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New wireless technologies will link not just people but lots of objectstoo. That will be tremendously useful, says Kenneth Cukier; butgetting there will be tricky

This year around 10 billion micropro-cessors will be sold, embedded in any-thing from computers to co�ee-makers.The vast majority of them will be able to�think� but not �talk�: they will performspeci�c tasks but cannot communicate.But this is now starting to change. The cost,size and power requirements of wirelessfunctions are falling rapidly, so some un-likely candidates are now being connectedto networks. For example, bridges andbuildings are being monitored for struc-tural integrity by small sensors. Farmlandis being watched and irrigation systemsare being switched on and o� remotely.

In years to come, wireless communica-tions will increasingly become part of thefabric of everyday life. David Clark, a com-puter scientist at the Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology who helped developthe internet, believes that in 15 or 20 years’time the network will need to accommo-date a trillion devices, most of them wire-less. To illustrate what that world might belike, Robert Poor, the co-founder of twowireless companies, Adozu and Ember,uses a modest example: light �xtures inbuildings. If every one of them containeda small wireless node, people would notonly be able to control the lighting more ef-fectively but put them to many other usestoo. If the nodes were programmed toserve as online smoke detectors, they

Marconi’s brainwaveWireless technology is advancing by leapsand bounds�and there is much more tocome.

On the radioWireless takes many forms. Page 3

Overcoming hang-upsMobile operators have more high-speed networks than they know what to do with.Page 4

What the mousetrap saidMachines catch on to smart talk. Page 6

A sense of things to comeSensors can keep a remote eye on almost anything. Page 8

Cutting the cordWireless energy makes wireless devices look easy. Page 9

Wireless incorporatedGizmos are starting to be slipped inside people. Page 11

The hidden revolutionWhat you don’t see will need careful watching. Page 13

The Economist April 28th 2007 A special report on telecoms 1

1

A world of connections

THE radio is 110 years old this year andthe microprocessor just under 50. As

these two technologies move ever closertogether, with wireless capabilities nowbeing put on computer chips, somethingexciting is happening. All the bene�ts ofthe computing world�innovation, shortdevelopment cycles and low cost�are be-ing extended to wireless communications.As a result, a myriad of hitherto separateobjects are becoming connected to net-works, from televisions and cars to indus-trial machinery and farmland. Tiny de-vices are even being placed into thehuman body to perform useful tasks. Thenew technology enables control to be exer-cised from a distance and lets di�erent de-vices interconnect to do something new.

So far the mobile phone has been get-ting all the attention. Around 2.8 billion arealready in use, with a further 1.6m beingadded every day. The phones themselvesare improving at a cracking pace. Yet thisboom is also spilling over into other areasof wireless communications, used for link-ing machines, sensors and objects. �Every-body talks about the emerging markets be-ing the big opportunity for the cellularindustry in the next few years, but in thelonger run there are going to be a lot moredevices talking to each other,� says Paul Ja-cobs, the boss of Qualcomm, which makesmobile-phone chips.

Also in this section

www.economist.com/audio

An audio interview with the author is at

www.economist.com/specialreports

A list of sources is at

www.economist.com/telecoms

More articles on telecommunications are at

AcknowledgmentsIn addition to the people and companies cited in the re-port, the author would like to thank William Webb of Ofcom, Adam Peake of GLOCOM in Japan, Masanobu Katohof Fujitsu, Catherine Lee of The Global Leader in South Ko-rea, and those who gave of their time and expertise atMcKinsey, Cambridge Consultants, Harbor Research, ABIResearch and Informa.

1

2 A special report on telecoms The Economist April 28th 2007

2 could signal a �re as well as show its loca-tion. They could also act as a security sys-tem or provide internet connectivity toother things in the building.

Such applications are already being de-veloped. For instance, Philips, an electron-ics �rm, plans to introduce wirelessly con-trolled lighting systems for commercialbuildings in around �ve years’ time. Andits researchers are working on making net-worked light �ttings capable of monitor-ing the objects throughout a building,tracking equipment in hospitals or pre-venting theft in o�ces.

These ideas have been �oating aroundfor years, variously known as �ubiquitouscomputing�, �embedded networking� and�the pervasive internet�. The phenome-non �could well dwarf previous mile-

stones in the information revolution�, ac-cording to a 2001 report entitled �Em-bedded, Everywhere� by America’sNational Research Council, part of the re-spected National Academy of Sciences. Areport by a United Nations agency in 2005called it �The Internet of Things�.

But now it is actually starting to hap-pen. Even governments have taken notice.Japan and South Korea have incorporatedwireless technology into national policies,their sprawling IT conglomerates march-ing in lockstep with the political leaders.The European Union and America (wheredefence money paid for many of the ad-vances) have issued thick reports.

For all the excitement, it will be a whilebefore machine-to-machine (M2M) com-munications and sensor networks become

ubiquitous. Although the technology ex-ists, di�erent approaches do not as yetwork well together. Unlike computer soft-ware, which can be deployed with a fewmouse-clicks, each system still needs to betailor-made. And the melding of commu-nications and computing brings togethertwo industries and engineering culturesthat are generally at odds, slowing pro-gress. Moreover, the business models tojustify the time and cost of adding wirelessservices are embryonic.

Still, the general direction is clear. In theyears ahead new wireless technologieswill appear in a plethora of devices, muchas computer chips did in the second half ofthe 20th century. This special report willexplain how this will come about, andwhy it will not be easy. 7

WHEN Guglielmo Marconi wasgranted patents on his �wireless tele-

graph� in 1897, the future of his inventionlooked modest. At the time radio signalscould travel only a few kilometres, andonly one receiver and transmitter couldoperate in any one area. Since 1900 �spec-trum e�ciency��the amount of informa-tion that can travel over the same portionof radio waves�has improved perhaps atrillion times, estimates Martin Cooper ofArrayComm, who is hailed as the father ofthe mobile phone (see chart 1).

The invention of the transistor in 1947and the microprocessor (which integratedtransistors and other things onto a singlechip) in 1958 changed the way radios func-

tion. The microprocessor helped to get ridof crystals, copper coils and vacuum tubes,putting the ingredients of a radio almostentirely on silicon. This costs less to make,takes up less space, consumes less power,makes the radio perform better and allowsit to work more smoothly with the otherelectronics inside the device.

Innovation happens quickly. The pro-cessing power of chips doubles about ev-ery two years, according to Moore’s law,named after Gordon Moore, a co-founderof Intel, the world’s biggest chip company.As the billions of transistors on the chipsget smaller, there is more room to add extrafunctions. Such chips do not just go faster,they also do more, and the cost of integrat-

ing new functions is relatively low. Many of the functions of such chips are

controlled by software, which means theycan be continually upgraded at little cost.Moreover, chip technology has not onlyimproved the performance and cost of theradio itself but other parts of the systemtoo, from �smart� antennae to advancedpower management for longer battery life.As a result, the cost of wireless communi-cations has plummeted.

The mobile-phone industry has bothbene�ted from these developments andspurred them on. The industry as awhole�including handset-makers, soft-ware developers, network operators andso on�is reckoned to have revenues of

Marconi’s brainwave

Wireless technology is advancing by leaps and bounds�and there is much more to come

1More for less (log scales)

Sources: Martin Cooper (ArrayComm); Intel

Increase in efficiency of wireless spectrum

1900 50 2000 50

1

100

10,000

1 m

100 m

10 bn

1 trn

100 trn

10,000 trn

1 m trn

Moore’s law, transistors in Intel chips

Spatialprocessing

era

Wireless system cost per delivery, $

1880 1900 20 40 60 80 2000 20

0.001

0.01

0.1

1

10

100

1,000

10,000

100,000

1 m

GSM/CDMA

1xEV-DO/EDGE

WiMax

Land mobile

Analoguecellular

Marconi

1970 80 90 200075 85 95 05 10

1,000

10,000

100,000

1 m

10 m

100 m

1 bn

10 bnDual-core Itanium 2

Itanium

Pentium III

Pentium486

386286

8086

80808008

4004

Itanium 2

Pentium 4Pentium II

Cellular era

1


2

RADIOS work by using the electromag-netic spectrum to send information.

When an electrical current travelsthrough a wire it creates an electromag-netic �eld, sending out waves in all direc-tions�rather like light, which is also a partof the spectrum but at much higher fre-quencies. An antenna and extra power al-low the signal to be transmitted over longdistances. The frequency of the wave canbe changed so that signals do not interferewith one another, allowing more of thespectrum to be used.

Radio waves exist in nature, fromsound and light to cosmic rays in space.The man-made sort can do things liketransmit music or heat food in a micro-wave. At the low end of the spectrum arethe frequencies used for things like televi-sion and mobile phones. The lower thefrequency of the wave, the farther it cantravel or penetrate physical objects. ThusFM radio at relatively high frequencies isused for local stations but does not travelfar, whereas short-wave radio, at low fre-quencies, can stretch around the world.

Wireless technology can be split into�ve main sorts, roughly ranked by the dis-tance that the signals travel. The top trav-ellers are satellite communications suchas the Global Positioning System (GPS).This is a constellation of 24 satellites,managed by the American armed forces,that constantly send out signals to de-vices on the ground. But the signals travel

only one way, from satellite to device.A little closer to home, and with sig-

nals going both ways, are �wide-area�mobile-phone technologies such as GSM

or CDMA. Advanced �third-generation�(3G) versions include HSDPA and LTE, de-veloped by the mobile-phone industry. Apromising rival is WiMax, based on theinternet standard and supported by thecomputer industry. A third category takesin shorter-range signals used to connectthings in a building or room. Examples in-clude the popular Wi-Fi standard to ac-cess the internet in hotels or airports, andZigbee to link sensors. A new advance is

ultra-wideband (UWB) technology,which uses very high frequencies at veryshort range to transmit huge amounts ofdata, as in sending video from an iPod-like device to a TV screen.

A fourth type connects things in a�personal-area network� or PAN. An ex-ample is Bluetooth, which is used to linkmobile phones with earpieces. The last isnear-�eld communications (NFC), wherecontact needs to be close, as in passes forbuildings and public transport. A variantis radio-frequency identi�cation (RFID)tags, used by retailers and others. Whenpassed in front of a reader, the tags sendback data stored on them. These radiosystems are as di�erent from each otheras light is from sound, so satellites cannottrack RFID tags, for instance. This meansthat some privacy worries are misplaced.

Radio has been cramming ever moreinformation into the transmission, usingtechniques such as spreading it across thespectrum, dividing it up into portions andusing �smart� antennae. As radio increas-ingly moves onto microchips, �software-de�ned radios� will be able to switchstandards and frequencies as they go.

The proliferation of wireless systemshas pushed up the demand for spectrumand increased its value. There are hopesthat �cognitive� radios may eventually al-leviate the problem by sharing hugeswaths of spectrum intelligently�butthey have yet to be invented.

Wireless takes many formsOn the radio

2Speaking in tongues

Sources: William Webb; Cambridge Consultants; OECD;

Pyramid Research; Nokia; TI; CSR; Ember; Hitachi

*Typical performance; actual figures vary†Approx. device-chip cost at high volume

Main two-way wireless technologies*

Data rate per second Range Cost†

Mobile WiMax 15Mb 5km $8 in 2008

3G cellular 14Mb 10km $6(HSDPA/LTE)

2G cellular 400k 35km $5(GSM/CDMA)

Wi-Fi 54Mb 50-100m $4

Bluetooth 700k 10m $1

Zigbee 250k 30m $4

UWB ~400Mb 5-10m $5

RFID 1-200k 0.01-10m 4 cents

around $1 trillion a year, according to In-forma, a market-research �rm. Tra�c vol-ume is soaring. By 2011 perhaps 4 billionpeople will be carrying a mobile phone.

Connecting things rather than people isfar less advanced. Sales of wireless mod-ules for devices, sensors and machines thisyear are forecast to reach a mere 33m,though they are expected to grow rapidly,to around 400m in 2011, according to Har-bor Research. By then revenues for hard-ware and services, now $48 billion, mayhave grown to $200 billion�still a far cryfrom the mobile-phone industry.

Yet wireless communications in theseareas are advancing rapidly at a time whenthe mobile-phone industry is approaching

saturation point in rich countries and theaverage revenue per user is sagging. Andthey hold a lot of promise: there are farmore things than people that can be wire-lessly linked, from doors and windows tomachines and trees.

Just as a milestone was reached in 1998when the volume of global internet tra�cthrough America overtook voice tra�c, soa turning point will come when devicesconnected to the network overtake people,whether in number, bandwidth or calls.This may happen sooner than expected.

Stratton Scalvos, the boss of VeriSign,which operates part of the internet’s ad-dress system, notes that around 12% of ad-dress tra�c involves computers linking to

other computers, without a person at ei-ther end. John Roese, the chief technologyo�cer of Nortel, a telecoms-equipmentvendor, expects the amount of machine-to-machine communication to pull aheadof human calls and web clicks some timebetween 2009 and 2011 as cameras, cars,utility meters, home security systems andthe like continuously send data across thenetwork. Vivek Ranadivé, the boss ofTibco, a software developer for corporateIT systems, says the number of computertransactions automatically started byother computers is already higher thanthat initiated by people.

Oddly enough, it is the success of mo-bile phones that has fuelled the rise of

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2

FROM a glass o�ce on the 32nd �oor ofSamsung’s R&D centre, an hour’s drive

from Seoul, the site of a huge property de-velopment known as �Ubiquitous City� isvisible in the distance. Soon its grey con-crete foundations will sprout a set of ultra-modern apartment blocks where every-thing is connected and controlled online.Samsung executives are proud of it be-cause it ties together much of what theircompany is involved in, from home appli-

ances and consumer electronics to mobilecommunications. Many other South Ko-rean �rms are also taking part, encouragedby the government. Joo Sik Lee, the head ofnew-business development at SK Telecom,the country’s largest mobile operator, ex-plains why such projects are so important.�Everyone already has a mobile phone,�he says. �We have to �nd new businessmodels and new uses.�

SK Telecom has introduced mobile-

payment technology and is experiment-ing with health-monitoring devices. It isadding RFID readers to its phones so peo-ple can get information about products. Itis even co-ordinating activities with its par-ent company’s construction arm to addwireless automation to around 120,000homes in South Korea this year. For amonthly subscription of about $5 this willenable residents to check their thermostat,security system and �re alarm and switch

Overcoming hang-ups

Mobile operators have more high-speed networks than they know what to do with

wireless communications among objectsrather than people, promoting innovationand bringing down prices. Take Texas In-struments, which leads the market forchips in mobile phones on the GSM stan-dard. In 2003 it began work on a singlelow-cost radio chip that included supportfor a digital music player, FM stereo radio,camera and colour display with a longerbattery life. A prototype was built in 2004and bulk production began in 2006. In thefourth quarter of last year alone the �rmshipped 10m of these chips. The chipshave dropped from $50 apiece to around$5, and a phone that would have cost $250�ve years ago is now $25. But rather thanbecome even cheaper, in future the chipswill o�er more features, says Greg Delagi,who heads TI’s wireless unit.

Engineers have been able to apply suchinnovations and economies of scale toother wireless technologies. As a result,some radio chips�for example, those usedfor the Global Positioning System, say, orfor Bluetooth wireless communications�now cost as little as $1 and are the size of amatchhead. Chips with a newer technol-ogy called Zigbee, used for short-rangesensors, which currently cost around $4and are the size of a �ngernail, are ex-pected to shrink down to a quarter of theprice and size in �ve years. A far simplerkind of chip called a radio-frequency iden-ti�cation (RFID) tag, which sends a tinyquantity of data over a short range whenactivated, can already be manufactured for4 cents apiece. Hitachi has a prototype chipthat �ts into the groove of a thumb-print.Last year 1 billion RFID chips were sold;this year the number may rise to 1.7 billion,according to IDTechEx, a consultancy.

All this means that many formerly self-

contained things have become capable ofcommunicating. For example, most big lo-gistics companies in America and Europenow track their �eets with a combinationof satellites and mobile-phone networks.Small wireless sensors monitoring equip-ment in large factories can provide earlywarning of impending breakdown. Theycan run on energy �harvested� from theheat or vibrations of the machinery.

Let device talk unto deviceApple’s iPod and Nike’s running shoes caninterconnect so that the music player canselect songs that match the jogger’s pace.Large organisations such as retailers, hos-pitals and the armed forces are using RFID

tags for managing stock levels. More robustversions of the technology are deployed in�contactless� bank cards, passports andpublic-transport passes.

Yet this is only the start. And althoughmany of the initial technologies werechampioned by America’s defence indus-try�which gave life to the internet in the1970s�the most interesting applicationsare emerging in the private sector (again, aswith the internet). Regulators are helpingthings along. Both Europe and America areconsidering proposals for �tting all carswith equipment that will automaticallycall the emergency services in the event ofan accident. Some countries now requireutility companies to read meters more reg-ularly to promote energy conservation,giving a boost to wireless connections.Makers of medical devices are o�eringmore home-monitoring products. Andmobile operators are spending huge sumsto upgrade their networks for high-speedaccess�and are looking for new sources oftra�c for them.

One of the most important conse-quences of these new wireless technol-ogies will be to increase visibility andaccountability, says Jiro Kokuryo of KeioUniversity in Japan. Economists todaytreat many items as indirect costs becausethere is no way to attribute the use of a re-source to a particular individual. Wirelesscommunications can change this, he says,by making it possible to base things likeroad tolls and car-insurance premiums onpeople’s actual driving patterns. But thatalso raises privacy concerns on a far largerscale than hitherto.

Will the fridge really want to talk to thekettle? Probably not. But that is a detail.Wireless technology is akin to the electri-cal grid, which was originally intended fora particular use, the light bulb, but whose�killer application� turned out to be thepower socket that allowed a multitude ofnew and unforeseen devices to draw en-ergy from it. In time, the new wireless tech-nologies will likewise reshape society inunpredictable ways. 7

1


2 their lights on and o� from afar.In Japan similar projects are under way.

Tests are in progress on cars with wirelesssystems that will prevent collisions�seenas the next great innovation that will bringtogether the country’s cherished IT and carindustries. A private school in Tokyo hasput wireless beacons on children’s back-packs to keep track of where they are. Atthe Mitsukoshi department store in thechic Ginza district, RFID tags on cosmeticsby Shiseido provide shoppers with moreinformation about the products.

So far these sorts of wireless systemsare relatively basic, admits Kazuo Murano,the president of Fujitsu Laboratories. Butthey mark the beginning of a new infra-structure that can be extended to manyuses, just as new software on a PC enablesit to do new things.

The enthusiasm for new wireless tech-nologies in parts of Asia is mirrored in Eu-rope and America. Mobile operators are in-vesting billions of dollars in building newnetworks that provide fast internet access.3G systems are being upgraded and an up-start technology called WiMax is being ex-plored. Many executives hope that thiswill connect not just people and theirphones but also gadgets, machines, pets,cars and homes.

But many problems remain to be re-solved. There is no telling whether therewill be any demand for such services be-cause the technology is not yet in place,and nobody knows how to charge for suchthings. Cyber-security is a huge headache.And many of the uses envisaged involveshort-range communications, such as dim-ming a light or transferring a video fromone medium to another, that may nevermake use of the mobile network at all.

Worst of all, a world in which devicescan join the network, do as they pleasewhile they are connected and leave againat will (like PCs logged on to the internet)runs counter to the telecoms industry’sculture. It prefers to control customers’ ac-tivities, both to ensure quality of serviceand to keep rates high. The same �walledgarden� approach that prevents peoplefrom using Skype (a web-based telephoneservice) on their mobiles also ensures thatthey remain free of viruses. For the mo-ment the vast majority of revenue comesfrom voice calls. As call rates drop, oper-ators hope to make up their income by pro-viding music and videos to the handsets.

Yet some mobile operators are trying tochange their business models. Sprint Nex-tel’s chief technology o�cer, Barry West,imagines a world in which someone who

buys a television or washing machinefrom any shop and plugs it in can connectit to Sprint’s network. The network itselfwill be open to the internet and users willbe able to do what they like, rather than be-ing funnelled to content providers withwhich the operator has a business rela-tionship, as happens with most mobilestoday. Mr West will be able to providesuch freedom because he plans to changethe way customers pay for his company’sservice. Instead of charging for every bit ofcommunication�a call over a particulardistance for a particular duration�he willuse �at-rate pricing, the way that peoplepay for internet service.

A clever pipeWill that not turn his wireless networkinto a �dumb pipe�, a mere commodity?�It’s absolutely not dumb,� he insists.Sprint intends to charge a premium for spe-cial services, just as airlines charge morefor a business-class seat, he says. More-over, he plans to sell much of the informa-tion he has about his customers to ad-vertisers. So, for example, interactivebillboards at a bus stop may be tailored toyoung mothers at one moment and beer-guzzling sports fans the next. �We’re mi-grating from a telecoms company to a me-dia company,� he says.

Sprint is the �rst mobile operator tocome up with a plan of action for a wire-less internet world. Yet all operators arefeeling the pressure of the internet. There isplenty of evidence that customers want to

control their phones as they do their PCs,by adding new software, and pay for ser-vice at a �at rate as they do for the internet.

Pricing is critical. In Europe the averagemonthly airtime per user is under 250 min-utes; in America it is more than 1,000. Themost likely reason for the di�erence is thecharging structure. When Japan’s NTT Do-CoMo introduced a �at fee for sendingdata such as photos from a phone, its net-work tra�c was said to have risen manytimes over within days. Many people inAmerica and Europe take pictures withtheir mobiles, but very few send them toother people because they are worried oruncertain about the cost. Sprint hopes towoo customers by simplifying the priceand providing open internet access.

Sprint’s business model echoes the in-ternet approach in other ways too. For itsnew network the company chose WiMax,a technology that is supported by the com-puter industry, notably Intel, rather thanby traditional telecoms vendors. WiMaxuses the internet protocol to providesmooth online access, unlike mobile net-works that carry the tra�c over other pro-tocols developed for phone calls. �If youtry to use a phone or BlackBerry to accessthe web, it is a trying experience today atbest,� grouses Paul Otellini, Intel’s boss.

Industry experts argue over whetherWiMax works better than enhanced 3G

cellular systems, but most reckon that theirperformance will end up much the same.The di�erence is in the way the equipmentis made and sold, notes Vanu Bose, the

1


2 founder of Vanu, a wireless �rm. The com-puting industry likes open standards sothat any device can be replaced by anyother, whereas the telecoms sector haslong bene�ted from locking customers inwith proprietary standards. And some-times pieces of kit from di�erent makersdo not work smoothly together.

WiMax does away with this problemby establishing a standard that puts every-one on an equal footing. The hope is thatthis will bring costs down to a commoditylevel for wireless gear, just as it did for com-puters. The royalties that �rms will need topay to license the intellectual property isexpected to be lower than at present. ABI

Research estimates that just four �rmsown almost 60% of the patents in 3G tech-nology, pushing licensing rates as high as28.5% of the cost of the equipment. Wi-Max’s patent pool is more evenly distri-buted among more �rms, and rates are ex-pected to be around 5%.

The network provider will not subsi-dise customers’ devices, as mobile oper-ators do at present to entice people intosigning on for a year’s subscription. So Wi-

Max not only lowers operators’ costs; itchanges their approach to business. Theproblem is that it has barely got o� theground. Networks are still at the trial stageand mass-market devices are not expecteduntil 2008.

For all the industry’s lofty visions, itmust confront uncomfortable realities. Forinstance, Samsung and LG, another bigSouth Korean conglomerate, more oftenlink their appliances with cables andpower lines than with wireless technol-ogy. And for all the wizardry of SK Tele-com’s home-automation system, peoplein trials do not seem to use it much. The op-erator is considering bundling the servicefree with online entertainment packages.Even �Ubiquitous City,� some executivesadmit, is more hype than reality.

This is not the �rst time that the indus-try’s plans have been delayed. In thelead-up to the 3G spectrum auctions in Eu-rope in 2000, some carriers thought thatlinking machines and devices would ac-count for around 12% of their revenue,notes David Benello of McKinsey, a con-sultancy. But in the event the industry de-

cided to concentrate on people andphones, not factories and farm equipment.

Now operators are having another go atmachine-to-machine communications.Orange, a pan-European operator, hascreated a special business unit, M2M Con-nect. Other carriers have similar plans. Yetdespite the talk, they are more interested intheir mobile business than in pursuingM2M. That is a pity, because they have thecustomers, the expertise on network secu-rity and the experience in managing mil-lions of devices that would allow them todevelop the new market successfully.

Connecting machines requires givingup control to users, observes Tim Whitta-ker of Cambridge Consultants, which de-signs wireless systems. In fact, OrangeM2M is criticised for trying to prevent cus-tomers from working with other oper-ators. Thus even when mobile �rms fall inlove with M2M, the technology is su�o-cated by their embrace. Wireless innova-tion is more likely to come from smallercompanies with a computing background.They are beginning to give machines eyes,ears and a voice. 7

MANY companies claim to have built abetter mousetrap. Rentokil has actu-

ally done so. The British building-services�rm added a small sensor and a wirelessmodule to its traps so that they notify thebuilding sta� when a rodent is caught.This is a big improvement on traps thatneed to be regularly inspected. A largebuilding might contain hundreds of them,and a few are bound to be forgotten.

Since June 2006 thousands of digitalmousetraps have been put in big buildingsand venues such as London’s new Wemb-ley Stadium. The traps communicate withcentral hubs that connect to the internetvia the mobile network to alert sta� if acreature is caught. The system provides awealth of information. The data it collectsand analyses on when and where rodentsare caught enable building managers toplace traps more e�ectively and alert themto a new outbreak.

Upgrading the humble mousetrap tooka number of innovations to come together.Wireless chips have got smaller, better andless expensive. Sensors require less power.

Batteries last longer. Many other compa-nies too have woken up to these advan-tages, adding wireless features to objectsand machines to enhance their perfor-mance and open up new revenue streams.

Such machine-to-machine communi-cations can take many forms, from ad-vanced utility meters that provide read-ings in real time to credit-card terminals atshops and restaurants. Most cash ma-chines communicate wirelessly over a se-cure data network. Carmakers are explor-ing vehicle-to-vehicle communications toboost road safety. There are so many pos-sibilities that the technology’s championssometimes get carried away. In 2003 theARC Group, a British consultancy (sincebought by Informa), forecast that by 2007the market could be worth well in excessof $100 billion. In fact its value this year islikely to be around $25 billion, according toJuniper Research. Harbor Research reck-ons that the total may be as high as $48 bil-lion if short-range wireless technologies,systems integrators and the like are in-cluded. What everyone agrees on is that

the sector is now growing very rapidly.And as prices fall�as much as 20% a yearfor mobile systems, according to GartnerResearch� growth is accelerating.

Expectations were so high becausemuch of the technology exists already. Yetit is being held back by non-technical fac-tors: the lack of integration among di�er-ent parts of the industry and the need forcompanies to change the way they oper-ate. In the computing world the providersof networks, hardware and software workrelatively smoothly together because ofcommon standards, from the size of prin-ter plugs to digital interfaces in the operat-ing system. But wireless M2M systemshave to start from scratch every time.

Reasons not to connectBuilding the wireless chipsets into the ma-chines in the �rst place requires know-how, time and money. Components fromdi�erent �rms may not work together, sosystems integrators such as IBM, Accentureor Capgemini have to be called in. Mobilenetwork coverage is inconsistent, so rely-

What the mousetrap said

Machines catch on to smart talk

1


2 ing on just one operator is risky, and formovable things such as vending machinesand cars, which may cross national bor-ders, it is unthinkable. �Mobile virtual net-work operators� which resell airtime fromscores of operators to M2M users couldprovide the required coverage, but theyhave been slow to emerge. Even trying tobuy bulk airtime from individual carriersis di�cult.

The list goes on. Back-o�ce software tomanage the system has to work with exist-ing corporate software. Someone has totake care of billing and managing the de-vices. And as everyone takes their cut, theexpense grows. �It is a very long value-chain for people to bring this together,�says Brian Tucker of Telit, which suppliescellular modules. Some consolidation isnow taking place, and companies thatbundle these functions are emerging inniches such as vehicle-�eet management.But integration remains a problem.

Vending machines are a striking exam-ple. At �rst sight giving them wireless con-nections seems an obvious improvement.It will allow their owners to check re-motely on a machine’s inventory, theamount of cash it contains and whether itis in working order, so sta� can cut downon their visits for restocking, servicing andcollecting the money. When the idea wasput forward years ago, it seem to epitomisethe advantages of M2M.

But things have not gone as planned. InJapan, where much has been made ofvending machines that accept paymentvia mobile phones, the vast majority are infact unconnected. And in Europe onlyabout half of the roughly 4m vending ma-chines are reckoned to be worth upgradingwith remote connections, which cost be-tween $100 and $300 a go. Progress evenon those is proving slow.

Part of the reason is the sheer di�cultyof getting all the relevant businesses to-gether. Vending machine companies have

to employ specialist IT and wireless �rms,which in turn have to �nd suppliers. One�rm that works with the vending industry,Vianet, found that arranging wireless ac-cess from the plethora of mobile operatorsacross Europe was so di�cult that it de-cided to make this a business unit in itsown right that supplies access to otherM2M sectors.

The biggest obstacle, however, was nottechnology but the nature of the vendingindustry. Though the machines are stu�edwith well-known brands from large com-panies, the �rms that manage them are of-ten small family businesses. Adding wire-less technology means a lot of internalchanges. What looks like improved e�-ciency on paper means a total reorganisa-tion in practice, including job losses. PaulGreen of Vianet recalls a conversationwith the boss of a European vending-machine �rm who stopped a programmepromising cost savings of 30% because itwas causing too much disruption.

Nice idea�if someone else paysAnother question that inhibits take-up,even among those who are interested, iswho should pay for the installation.Putting a wireless terminal into a vendingmachine is attractive not just for inventoryand maintenance but also because it willallow payment via mobile phone. But it isnot clear who should pay, so no one does,says Anders Franzen of Wavecom, whichsells cellular modules for machines.

Despite the di�culties, wireless vend-ing machines are starting to emerge, butnot in the way originally envisaged. Ma-chines that sell pricey things such as iPodsand DVDs are now being connected to theinternet so companies can gather salesdata and �ne-tune the products on o�er.Most importantly, the network connectionalso handles credit-card transactions, a ne-cessity for higher-value items.

For mobile operators, moving into the

M2M market makes perfect sense. It placeslow demands on the network. The averagetra�c load per device is around a quarterof a megabyte per month, estimates PaulSmith, the boss of Wyless, an M2M net-work provider. And corporate customersstick around for much longer than individ-uals do. Yet for customers, adding wirelessconnections to machines is risky becausethe technology is evolving so fast. And bal-ancing the interests of everyone who has astake in the system can be hard.

Certainly the car industry has found itso. Adding wireless features to cars hasbeen under discussion for years. Somenew cars in rich countries now come withsatellite navigation; some have Bluetoothso that mobile phones and digital-mediaplayers can connect with the car’s speak-ers. But long-range, two-way communica-tions are being introduced only slowly. Sofar only 15m vehicles worldwide are con-nected, although numbers are expected togrow by 40% a year to more than 60m in2011, according to Visant Strategies.

For the moment the technology is be-ing used only in a few luxury cars andsome rented cars and lorries. In Germany,lorries have had a GPS and mobile systemto pay road tolls since 2005. Some regula-tors require telematics to ensure that lorrydrivers are getting enough rest. Logistics�rms themselves use such systems to com-municate with drivers on the road.

General Motors in America o�ers a ser-vice called OnStar that can remotely diag-nose engine trouble, contact emergencyservices after an accident and provideroadside assistance at the touch of a but-ton. It already has more than 4m subscrib-ers and an estimated revenue of more than$1 billion a year.

But getting wireless connections intocars on a large scale has proved di�cult.Carmakers envisage vehicles communi-cating automatically with others nearby tosignal road hazards or prevent accidents.

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2

THE military uses for wireless technol-ogy are persuasive. For example, pilots

can �y above a war zone and drop thou-sands of small wireless sensors, the size ofa small pebble and costing a dollar apiece,over the terrain. As soon as they settle thedevices start communicating with eachother, weaving themselves into a densedigital mesh. They pick up vibration andsound, so they can identify advancingtroops. The sensors can also detect thepresence of nuclear, chemical or biologicalagents. The information they pick up is re-layed to a satellite. For power, they �scav-enge� energy from the environment, usingsolar energy or temperature changes.

The civilian uses are equally impres-sive. Forest rangers can drop the sensorsfrom aeroplanes to detect �res, showingtheir exact location and how fast and inwhat direction they are spreading. Smallerversions the size of grains of rice can beused by airlines in the innards of aircraft tocheck for the presence of large insects orrodents that might interfere with the wir-ing. Still smaller versions the size of specksof salt can be added to paint, turning entiresurfaces into wireless sensors that can de-tect motion or act as smoke alarms or secu-rity systems.

The trouble is that as yet such sensorsdo not exist. But a lot of practical work is al-ready going into making them a reality. Aversion of the military scenario above, for

instance, was rehearsed in an experimentin March 2001 at an American MarineCorps base in California. Around a dozennodes the size of a matchbook were re-leased by a miniature unmanned aircraft.They were able to measure the speed anddirection of vehicles from ground vibra-tions. This proved that the technology, al-though still at an early stage, was viable.

The military experiment was sup-ported by America’s Defence AdvancedResearch Projects Agency (DARPA) andarose from a programme called �smartdust� at the University of California atBerkeley in the 1990s. It created some of

the technical foundations needed for sen-sor networking, such as a pared-downcomputer operating system, database andprotocol for sensors to send tra�c (but�sleep� as much as possible to prolong bat-tery life). The technologies are open stan-dards, so may be used freely by other�rms, just as the underlying protocol of theinternet is open.

With DARPA’s early support a gaggle ofcompanies have emerged, such as DustNetworks, Arch Rock and Moteiv (from re-search at Berkeley) and Ember (based onwork at MIT). Other companies, such asCrossbow Technology, Millennial Net,Sensicast, Tranzeo and MicroStrain, are ap-plying the innovations to their existingtechnologies. Wireless-sensor technologyis now moving out of military testinggrounds and into the commercial world. Itis used for things like monitoring and con-trolling industrial machinery, automatictemperature regulation in buildings andkeeping tabs on the environment.

Whereas M2M communications gener-ally involve wireless devices attached toequipment such as cars or vending ma-chines that link up to the cellular system,sensor networks use small chips that areoften embedded into the device and use alocal-area network that may never con-nect to a larger one such as the cellular sys-tem or the internet. For the moment thesensors are not yet widely deployed: the

A sense of things to come

Sensors can keep a remote eye on almost anything

Others see wireless as a source of new rev-enue from services such as tra�c informa-tion. Regulators in Europe and Americawould like cars to contact emergency ser-vices automatically after an accident, andthe police want to track suspects. (Tell-ingly, mobile operators are not keen on theidea. They are worried about liability iftheir network is not up to snu�.) Consum-ers could download maps, restaurant in-formation and media content.

No escapeIt is not easy to get agreement on whoshould pay for all this. Nevertheless,where it has started to happen, it haslaunched some innovative business mod-els. For example, PassTime, an Americancompany, leases cars to people with poor

credit histories. The wireless device allowsthe company to switch o� the ignition ifpayments are missed, and to �nd the car ifit is stolen or has to be repossessed.Around half a million cars are alreadyequipped with the system.

�Pay-as-you-drive� insurance schemesare also gaining ground. Last year NorwichUnion and Royal & Sun Alliance, two Brit-ish insurance �rms, began o�ering car in-surance based on driving patterns, madeup of a modest �xed rate and a variable el-ement depending on where and when thecustomer drives. The car is �tted with GPS

and a mobile connection. Under NorwichUnion’s plan, driving down a motorway(where accidents are rare) on a Sunday af-ternoon costs a penny a mile; cruising on asuburban road (where mishaps are more

frequent) on a Saturday night is a hefty £1.The driver bene�ts because he has somecontrol over what he pays. Insurance com-panies bene�t by creating an incentive fordrivers to avoid risky situations. The sys-tem can also track the car if it is stolen andpinpoint its location if it breaks down.

Robin Duke-Woolley of Harbor Re-search reckons that such new businessmodels, which he calls �smart services�,will be a good reason for companies to addwireless technology to machines. Noteverything lends itself to this treatment:aeroplane engines, for example, are toohot, so they have wired sensors, and print-ing presses usually sit deep inside build-ings, so they use �xed-line access. But formany things�even simple mousetraps�wireless is just the job. 7

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2 technology is still maturing and customersneed convincing that it is worth having.But the idea is gaining momentum. Oncethe volume goes up, prices will comedown and follow-on innovation willspeed its adoption.

A good place to get a glimpse of newwireless technologies in action is BP’sCherry Point Re�nery in Blaine, Washing-ton. Built in 1971 on almost four squaremiles (10 sq km), it has a daily throughputof 225,000 barrels of crude oil. The sitealso produces 8% of the world’s calcinedcoke, which �nds its way into one out ofevery six aluminium cans. Modernisingthe plant to keep it e�cient is costly; BP

says it has spent nearly $500m on this overthe past ten years. Fields of tanks need tobe monitored for operational, safety andenvironmental purposes. But snakingwires across such a huge area is expensive.

New wireless technologies are critical,explains Tim Shooter, who works on fu-ture technology at BP. They allow more op-erations to be monitored and controlledand save money at the same time. The av-erage re�nery has around 3,000 �instru-mentation points� where data on thingslike temperature, �ow, humidity and vi-bration are collected; managers would beeven happier with 10,000 points if onlythey were less pricey. The cost of the basic

monitoring devices ranges from $1,000 to$10,000 apiece. Although adding wirelessfunctions to these sensors almost doublesthat cost, it reduces the price of installationby 50-90%�and installation makes upmost of the total cost. By upgrading someprocesses to wireless systems, Mr Shooterbelieves each re�nery will be able to saveat least $1m a year.

Getting better all the timeUntil a few years ago wireless technologywas not up to the job. The �big leap for-ward�, says Mr Shooter, is that the newtechnologies are far more reliable in hos-tile industrial conditions and the commu-

THE most ubiquitous accessory forwireless devices is the wire used to

power them. That limitation could beovercome by using electromagneticwaves to transfer energy. The idea hasbeen around since soon after their discov-ery: Michael Faraday found in the 1830sthat changing a magnetic �eld induces anelectrical current in a nearby wire. One ofthe �rst patents registered in the 1890s byNikola Tesla, one of Edison’s former assis-tants, was for �radiant energy�. The pio-neers of radio were also those ofelectricity; the two disciplines were ini-tially one.

Much of the research on wireless en-ergy transfer lay fallow for a century. Itwas di�cult and dangerous, and therewas no immediate need. But the prolifer-ation of small wireless devices hassparked new interest in the idea. �No-body wants to have to change the batter-ies in their door,� says Tim Fowler ofCambridge Consultants, a wireless engi-neering �rm.

There are several kinds of wireless en-ergy transfer. One, dubbed �radiative�, in-volves generating an electromagnetic�eld. A special receiver picks up a bit thathas not naturally dissipated in the air andconverts it to electricity. The energy cantravel nearly three metres (ten feet) tokeep a small battery charged, but most ofit is lost before it gets to the receiver andthe power supplied is extremely low. Thetechnology, pioneered by Powercast in

Philadelphia, will be deployed for the �rsttime this year by Philips, for lights onthings like Christmas decorations.

A second technique relies on magnetic�elds. It is still at an experimental stageand works using resonance. When twoobjects resonate at the same frequency,they transfer energy well�just as a childeasily maintains momentum on a swingwhen he uses his legs to move in synch.The use of magnetic resonance allows en-ergy to be transferred in useful quantitiesand almost entirely to the device. Butagain it can travel only a few metres. Evenso, ever since its inventor, Marin Soljacicof MIT, presented his work at a confer-ence last autumn he has been besieged bycalls from venture capitalists.

Another way of transferring energy,called �inductive coupling�, is not somuch wireless as plugless. Power is senton almost direct contact, for example,with a mat on which gadgets can beplaced to recharge. This system, with afew variations, is used by start-ups suchas Splashpower in Britain and Wild-Charge and Fulton Innovation in Amer-ica. It avoids the need for cables andconnectors to charge gadgets and can bebuilt into many surfaces, such as car dash-boards or o�ce furniture.

It helps that computer chips now needmuch less power than they used to. GeneFrantz at Texas Instruments calculatesthat the power requirements of a chip of agiven capacity roughly halve every 18

months, a less-noticed corollary toMoore’s law. Despite the advances,power consumption remains a seriousconstraint. The amount of energy a bat-tery can store per unit volume is increas-ing by 8% a year, but the needs of evermore powerful electronic devices are go-ing up more than three times as fast.

Another method is to �harvest� en-ergy from the environment, convertingheat, light or vibrations that occur natu-rally. For example, sensors in a skyscrapercould be powered by the normal sway ofthe structure. And certain materials are�piezoelectric�, meaning that they natu-rally become deformed by heat or vibra-tions, generating an electrical current thatcan be captured and stored. The technol-ogy is young but advancing fast. Com-mercial products are already being soldby a host of companies such as Perpe-tuum in Britain and Ferro Solutions, MidéTechnology, KCF, TPL and MicroStrain inAmerica. The hiccup is that very little en-ergy is generated and the harvestingmechanisms are sometimes larger thanthe devices they power.

Yet another solution could be fuelcells. Unlike batteries, which simply storeenergy, fuel cells actually generate it fromvolatile stu� such as hydrogen or metha-nol. Basic versions of the technology al-ready exist to recharge devices such asmobile phones. But just try getting onboard an aircraft with a full-�edged fuelcell in your laptop.

Wireless energy makes wirelessdevices look easyCutting the cord

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2 nications protocols are more intelligent. One notable innovation is �ad-hoc

mesh networking� in which each node onthe network�eg, a sensor on a waterpump�is both a transmitter and a receiverand can join the network whenever re-quired. Earlier wireless technologies as-sumed that sensors would send data to aspeci�c receiver, in a hub-and-spoke fash-ion. This had many drawbacks. For a start,it made the system in�exible. If you addeda new node, the whole system had to be re-con�gured and the network becameharder to manage. And if a central receiverfailed, the whole system collapsed.

The newer technology remedies thesefaults. Each node can relay tra�c to otherdevices, creating an interlocking web. Itneeds less power because the data travelonly a small distance to another node. It isself-organising and self-healing. If onenode goes down, the system �nds an alter-native path for the tra�c. And the more de-vices are attached, the more e�cient andresilient the network becomes.

Factory controls like those at BP are ob-viously useful, but they do not add up to avolume business. A good example of alarge-scale application is building manage-ment. Thanks to wireless communica-tions, lighting, heating and air-condition-ing can be controlled centrally to keepenergy bills down. So when a guest checksout of a hotel the receptionist can adjustthe air-conditioning to stop it needlesslychilling the furniture. This could also bedone through a wired system, but wirelesstechnology o�ers lower installation costsand greater �exibility.

Guest appearanceSome �rms are installing such systems inolder buildings as well as integrating theminto new ones. Riga Development, a wire-less-technology �rm in Toronto, hasworked with hotels in Canada and the Un-ited States to replace ageing analogue ther-mostats with digital ones that are around35% more energy-e�cient. It wirelesslylinks the new temperature-control panelswith heating and air-conditioning units, ata cost of around $350 per room. Each roomcan also be controlled from the front desk.And thanks to the wireless mesh network,the panel in each room also acts as a relayfor the data tra�c from other rooms backto a central control point.

At a medium-sized o�ce park in Las Ve-gas, wireless temperature controls were in-stalled in a few buildings containingaround 200 o�ces, says the media-shymaintenance manager (who did not want

his or the company’s name to be used).Temperatures in the Nevada desert tend toextremes and landlords are responsible forenergy bills, so managing a building’s cli-mate makes a di�erence to the bottom line.The new wireless thermostats allowrooms to be controlled centrally on a PC orover the web. The adjustments that ten-ants themselves are able to make can becontrolled too, so that heating or air-con-ditioning is not used to excess. The systemwas cheap to put in, mainly because it re-quired very little installation, the managerexplains. Tenants are happier and the sav-ings on the energy bills have been consid-erable, he says; �conservatively 25%�.

These uses of wireless are just the be-ginning. Sensors are not only being addedto devices that already have electronics onthem, but being put on to things that wereformerly bare of any technology at all. Forexample, they are being �tted to buildings,bridges and roads to monitor their struc-tural integrity. The sensors can identifystress and early cracks that need attention.Sensors are also being used to monitor theenvironment. Scientists now use them tomeasure the climate in areas that wouldhave been impractically small when sen-sors were more costly�say under individ-ual plants rather than in a thicket.

Wireless sensors are also cropping upon farms, to measure temperature, mois-ture and light on tracts of land wherewired sensors cannot easily go. Among the�rst big users are vintners, because their

crop is particularly valuable and evensmall variations in climate can ruin it.Ranch Systems, for instance, suppliesequipment and software to a dozen vine-yards in Northern California. A �eet ofsensors allows growers to monitor wind,water and soil and air temperature. Thishelps them set the watering schedule tosuit the di�erent needs of each part of thevineyard and manage frost, disease andpests, explains Jacob Christfort, the foun-der. �It is a little like da Vinci and the heli-copter,� he says, referring to the artist’sfamous sketches that presaged later inven-tions. �These things were conceptuallypossible all along, but some mundane ad-vances are required before it all comes to-gether and somebody actually does it.�

The technology has become so accessi-ble that it is sparking a cottage industry ofsmall entrepreneurial �rms. Moteiv isputting sensors on �remen’s uniforms torelay information about the �re and lettheir colleagues know exactly where theyare. The system can even provide the �re-men with information such as �oor plans,projected onto their masks. Other applica-tions now on sale include wireless home-security systems and wireless beacons forsailors to tell the crew when someone hasfallen overboard.

Yet the very diversity of its uses high-lights one of the barriers to the develop-ment of the technology: they all have to beput together in a bespoke fashion. Wirelesstechnology is so new that it has yet to besimpli�ed and standardised, as most tech-nologies are over time, notes Monica Pa-olini of Senza Fili Consulting.

Another complication is that nobodyreally knows how much stress a collectionof wireless sensors will put on a network,other than that it will probably be di�erentfrom what happens on the internet. Muchinternet tra�c is asymmetric, with com-puters at the edge of the network receivinghundreds or thousands of times more traf-�c than they send. A single mouse-click torequest a �le brings a massive YouTubevideo in return. With sensor networks thistra�c asymmetry is inverted: they send farmore data than they receive. Althougheach individual consignment of data istiny, they add up. And some sensors sendout a steady heartbeat, if only to say �I’mstill here!�, which sets o� a communica-tions session throughout the network.

What worries engineers most is how todeal with all the data produced by the sen-sors. �The good news is that you can get allthese data; the bad news is that you have todo something with them,� says Kris Pister,

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THE Baja Beach Club in Barcelona is anunlikely demonstration model for

wireless technology. Bikini-clad wait-resses serve drinks to guests as a DJ mixesmusic from a motorboat perched abovethe dance �oor. But the club made head-lines three years ago when it introduced aunique form of entry ticket to its VIP area: amicrochip implanted in the patron’s arm.

Slightly larger than a grain of rice andenrobed in glass and silicon, the chip isused to identify people when they enterand pay for drinks. It is injected by a nursewith an intimidating syringe under a localanesthetic. In essence, it is an RFID tag. If aspecial tag-reader is waved near the arm, aradio signal prompts the chip to transmitan identi�cation number which is used tocall up information about the wearer in acomputer database. Otherwise the chip isdormant. The �intelligence� of the systemis in the computer, not the capsule.

It is the �rst time that chips have beenplaced in humans as a means of identi�ca-tion and payment, gushes Conrad Chase,the club’s co-owner, who came up withthe idea and was the �rst volunteer to be�tagged�. �I know a lot of people have fearsabout it,� he says. But he points out thatmany people already have piercings andtattoos. �Having a radio-transmitting chipunder your skin makes you very unique,�he says wryly.

All this for a mojito might seem a bit ex-treme�which for a night club is preciselythe point. Even so, take-up has been low:only 94 people have been tagged in Barce-lona and 70 at another Baja club in Rotter-dam. But as go the bohemians, so, eventu-ally, go the rest of us.

CityWatcher.com, an American �rmthat provides video surveillance in cities,

has experimented with tagging two em-ployees to give them access to areas wheresensitive data are stored. VeriChip, an-other American company that sells chipsand readers, provides it to hospitals tomanage patients (though only around 200people have so far raised their arm to getone). The idea of tagging immigrant work-ers in the United States has been broughtup in Congress.

There is much more to come. As wire-less technology improves, it is not only get-ting attached to machinery and embeddedin the environment, but slipping underpeople’s skin as well. And RFID capsulesare small fry. There are far more advancedwireless medical devices that measure

body functions and transmit the informa-tion from the skin surface or from insidethe body. As the huge cohort of baby-boomers grows older and becomes moreinterested in preventive medicine, peoplenow aged 50 or younger are quite likely tohave some form of wireless gizmo at-tached or implanted in their lifetime.

Wireless technology has been used inmedicine for decades. Pacemakers rely ona basic wireless system to set a stableheartbeat. Ultrasound and X-ray technol-ogies are wireless. But as microchips be-come more powerful, devices shrink andbattery life is extended, a host of compa-nies are vying to take wireless technologydeep into the human body.

Wireless incorporated

Gizmos are starting to be slipped inside people

the co-founder of Dust Networks. E�ortsare under way to increase the processingpower of the sensors so that they can ana-lyse the information themselves ratherthan just collecting it and passing it on.

But this wealth of information createsopportunities as well. Teruyasu Murakamiof Nomura Research Institute believes thathaving things continuously connected to anetwork will open up new markets andnew ways of living. And Bob Karschnia of

Emerson Process Management, which de-signs and builds factory automation sys-tems such as the one at BP’s Cherry PointRe�nery, digs through the mountains ofdata to �nd new ways for businesses to op-erate. At times, he philosophises aboutwhat the technology means. The intercon-nected machines are akin to the brain’sneural pathways, he suggests. �If we arecomputing and connecting like the brain,we should be able to emulate memory,�

he says. �How do you create ‘memories’ inthe processes of a factory?�

As machines talk to other machines,they may uncover facts and relationshipsthat are not apparent to people. That mayenable factories to �learn� and �nd ways tobecome more e�cient. What happens onthe factory �oor will make its way, in a dif-ferent form, to o�ce buildings and homes.The next step is for wireless technology toenter human beings themselves. 7

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2 Some wireless devices are ingested.Others are implanted. Some are attachedto the body and linked to a network. It isstill early days, but the systems are improv-ing fast. �The basic technology to makethese things happen exists; the big issue ishow to make this economically viable,�says Maarten Barmentlo, the chief tech-nology o�cer of Philips’s consumerhealth-care division.

Inside storyAlready a gaggle of gadgets is available forspecialised uses. Take the PillCam, de-veloped by Given Imaging in Israel, a tinytwo-sided camera the size of a very largepill which patients swallow. It has beenused in more than half a million gastro-in-testinal endoscopy tests since 2001. Oneversion is used to diagnose disorders ofthe oesophagus and another for those ofthe small intestine. It snaps a pre-set num-ber of pictures per second and sends themwirelessly to a data recorder worn on thepatient’s waist. The images are down-loaded to a computer for diagnosis. The$450 capsule passes through the bowelnaturally and is �ushed down the toilet.

This method lets people go about theirnormal business for most of the eight-hour test, during which up to 50,000 im-ages are generated. It marks a vast im-provement on an older technique that in-volves pushing a long tube through apatient’s digestive tract. Although that pro-cedure allows doctors to take tissue sam-ples, it is uncomfortable and risks irritatingthe tract. Now Given Imaging is in clinicaltrials with a wireless camera for inspectingthe colon, and is developing another forthe stomach. The company faces compe-tition from Olympus, a Japanese camera-maker, which is using similar technology.

Other wireless systems are implantedin the body. Medtronic, a large medical-de-vice-maker, is developing many productsthat use wireless communications. Lastyear it won regulatory approval for an im-plantable de�brillator that links up withhospital equipment or a home monitoringdevice. Along with three other compa-nies�CardioMEMS, St Jude Medical andRemon Medical Technologies�Medtronicis racing to market a device for congestiveheart failure, which a�icts many millionsof people worldwide. Once implanted, thedevice will measure pressure and �uid in-side a patient’s heart and wirelessly sendthe data to an external unit. With regularmonitoring, patients will be alerted to ab-normalities at an early stage.

There are two ways of making the wire-

less work, marking a division in the indus-try about the future of wireless technologyin health care. Medtronic and St Jude cur-rently make large-matchbox-sized de-vices�in essence, minituarised comput-ers�that are implanted in the chest andconnected to the heart with leads, but canbe interrogated wirelessly from outsidethe body by a reader at close quarters.

A more novel approach involves eitherradio waves or ultrasound technology.CardioMEMS uses radio-frequency tech-nology, activating the chip in the im-planted device by a reader that sends aburst of energy (like an RFID tag) to whichthe device responds with the heart-pres-sure information. Remon relies on a formof ultrasound that transmits energy topower the chip and prompt it to send backits pressure readings. Because the electro-magnetic frequencies it uses are low, thereader can be farther away.

All four companies’ heart-failure de-vices are still at the trial stage. In MarchMedtronic su�ered a setback when a panelat America’s Food and Drug Administra-tion rejected its device, called Chronicle,because the trial data showed it to be insuf-�ciently e�ective. Meanwhile, Remon isapplying its technology to what it calls �in-tra-body wireless communications�. By di-viding up the signal, this allows several de-vices inside the body to relay informationto each other or to a receiver without inter-ference, just as a radio can be tuned to dif-ferent stations. So an implanted glucose-level reader in one part of the body couldcommunicate with an implanted insulin-pump elsewhere, says Hezi Himelfarb, theboss of Remon.

Such scenarios are not so far from beingrealised. Sensors for Medicine and Science(SMSI) is developing a glucose sensor to be

placed just under the skin of the forearmthat connects to a watch-like wirelessreader. This will probably become themost common way of deploying the tech-nology: not by surgery deep into the body,but by inserting a sensor below the skinthat can last for months or years, and hav-ing a wireless reader nearby.

This is the method used by Thomas Fer-rell of the University of Tennessee, whohas developed an implantable capsulethat measures ethanol concentration inthe blood. He says it could be used by alco-holics who volunteer for monitoring as analternative to prison. The technology,funded by the National Institute on Alco-hol Abuse and Alcoholism, is currently be-ing tested in animals. Dr Ferrell expects itto become available commercially withintwo years.

Listen to meEarlier Dr Ferrell spearheaded a DARPA

initiative to create a tiny chip that would �tinto a person’s ear and monitor vital signssuch as body temperature, pulse andblood pressure. The work was put on ice�ve years ago because of the huge cost ofdeveloping the technology that was avail-able at the time. But now that the cost hasfallen and the technology improved, theproject is becoming feasible. Later this yearthe work is due to be resurrected by astart-up, Senior Vitals, to produce sensorsfor monitoring elderly people.

The technology to monitor people’s vi-tal signs already exists: NASA does it for as-tronauts in �ight. But for the moment thereis no business model for applying it on theground, no IT system to manage it and nocompany that could carry out the work. Aswith M2M communications, any systemwould have to be tailor-made, whichwould make it very expensive. And aswith other wireless devices, powering theelectronics is a problem.

But companies are beginning to showinterest in the sector. Adi Gan of EvergreenVenture Partners, a venture-capital fund inIsrael, says that numerous business plansin this area have crossed his desk in recentmonths. He sees a lot of promise. For ex-ample, a doctor might implant a sensorduring surgery to o�er far better post-oper-ative monitoring and care. When the pa-tient comes for a follow-up visit, the doc-tor’s reader would power the chip, whichwould provide medical information. Tinydevices could even be used for treating dis-eases. They might be powered wirelesslyto, say, burn new cancer cells in an areathat had previously been treated.

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MACHINES, buildings, �elds and hu-man bodies have a lot to say, if only

they are given a chance to talk. �The previ-ous information revolution was IT, whichwas basically: take all the paper and turn itdigital to share. What we provide [now] isa bridge to the physical world,� says JoyWeiss, the boss of Dust Networks, whichmakes wireless chips.

Yet dealing with lots of wireless gadgetseverywhere is an unpractised art. Securitymust be assured and privacy protected. Allthose radio waves raise health worries.There may not be enough radio spectrumto go around as demand grows. And in thelonger term disparate systems may con-verge and become interconnected, bring-ing up a whole host of new questions.

What is already clear is that the infra-structure required to support wirelesscommunications will have to be massive.Already, tens of billions of e-mails, mobiletext messages and instant messages are be-ing sent through the world’s public net-works each day, not to mention quasi-closed networks used by stock exchanges,�ight-reservation systems and the like.Each CDMA mobile phone communicateswith a cell tower 800 times a second justfor its power management.

VeriSign, which manages networkssuch as the internet’s address system, theglobal RFID registry and mobile text mes-sages, is spending $200m-300m on its sys-

tem to handle a peak load of 4 trillion in-ternet-address queries a day by 2010.Cyber-attacks are expected to grow at arate of 50% a year. The design of the newsystems will be critical and the penaltiesfor failure severe. For example, faulty RFID

infrastructure in the initial stages of theIraq war in 2003 resulted in supplies to thevalue of $1.2 billion being lost during trans-port, according to the US General Account-ing O�ce. Projects to embed robust RFID

chips into passports and national ID cardsaround the world are beset with delays.

The issue is trickier than many peopleappreciate. As wireless systems becomecommon in homes, businesses and publicspaces, says Lee McKnight of Syracuse

University and the founder of WirelessGrids Corp, they will eventually integrateand work together on the �y, in the sameway that today a property website mightchoose to overlay Google maps on its list-ings. Moreover, the streams of data fromdevices and sensors are di�erent in kindfrom what most people are used to: the in-formation is �probabilistic� rather than de-�nitive, explains Martin Illsley of Accen-ture. And the systems are vulnerable tobeing hacked into.

The way we look at privacy protectionwill need to be overhauled. Today it workslike a minuet, with a de�ned set of part-ners and parameters, says Elliot Maxwell,a technology-policy guru and former o�-cial at America’s commerce department.But M2M and sensor networks change thetune: the systems are more decentralisedand interwoven. Who keeps an audit trail?How are the data veri�ed? Who gives con-sent to whom? Today’s privacy rules pre-sume a relationship between citizen andgovernment or consumer and company.But the way in which information will begenerated and shared may involve somany parties that the minuet will turn intoa punk rock concert.

The issues feel new because the tech-nology is only just beginning to be de-ployed. Where it is already in use, withRFID chips, it has generated controversy.American Express has patented a tech-

The hidden revolution

What you don’t see will need careful watching

3On the right wavelength

Sources: Harbor Research; ABI Research

Wireless M2M devices and sensors, forecastsShipments, m

2006 07 08 09 10 110

100

200

300

400

Harbor

ABI

Such uses of wireless seem far removedfrom the mobile phones which vast num-bers of people carry with them at all times.But there is a connection. As the use ofwireless medical devices grows, the bestway of collecting the data and sendingthem to a remote monitoring centre mayturn out to be the patient’s mobile phone,which will be close enough to receive datafrom the low-powered implanted device.It could be the critical bit of infrastructurebetween wireless communications in thebody and the global internet. Just whenpeople are starting to think of the mobilephone as a wallet, they �nd that it is be-coming the family doctor too.

Mobile-phone operators understandthe potential. South Korean and Japanesecarriers are experimenting with technol-

ogies that let people monitor their heartrate, blood pressure and other vital signswith home devices and transmit the datausing a phone. Philips and GE are addingwireless technology to patients’ home-monitoring devices. Yet today’s mobilenetworks are not su�ciently reliable foranything other than non-critical uses, ac-cording to a study in 2005 from the Univer-sity of Massachusetts in Amherst. And theoperators’ current pricing models are amajor barrier, says Matt Welsh of HarvardUniversity, who is developing sensors forthe continuous monitoring of vital signs.

For now the advances are largely com-ing from the IT industry, not the medicalsector, which is noted for its conservatism.Whereas pharmaceutical �rms are startingto use RFID tags on medicine packages as

an anti-counterfeiting measure, othercompanies are working to put RFID tagsonto individual pills. In January Kodak�led for a patent on an edible RFID tagwhich could be used, for example, to ex-amine the digestive tract or check whethera patent has taken his medication.

It all seems a long way from the BajaBeach Club, where Mr Chase goes abouthis nightly routine. He reviews imagesfrom security cameras, some of which arewireless, and then locks an o�ce with keysusing a wireless ID system that recordswho enters where and when. The geekystu� is his doing, but then he has form.Back in the 1980s, long before opening hisnightclub, he served in the US Army SignalCorps, working on the ARPANET, the mili-tary precursor to the internet. 7

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nique to track people in public placesbased on the RFID tags in their clothingand products they carry, but has agreednot to use it without disclosing the fact,after pressure from privacy advocates. Lastyear a Wisconsin legislator proposed a lawto ban any mandatory microchip implantsin humans (although nothing of the kindexists as yet), or embedding a chip in a per-son without the recipient’s knowledge.The European Commission is set to issueguidelines on privacy and security stan-dards for RFID technology later this year.

Silent chips�The ‘silence of the chips’ must be pre-served as a fundamental right of citizens,�says Bernard Benhamou of the Institute ofPolitical Science in Paris, who was a mem-ber of the French delegation at UN meet-ings on internet governance in 2003-06.Mobile phones, he believes, should beable to pick up the presence of sensors.People should be able to read basic RFID

tags�and destroy them too to preservetheir privacy. Such rights, he says, will be-come more important as wireless technol-ogies become small enough to be invisible.

Yet the technology cuts both ways. Pri-sons in America are experimenting withbracelets that have wireless chips embed-ded in them to keep track of inmates. Itsounds Big Brotherish, but prison o�cialssay that violence among prisoners has de-creased. Guards are also tagged, so prison-ers may feel safer from abuse.

A 2004 report for the European Parlia-ment on the e�ects of new wireless tech-nologies on health and the environmentargued for the �precautionary principle�:holding back until any adverse e�ectshave become clear. But in practice that ishard to do. The report recommended thattechnology products be sold with factuallabels, rather like processed foods, so con-sumers will know how much radiationthey emit, how much energy they use andso on. The report did not cover privacy, butthere should probably be disclosure of thepresence of wireless systems too.

Another possibility is to separate thedata. Adam Green�eld, in his book �Every-ware: The Dawning Age of UbiquitousComputing�, published last year, makesan impassioned plea for �seamfulness�.Whereas the computer industry strives tomake things as �seamless� (that is, inte-grated) as possible, he advocates keepingsome networks and data apart.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of HarvardUniversity’s Kennedy School of Govern-ment has come up with a more innovative

proposal: requiring information to be de-leted over time. He describes this as a legaland technical version of human forgetting.Today’s computer systems do not do that;tomorrow we may wish they did.

We are in the early stages of the creationof a new industry, reminiscent of comput-ing in the early 1970s when companies be-gan to adopt it in earnest. There was plentyof resistance. The systems were di�cult tooperate and seemed to be set up for nerds.The economic bene�ts were questioned.There were privacy and regulatory wor-ries. Yet in time the rough edges weresmoothed and everybody bene�ted.

Technology rarely evolves in the waythat people think it will. When Marconi in-vented his wireless telegraph, he neverimagined broadcast radio. A decade earlierHeinrich Hertz had famously declared: �I

do not think that the wireless waves that Ihave discovered will have any practicalapplication.� To the men at Bell Labs in1947 the transistor was simply an e�cientreplacement for vacuum tubes; they hadno inkling of its use in computers. Todaythese technologies are omnipresent: tele-visions in every home; computers in everyo�ce; phones in every pocket; radiotowers looming overhead.

What is di�erent about new wirelesscommunications is that people will barelynotice them. Machines will talk to ma-chines without human intervention. Buthumans will nevertheless be laying thefoundation of a new infrastructure which,like the electrical power grid, will becomea platform for subsequent innovation.There is no saying how it will be usedother than that it will surprise us. 7

Future special reportsCountries and regionsHong Kong June 30thIran July 14th

Business, �nance, economics and ideasCities May 5thInternational banking May 19thThe green economy June 2ndAir travel June 16th

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