A Functional Approach for Studying Technological Progress: Extension to Wireless Telecommunications

This thesis attempts to study the technological progress of wireless technology and the wireless industry throughout history, using high-level, non-device specific performance metrics. Such metrics are developed by following the broad functional category approach. The analysis performed is both qualitative and quantitative. Firstly, the quantitative study provides a general perspective of how the technology has evolved through history, looking for signs of constant evolution and/or signs of technological saturation or acceleration. Following this, the qualitative section aims to provide the basis of a strategic framework that could be of importance to organizations in the industry, in particular to those interested in making the right decisions regarding technology selection, new spectrum licensing, and new services pricing, by using a cost-benefit approach. It was found that, in concordance with the two previous analyses performed on the information and energy technology domains, a continuous progress in the metrics identified is observed in the three Functional Performance Metrics (FPM) determined for this study. Still, some weak signs of eventual saturation were observed in one of the metrics identified in the study for the first time in this kind of study. A rate of yearly progress of 15% was obtained from the spectral efficiency Functional Performance Metric (FPM), while significantly higher rates, close to 50%, were obtained for both the throughput and coverage density FPMs. The time series comprises over 100 years of data, from the late 1800's / early 1900's until the present.