Q5 - David Sykes, ProVision Communications

Electronics Weekly puts its questions to an industry figure: David Sykes is CEO of wireless and video specialist ProVision Communications

What kind of society are we building, with video available everywhere you go?

Definitely a good one - mobile communications empowers people, and video enriches mobile communications. As the displays and cameras in mobile phones get better and better, people are finding so many imaginative ways to use them. There's no question that better communications means better understanding and happier people.

Do you think the case for WiFi radiation health safety has been proved yet?

You will never be able to prove this absolutely, but WiFi is clearly far less of a problem - if it is a problem at all - than DECT and mobile phones, or microwave ovens. These have all been around for years now with no obvious side effects, and no-one seems too bothered about them.

Thick walls in old buildings are still a problem for wireless - what's going to change that?

Go around the problem instead. All the latest wireless technologies use OFDM which makes a virtue of reflections and indirect paths for the radio signal. In our work we take full advantage of things such as MIMO and smart antennas to achieve really reliable wireless communications, regardless of whether there is a thick wall or a crowd of people in the way.

What is the technical limitation of a data network for video transmission?

We suffer a bit today from how today's standards have evolved: networking standards grew out of data processing, so didn't take the real time needs of video properly into account. However, you can transmit video - even HD video - without problem if you optimise the network to transport IP encapsulated video, and dynamically manage the link.

Is it possible to eliminate packet errors in a wireless network?

No, it's not. Radio signals are intrinsically unreliable - and digital video is very sensitive to packet errors - so if you want to transmit real time video you need sound strategies to cope with these. Which is why we have developed - and patented - an effective way to conceal the inevitable errors.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Wireless, a roundup of content related to wireless communications.