I was asked in 2004 to give my vision about the future of multimedia communication during a Forum on 4G technologies. These are the slides of my talk.

1. 1
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Vision statement
Realization of Enhanced Reality
Mobile Communication
Touradj Ebrahimi
Touradj.Ebrahimi@epfl.ch

2. 2
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Background

3. 3
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Multimedia
 Means of Expression aimed at being
consumed by humans
 Modalities
– Audio (music, song, radio, …)
– Image (paintings, photos, press, …)
– Video (cinema, TV, …)
– …
Closely linked to content creation

4. 4
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Digital revolution
 Representation of media in digital
form
– Ease of manipulation by
computers
– Efficient transmission through
various communication channels
– Robustness to errors
– Infinitely reproducible
– Low cost
– Easily searchable and accessible
– …
 Moore’s law (exponential growth)
– Computing power
– Storage
– Communication channels
bitrates

5. 5
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Roadmap

6. 6
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Phase 1 (yesterday): Era of all digital
 World of acronyms
– CD (Digital music)
– DVD (Digital video)
– DAB (Digital radio)
– DVB (Digital TV)
– ISDN (Digital phone)
– GSM/UMTS (Digital mobile phone)
 Media in bits!
– Essentially same experience as before, but
more efficiently deployed

7. 7
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Phase 2 (today): Era of multimedia
 Synthetic and natural media
– Natural content (AV) can be acquired easily
and cost efficiently
– Content is not anymore only the result of
acquisition of real world through various
– Virtual reality
– Augmented reality
– Mixed reality

8. 8
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Phase 2 (today): Era of multimedia
 New media, rich media
– New types of content (media) and
experience start appearing thanks to digital
revolution
– Content is increasingly rich (associated
metadata) and accessible
– Content democratization (consumer-
producer)

9. 9
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Phase 3 (tomorrow): Era of interface
 Moore’s law does not apply to the interface
between man and machine
– We basically use the same interface devices in the
last 50 years (keyboard, mouse, screen, …)
– The communication bitrate between man and
machine remains very low
– Interfaces remain unnatural
 New man-machine interfaces
– Computers/devices that can see and hear
– Speech recognition
– Gesture recognition
– …

10. 10
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Phase 4 (day after tomorrow): Era of extended media and interface
 Multimedia
beyond
audiovisual
– Olfaction (smell)
– Haptics (touch)
– Gustation (taste)
 New interfaces
– Emotional computers
– Brain-computer
interface

11. 11
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Roadmap
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
All Digital
Multimedia
Interface
Extended media and interface

12. 12
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Mobile communication device of 2010 and beyond

13. 13
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Some existing prototypes
More details: http://bci.epfl.ch
Hanover Messe 19-23 April 2004

14. 14
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Essential technical
breakthroughs

15. 15
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Challenges
 Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics
 Security (content protection,
authentication, conditional access, …)
 Multiview (stereo) vision
 Haptic, olfactive and gustative
representation models and devices
 Brain-computer interfacing
 …

16. 16
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Requirements to
(mobile) communication systems

17. 17
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Requirements on network and system
 High bitrate
 Low delay
 Low power consumption
 Heterogeneous network handouts
 Compatible with Source/Channel/RF joint
coding and optimization (forget OSI!)
 …

18. 18
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Other challenges

19. 19
DoCoMo 4G TECH FORUM
March 15, 2004 YRP, Japan Touradj Ebrahimi
Social and business opportunities
 Consumer acceptance of new media and
interfaces (killer apps)
 Past experience shows that new
technologies have been used in different
ways than those envisioned by
technologists
 Do old business models still apply?