Fourth-Generation Systems and New Wireless Technologies

With the rapid development of wireless communication networks, it is expected that fourth generation (4G) mobile systems will be launched within a decade. 4G mobile systems focus on seamless integration of existing wireless technologies including wireless wide area network (WWAN), wireless local area network (WLAN), and Bluetooth. This is in contrast with third generation (3G) mobile systems, which merely focuses on developing new standards and hardware. The recent convergence of the Internet and mobile radio has accelerated the demand for “ Internet in the pocket, ” as well as for radio technologies that increase data throughput and reduce the cost per bit. Mobile networks are going multimedia, potentially leading to an explosion in throughput from a few bytes for the short message service (SMS) to a few kilobits per second (kbps) for the multimedia messaging service (MMS) to several 100 kbps for video content. In addition to wide-area cellular systems, diverse wireless transmission technologies are being deployed, including digital audio broadcast (DAB) and digital video broadcast (DVB) for wide-area broadcasting, local multipoint distribution service (LMDS), and multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) for fi xed wireless access. IEEE 802.11b, 11a, 11g, 11n, and 11h standards for WLANs are extending from the enterprise world into public and residential domains. Because they complement cellular networks, these new wireless network technologies and their derivatives may well prove to be the infrastructure components of the future 4G mobile networks when multistandard terminals become widely available. This is already the case for Wi-Fi in the public “ hotspots, ” which is being deployed by mobile operators around the world with the aim to offer seamless mobility with WWANs.

The 4G systems will encompass all systems from various networks, public to private, operator-driven broadband networks to personal areas, and ad hoc networks. The 4G systems will be interoperable with second-generation (2G) and 3G systems, as well as with digital (broadband) broadcasting systems. The 4G intends to integrate from satellite broadband to high altitude platform to cellular 2G and 3G systems to wireless local loop (WLL) and broadband wireless access (BWA) to WLAN, and wireless personal area networks (WPANs), all with IP as the integrating mechanism.

Source of Information : Elsevier Wireless Networking Complete