Petri Mähönen has observed that wireless researchers haven’t exploited supercomputing as much as one might expect, especially in comparison with other scientific disciplines such as aerospace, meteorology, oceanography, biology, sociology... If they had, we could be exploring thousands or millions of “Test Cities” rather than just the one contemplated in the PCAST Report (pdf, Chapter 6 and Appendix G). The PCAST budget for the first three years of a Test City (Table G.1) runs to $21 million in operating expenses and $15 million in capital expenses – that would buy a lot of computation!
I suspect (hope!) we’re on the verge of a step change in using software simulation, aka “mirror worlds”, to understand and manage radio systems. The underlying technology has been on the exponential growth curve we’ve all heard about, but hasn’t broken through to high profile visibility. It may soon.
