Incredible holograms, AR and VR, 5G innovations, disease control by smartphone, and tracking systems for dogs, children and valuables: here are the 10 most exciting tech innovations to come out of Mobile World Congress
Posted on March 3, 2018
The annual Mobile World Congress held at Barcelona is always dominated by new phones from the big brands, but if you look beyond the main halls there is so much innovation to explore. Here is a taste of the tech that caught the eye this week.
10. Pivotal Commware’s holographic beams
The big telecom companies have agreed on a way to create 5G mobile phone masts, and they work in a similar way to 4G, spreading bandwidth equally in all directions. That’s hugely wasteful. So Seattle-based Pivotal Commware has found a way to focus radio-frequency energy directly at a moving target, much like a spotlight.
“We’ve created software-defined antennas that maximise capacity and coverage, and squeeze every ounce of effectiveness out of the spectrum,” says Brian Deutsch, chief executive of Pivotal Commware.
“Even in cities you can get a bad phone signal if you’re on the edge of a cell [area of coverage], so with this technique, you can just move the edge of the cell somewhere where there are fewer people,” he says.
Such high-fidelity beams could even make it possible for massive 5G-like bandwidth to follow a person wherever they go. No wonder Microsoft founder Bill Gates is an investor.
Read the rest of the article at South China Morning Post
