Special issue on energy efficient reconfigurable transceivers

Throughout the global community, wireless communications have had a profound social and economic impact, enriching our daily lives with a plethora of services from media entertainment to more sensitive applications such as e-commerce. Looking towards the future, although voice and SMS are still major sources of revenue, richer mobile traffic will account for a large chunk of the internet highway. To cope with this increased demand, operators will be required to invest more in core infrastructure, and deploy more advanced technologies. In fact, already in today's market, operators are deploying over 120,000 new Base Stations (BSs) on a yearly basis across the world. Moreover, the rapid evolution of mobile technologies, from 3rd Generation (3G) supporting 384 kb/s downlink in 2001 to the Long Term Evolution (LTE) supporting 300 Mb/s downlink in 2010, is further increasing the cost for network operators. However, although the data throughput per user is rapidly growing, the revenue per Mb is continuously dropping such that resorting to advanced spectral efficiency technology alone appears insufficient to maintain a profitable business. Consequently, service providers - and infrastructure vendors - are increasing their focus on cost reductions.