For Cooper, 3G is a baby step toward real high-speed, inexpensive wireless communications. The technology makes better use of the arrays of antennas found in cellular base stations. As you may have noticed when driving by a cell tower, each station contains a forest of up to a dozen antennas. But many communications and radar systems have long used similar arrays to aim their signals in particular directions. The transmissions from individual antennas interact with one another, preventing the signals from going in some directions and amplifying them in others.
Cooper proposes retrofitting cellular base stations to the same end.
His system is based on digital signal processors originally developed by the U.S. military for spying on foreign radio broadcasts. Such signal processors, when attached to an antenna array, can beam radio signals precisely at individual users. As each user moves around, the smart antennas track them. The result is a kind of cloud of radio signals that follows each user around like the cloud of dust around Pigpen. The system can reuse the same radio frequencies for different users in the same vicinity, without worrying that the transmissions will interfere with one another.