Can 154 Years of Disruptive Innovation in Wireless Communications be Continued into Fifth Generation (5G) and Beyond?

This talk is intended for a broad university audience, not necessarily for technical expert in wireless communications. Wireless Communications has permeated all aspects of our lives and the demands for wireless products and services will continue to grow at exponential rates. The history of wireless communications has seen several disruptive innovations launch new developments in the technology and the provision of services. Many times, it was incorrectly believed that wireless communication had reached its physical limits and that available frequency spectrum bandwidth, interference from too many service users, device weight, and power consumption limited further advancements in network design and capacity. Yet, fundamental thinking has continued to innovate disruptive technologies, driving the continued advancement of wireless communication products and services for 154 years now. An abridged history of advancements in wireless communications traces some interesting and perhaps sometimes lesser known innovations in wireless communications from pre-1G to 1G through 5G. Attention is then turned to the question of how to launch the new era of 5G and future wireless networks beyond 5G.  In particular, the focus is on questioning whether substantial needed improvements in the number of users supportable simultaneously by the system can be achieved by 5G. This question is put into the context of the theme of the inaugural international Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, (IEEE) 5G Summit at Princeton University, "Rethink The Fundamentals".  Launching a new era of 5G and future networks will require out-of-the-box thinking and disruptive ideas about how to generate interference that has exploitable properties, enabling useful control of the interference caused by multiple users wanting to access the wireless frequency spectrum resource at the same time.  Some strategies for increasing the number of users supportable simultaneously in the same frequency bandwidth are proposed.