ABSTRACT: The lecture will address controversial questions of modern communications and suggest areas of new research. Can we go on improving wireless communications for ever, or are we facing some barriers as our mobile communications devices become ever more complex? Can we keep squeezing more out of the available spectrum? Can we keep adding support for new bits of spectrum in our phones? Where will all the antennas go? Can we drive down the power consumption of our networks to meet Vodafone's target of halving our carbon emissions by 2020? How do we test MIMO terminals? The lecture will address these questions and suggest areas where new research might help us to face these challenges.

SPEAKER: Trevor Gill graduated from Cambridge University in 1977, and started work at Racal Electronics on a frequency hopping military communications system. In 1983 he worked on a comparative study of analogue cellular technologies, leading to the UK analogue standard  (TACS). He worked on some of the early GSM standards, and initiated the design of one of the first GSM phones on the market. In 1990 he led a team that developed an automatic frequency-planning tool for cellular networks and transferred to Vodafone to lead the Radio Modelling Group.  The group was responsible for development of a range of radio planning tools and simulators for GSM and WCDMA, He is now Head of Technology Research Programme in Vodafone Group R&D and leads Vodafone's study of future fixed and mobile network technologies.