With out Seizo Onoe, mobile phone networks wouldn’t be the supply of worldwide connectivity we all know right this moment. The IEEE life member was instrumental in driving the standardization for 3G and 4G mobile networks.
The first-generation networks that launched within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties had been largely country-specific, designed for making solely home or regional calls. There was no approach to ship textual content messages or different knowledge over 1G networks. And interference from different radio alerts made 1G protection unreliable; there have been loads of dropped calls. Plus, with out encryption, eavesdropping was a persistent drawback.
In 1991 2G networks signaled the fledgling {industry}’s swap to digital—which improved safety and broadened the vary of options. Fundamental textual content messages grew to become attainable.
Particular person international locations and carriers had constructed their very own telecommunications infrastructures, nevertheless, utilizing completely different applied sciences and protocols (though Europe had established a typical regional customary). An industry-wide, standardized mobile telecommunications infrastructure was wanted.
Onoe answered that decision, serving to to align corporations’ and international locations’ infrastructures as 3G networks took form.
For his efforts, Onoe has been awarded the IEEE Jagadish Chandra Bose Medal in Wireless Communications. The medal, bestowed for the primary time this 12 months, is called for an Indian scientist who pioneered radio and millimeter-wave research.
Onoe is at present director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau on the International Telecommunication Union.
The medal is designed to commemorate contributions to wireless communications applied sciences with a worldwide impression.
“It’s the highest honor for me,” Onoe says, “particularly as I’m the primary recipient.”
Studying early digital cellular radio transmission
Onoe grew up in Akashi, in southwestern Japan. He says he was drawn to the “directness” of STEM topics. He majored in engineering when he enrolled at Kyoto University in 1976.
“In fact, my dad and mom additionally urged engineering as a result of it was extra advantageous for employment,” he says.
He earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1980 and an engineering grasp’s diploma two years later. As a graduate scholar, he labored on early digital cellular radio transmission.
The primitive tools on which he minimize his enamel—repurposed (1.544 megabits per second) fixed-line {hardware} donated by {industry}—despatched out cellular radio alerts at data rates that will be corresponding to these of 3G sometime, foreshadowing the digital cellular future.
The talk behind the 3G customary
Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 1979 launched the world’s first 1G network. In 1982 Onoe joined NTT’s Yokosuka Electrical Communication Laboratory, in Yokosuka Metropolis. Beginning his NTT profession as a researcher, he helped develop the management alerts needed for name setup and different controls over an analog community.
“On the time, NTT’s cellular companies was a really small division,” he remembers. Issues actually began altering within the early Nineteen Nineties, he says.
In 1992 the corporate spun off its cellular division, Docomo (do communications over the cellular community). The title was popularly interpreted as a play on the Japanese phrase dokomo, which suggests in all places.
Onoe was transferred to Docomo in 1992, when the corporate was based, and was later promoted to govt engineer and director. NTT reacquired Docomo in 2020.
He contributed to 3G growth, together with work on a speedy cell search algorithm, which proved essential for community efficiency. The algorithm lets mobile devices rapidly determine the closest base station in a mobile community. And it didn’t depend on different techniques, like GPS, to find the right cell in a community—making the method simpler, sooner, and cheaper.
His most difficult effort all through the Nineteen Nineties, he says, was together with rising digital mobile stakeholders worldwide—together with governments, telecom corporations, and regulators—to start envisioning the infrastructure on which a very international mobile community could possibly be constructed.
That meant growing a single customary.
“There have been many, many heated debates all world wide,” Onoe says.
Based on history articles printed on-line by Ericsson, the debates had been complex and contentious. They concerned entities from inside and out of doors the {industry}, together with cellphone producers, cellular service suppliers, requirements boards, and authorities officers.
Europe alone was contemplating 5 completely different telecom infrastructures throughout the continent’s quite a few cellular networks, Onoe says, highlighting the divide world wide. Some corporations and international locations supported time-division multiple access (TDMA), which might break up the out there community bandwidth into time slots and assign customers particular slots for transmission. Others had been pushing a distinct entry expertise that’s partly competitive with TDMA and partly complementary to it: code-division a number of entry (CDMA), which makes use of distinctive codes to permit a number of customers to share each bandwidth and time.
As if that rising requirements panorama weren’t difficult sufficient, Sony championed yet one more expertise primarily based on orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).
In December 1997 the European Telecommunications Standards Institute met in Madrid. At difficulty could be who managed the requirements for, on the time, the 3G future.
And that’s when the fur actually flew. The Nordic cellular producers Ericsson and Nokia squared off in what had been, in keeping with Ericsson’s account at the very least, “more and more warlike circumstances.” Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, who the above account stated “regarded Ericsson as a British firm,” took Ericsson’s aspect within the squabbles. Different ETSI disputes aired at that assembly discovered their method into lawsuits years later.
Not one of the requirements into account garnered sufficient votes to go. A second vote could be held the next month in Paris—and so the lobbying started anew.
On the Paris assembly in January 1998, the ETSI voted on W-CDMA because the dominant customary for the world’s 3G networks. However within the spirit of compromise, the requirements physique additionally allotted a restricted quantity of 3G spectrum to TD-CDMA, a mix of the time-division and code-division strategies.
Following that, within the last stage of the 3G standardization battle—a debate between wideband CDMA and an analogous entry expertise, CDMA2000—Onoe emerged as a serious participant to assist dealer an settlement, as Japan at the very least hedgingly supported the push for W-CDMA.
“I made a decision to step in and be part of the warfare, so to talk,” Onoe says. “Throughout all these international locations and distributors and people preventing, it was clear we had been going to must provide you with some compromises to lastly agree.”
Onoe helped lead an operators’ harmonization group to do exactly that. It proposed altering the chip charge—the frequency at which the smallest models of 3G code are transmitted.
With 3G politics addressed, the onerous 3G engineering work then started in earnest.
“We needed to begin the event of the business system,” Onoe says. “I don’t assume I totally appreciated simply how difficult that was going to be.”
From 1999 till 2001, he says, he labored daily together with weekends.
“I might begin conferences at midnight, summarize the day’s actions, and plan for the subsequent day,” he says. “It’s onerous to think about all these years later, however as a younger and excited engineer, it was simple for me to do.”
NTT grew to become the primary firm to launch 3G commercially, in October 2001. The brand new wi-fi customary vastly outstripped 2G’s knowledge charges. In the end, common 2G obtain speeds were about 40 kilobits per second, whereas 3G finally would boast as much as 8 megabits per second. The 2G to 3G swap represented a night-and-day distinction in velocity, making 3G the primary international customary to allow the primary wave of cellular video calls, Internet looking, online games, and streaming video content material.
4G and telecom’s speedy bandwidth progress
Together with his contributions to 3G secured, Onoe continued to look ahead. In 2009 Ericsson and Sweden’s TeliaSonera launched the world’s first 4G/LTE network. Five times faster than 3G, it unlocked high-definition video streaming, lag-free online gaming, and a brand new vary of cellular apps together with FaceTime, Snapchat, and Uber.
Onoe additionally performed a key position within the international 4G standardization course of. On the time, he was Docomo’s managing director of R&D technique. He went on to turn out to be the corporate’s chief expertise officer, in addition to an govt vice chairman who served on the board of administrators. When he left the corporate in 2022, he was NTT’s chief standardization technique officer.
That 12 months he was elected to his present position: director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. He started his four-year time period at the start of 2023.
“The ITU’s elementary mission is to attach the unconnected,” he says. “One-third of the world’s inhabitants continues to be not related. And customary specs assist, as a result of after they’re adopted broadly, they create economies of scale. Competitors will increase, and the worth drops. It’s a constructive cycle.”
Collaborating with IEEE
Onoe joined IEEE early in his profession—following firm coverage at NTT encouraging membership. He says he continues to resume his membership as a result of he values the networking alternatives it supplies, in addition to probabilities to speak concerning the {industry} with fellow engineers.
He works carefully with IEEE leaders in his present place at ITU. In December the organizations convened the IEEE-ITU Symposium on Achieving Climate Resilience, which goals to form a technology-driven highway map to confront the local weather disaster.
“We additionally maintain joint workshops and conferences and share ideas informally,” Onoe says. “As I’ve seen all through my profession, it’s critically necessary that requirements our bodies actively collaborate if we hope to advance international expertise.”
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