may result in expanded usage opportunities.
Coordination between Ubiquitous Equipment/Information Appliances (From the Viewpoint of Interface, Intelligence) When we consider the coordination between ubiquitous devices (such as wireless tags), which will likely be used more widely going forward, and information appliances, it is important to establish the higher-layer standard for the interface connecting ubiquitous devices with home gateways and other equipment.
Because the functionality of many of the ubiquitous devices are limited to very simple features, sometimes, it may not be possible to communicate using the conventional interface conditions applied between communications terminals and servers.
Even in such cases, it would be possible to cultivate new attractive services (like Mobile Ordering or Content Player) by improving the connectivity control and automatic processing features on the system side.
These features draw huge expectations not only for the improvement of service quality, but also because of the possibility of lowering equipment costs.
Use of Location Information (From the Perspective of Intelligence) If location information is used, not necessarily for establishing communications,but for more proactive purposes, it could lead to an expansion of usage opportunities.
To date, many studies have been performed on this subject, and it is important to explore possible ways of expansion through improving the precision of locating or through the coordination with higher-layer services.
For example, improved precision will make it possible to predict a pedestrian suddenly rushing out in front of the car and give a warning to the driver beforehand, or precisely tell the location of a victim in an earthquake or other large disasters to the rescue team.
In addition, through service coordination, as mentioned earlier, it would become possible to eliminate the need of repeated delivery in delivery services, or send emergency notices if an accident by linking with the car-mount sensors.
Opportunities for providing new services may further increase if users' behavioral patterns are applied to not only navigation services but also to information processing by personal agents explained below.
The increasing trend of mobile utilization in daily lives and the reduction in the size of mobile terminals to wearable levels will all contribute to enabling the above.
However, besides improvements in the location determination accuracy, implementation of a detection function to know whether the user is carrying a mobile device needs to be considered as well.
Please take note that qualitative changes in the technical requirements due to the evolution of services are not particularly mentioned in detail, although they are important because of the expected growth in needs for higher reliability and safety as the services take root and play an increasingly important role in the society as a life infrastructure.
This is because these items have already received great consideration in general.
- Enhancement/Establishment of Interoperability (Particularly from the Viewpoint of Interface) If of a disaster, coordination of basic communications functions, for example, across different carriers are required.
There are also strong requests in higher-layer services, like medical applications, to enable an operator to gain access and make reference to the precious data that had been set and input by another operator after converting them into a standard format.
As described above, there are expectations for enabling interoperability of basic features in the infrastructure and to share and commonly use services and information in the higher layers.
If this is enabled, it could be possible to provide a mobile service infrastructure that serves as a more important lifeline for people's lives, which may result in expanded usage opportunities.
Coordination between Ubiquitous Equipment/Information Appliances (From the Viewpoint of Interface, Intelligence) When we consider the coordination between ubiquitous devices (such as wireless tags), which will likely be used more widely going forward, and information appliances, it is important to establish the higher-layer standard for the interface connecting ubiquitous devices with home gateways and other equipment.
Because the functionality of many of the ubiquitous devices are limited to very simple features, sometimes, it may not be possible to communicate using the conventional interface conditions applied between communications terminals and servers.
Even in such cases, it would be possible to cultivate new attractive services (like Mobile Ordering or Content Player) by improving the connectivity control and automatic processing features on the system side.
These features draw huge expectations not only for the improvement of service quality, but also because of the possibility of lowering equipment costs.
Use of Location Information (From the Perspective of Intelligence) If location information is used, not necessarily for establishing communications,but for more proactive purposes, it could lead to an expansion of usage opportunities.
To date, many studies have been performed on this subject, and it is important to explore possible ways of expansion through improving the precision of locating or through the coordination with higher-layer services.
For example, improved precision will make it possible to predict a pedestrian suddenly rushing out in front of the car and give a warning to the driver beforehand, or precisely tell the location of a victim in an earthquake or other large disasters to the rescue team.
In addition, through service coordination, as mentioned earlier, it would become possible to eliminate the need of repeated delivery in delivery services, or send emergency notices if an accident by linking with the car-mount sensors.
Opportunities for providing new services may further increase if users' behavioral patterns are applied to not only navigation services but also to information processing by personal agents explained below.
The increasing trend of mobile utilization in daily lives and the reduction in the size of mobile terminals to wearable levels will all contribute to enabling the above.
However, besides improvements in the location determination accuracy, implementation of a detection function to know whether the user is carrying a mobile device needs to be considered as well.
