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NEXT GENERATION MOBILE PHONE BY OPEN WIRELESS ARCHITECTURE (OWA)

About iHand - One Device, One Number in One Life

[Abstract]

A virtualized Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) layer is designed between the physical transmission layer and the user application and operating system (OS) layers to provide a converged open radio transmission platform, and provide a solution to make the application and OS layers to be independent to the wireless transmission layer. The OWA virtualization layer defines the portable wireless air-interface modules corresponding to the physical radio transmission technologies (RTTs) to enable the flexible change of different RTTs by an external memory card, and facilitates the visitor OS operable upon the host OS of the mobile terminal device to support seamless handover and switch between different OS platforms.

[Summary]

The conventional mobile terminal device including the hottest xPhone mobile phone system has many technical limitations which become the critical issues for the future development. The major problems of the conventional mobile terminal system include:

System architecture is very closed. Every mobile phone vendor has its own architecture and all systems modules come from same vendor or its partners only.

Every mobile phone is limited to its specific wireless standards or called Radio Transmission Technologies (RTTs), and does not allow flexibility in selecting different RTTs.

Some multi-standards mobile phone is just coupling several separate RTTs into the system which consumes much power and system resources, and unused RTTs can not be removed from the system.

Every mobile phone is locked to its own operating system (OS), and do not allow any applications if their OS is different from its own OS.

The whole system architecture relies directly or indirectly on the physical radio transmission layer.

Because of these architectural problems, the mobile phone becomes one of the most least cost-effective consumer products based on the report from 2007 World Wireless Congress. The user can not upgrade or improve the mobile phone due to its closed architecture and lock to specific RTT and OS platform.

The mobile applications are facing tremendous development and movement across the global and will continue to evolve from a traditional voice-centric service to the multimedia services including voice, data, message and video. These multimedia services may run on same OS platform or come from different OS platforms developed by third party vendor or ported from other system platforms such as computer system. Developing all mobile applications upon same single OS platform is very costly and do not make any sense in the commercial business market.

Meanwhile, these multimedia applications require the underlying wireless transmission to be broadband, high-speed and full mobile. However, from the wireless communication’s point of view, no single wireless standard (or called radio transmission technology) can provide both broadband high-speed and seamless mobility features based on the communication theory.

Therefore, in order to support the multimedia applications for the mobile phone device, multiple RTTS must work together as a converged radio platform rather than a single RTT system.

In order to solve the problems existed in the conventional mobile wireless communications, and meet the goals as mentioned above, improvement of the current wireless system architecture is the only and final solution. The Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) approach has been proposed to achieve the above goals and shifted the wireless mobile terminal technology from a transmission-specific radio system to an interface-based open system platform for the complete openness and simplicity of the future mobile terminal device.

This invention virtualizes an OWA System Layer between the physical transmission layer and the high user application and operating system layers to ensure their complete independence and openness in both architectures and operations.

The OWA Virtualization Layer comprises all the system level functions including OWA Baseband processing, Wireless adaptation and virtualization, OWA BIOS (basic input/output system) Interface and Framework, Software Defined Modules, Host and Visitor OS interfaces, and Open OS BIOS (basic input/output system) which will be implemented by one single SoC (system on chip) silicon chip called OWA Baseband Chip.

This invention is implemented in iHand - the next generation smart phone platform. iARM is the Virtual Mobile Server and Controller for iHand to optimize the wireless spectrum utilization and synchronize the applications, services and networks for iHand mobile device. iARM is also designed as a portable smart OWA card to turn consumer electronics into the 4th generation mobile phone/device converging multiple wireless air-interfaces (GSM, CDMA, OFDM, WIFI and WiMAX) in one open architecture platform. The iHand is the converged mobile phone supporting any wireless standards by inserting different wireless interface SIM cards or multiple interfaces in one SIM card, and the integrated communication device of home phone, office phone and mobile phone. The iARM is the mobile internet terminal unit installed in the car/vehicle system, laptop computer, portable consumer electronic device, and/or the Virtual Mobile Server for the iHand devices. The iARM synchronizes with iHand (or multiple iHands), and can serve as the mobile server for all applications, services and network accesses of iHand.

Based on The Churchill Club's Top 10 Tech Trends, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures and Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners both pointed out that "The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer", and "The mobile device migration to smart phones from features phones will produce even greater disruption than PC industry moving from character mode to graphical interface. Within 5 years, everything that matters to you will be available to you on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse". Joe Schoendorf of Accel Partners further predicted "80% of the world population will carry mobile Internet devices within 5-10 years". The Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) technology is the optimal solution to ensure openness, simplicity and cleanness of your future mobile phone which is called iHand - The World in Hand.

For more information about the technical specifications and/or technical whitepaper, please contact the office of Chief Architect Prof. Willie Lu at: wwlu<at>yahoo.com or contact<at>sieneon.com. iHand/iARM are developed in both US and China 4G Centers. Some IEEE publications on OWA technology are available at the USCWC website.