Frequency-Agile Radios and Network Mapping

Chapter 3 also alluded to frequency-agile radios. I am reasonably confident that they will play
a major role in the networks of the future. They will certainly increase the capacity and spectral
efficiency of any broadband wireless network in which they are used, but they will also add
enormously to the complexity of cell mapping and network organization. I know of no network
planning software capable of modeling networks based on this facility, so the operator today
has no real means of planning for the arrival of a technology that is three to five years off in a
commercial sense. My assumption at this point is that frequency agility would only be an asset
when combined with adaptive array antennas and with the overall network intelligence that
would enable every base station to coordinate its activities with every other base station and
solve extremely complex problems concerning frequency allocation and reuse within the
entire network.