Hot Research Area in Wireless Communications

Hell Everyone,

I would like to request expert users of this group to shed some light on the hot research areas in Wireless Communications field. As I have heard many times from many persons commenting that physical layer research is mature now and there is no room for further interest and excitement.

My QUESTION is that if there is no future for physical layer research than why to study and explore or research anymore ?
and if there is still to work on physical layer than what are the areas to work further

for example,
cognitive comm
multi-user comm
cooperative comm

etc

If not physical layer and than how about other layers like MAC and Network Layer; Is it worth to work in these layers to secure future in terms of Job and Funding.

I hope this topic will be extensively discussed on the group so that the new comers in the field of Wireless Communications may have some ideas before really being part of this somehow uncertain world.

Thanks

I think it is correct that, unless there are device technology breakthroughs, we won't see any order of magnitude improvements in PHY capabilities...at least from theoretical research. Increasing the data rate right now seems to be about increasing the availability of physical spectrum. Hence, the interest in cognitive radio and millimeter-waves. We've largely explored what MIMO can offer, although millimeter-wave communication does offer a domain for MIMO PHY research since many antennas are possible in small packages and the MIMO capabilities of the channel are not well established.

That being said, there are always going to be specific applications or specific design constraints that will require custom PHY design strategies, so be on the lookout for new applications. For example, recently there has been some PHY research on beamforming for millimeter waves. At millimeter-waves the beamforming is often not done at baseband to save hardware resources, which requires single-tap beamforming. However, the vast spectrum and substantial sample rates of millimeter-wave links (likely to be used in 5G systems) produces severe frequency selectivity. Hence, there has been some work on single-tap beamforming in a frequency selective channel, which is a difficult optimization to run at low complexity.

As far as higher layers, I'm not as excited as many others seem to be. I do think there will be substantial progress (especially in exploiting more information to configure networks more carefully, i.e., big data), but I don't think much of it will come from the academics or research institutions. I think it will likely happen through industry (standards-based) efforts when markets are at stake. Engineering/scientists/program managers are always looking for an elegant technology that changes the game quickly, but this area has been under a microscope for a while. I suspect that performance jumps in practice will happen through the slow, grinding process that results from prototyping efforts.

If you are looking for money to support your research efforts, you don't have much choice. Look at what your funding agencies are interested in (e.g., NSF, DARPA, etc.). That should tell you where to go....unless your name carries enough weight where you can define the areas of innovation on your own.

Right said that majority of research being done is industry or market driven and one has to keep his/her eye open to latest market demands. I would like to thank you for your comments on the issue. However, one should also be aware of the technical details which fall short when providing the promised made by ITU regarding different services or data rates.

For example, the promised data rate for 4G mobile system are 1Gbps for stationary and 100Mbps is for mobile user, but this data rate still has not been possible. If this is the case then this implies that we still have to work to achieve that goal. Now the question is, if we have not met the promise then there must be further research. On the other side, if we have reached the limit of PHY layer then in which direction to go to achieve the goal set for 4G.