Generations of Wireless Technologies

It was one of our coffee table discussions and someone from our team bought up a point regarding mobile wireless standards. He was asking “Hey what are this 3G, 4G, 5G standards and how it is differ from each other”? “And how they impact me”?

We all might have heard about all hese standards, and even consuming thease from long time. Me too. But with the rapid enhancement of technology there is lot of confusion what’s 3G what’s 4G and so on. To answer him maybe we can tell something like “Bandwidth is matters the difference”. Yes it is somewhat true, but it is always better to know little more, right? Here we are trying to understand what is going on with this technologies,what are the difference and where they are taking us, with the help of few questions.

Ok. To start with I wanted to show the first mobile which I owned - Nokia 3310 GSM Cell (2G). I used this one almost 4 years. Bulky, but still I love this model! Doesn’t matter, here comes the first question:

Why mobile phone was called cell phone?

A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. Cell is short for Cellular. Cell phones companies distribute an area or a city in several grids called cells. See the image on left. Whenever you are at a certain spot, your phone will be receiving or transmitting through the towers located in that local grid. As you keep moving from "cell" to "cell" the respective towers pick up signals from your phone. This is also the reason that you can locate a person using a cell phone quite easily using this grid triangulation system (or something of that sort).

The telecommunication service in World had a great jump within last few years. 8 billion or more people own mobile phones it seems. We are going to see the various main generations of cellular from 1st generation to 5th generation .In the present time, there are four generations in the mobile industry. These are respectively 1G the first generation, 2G the second generation, 3G the third generation, and then the 4G the fourth generation and an upcoming 5G. The nomenclature of the generations generally refers to a change in the fundamental nature of the service, non-backwards compatible transmission technology and new frequency bands. This article details the differences between the major cell phone technologies

So who define this (1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G) stands?

It's an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard.

What’s different between these technologies and how do they impact you?

In order to see the impact of generations we only have to see what was there in each generation. The "explosive growth in bursty traffic" changes the network dynamics and requires a good evaluation of various classes of service when designing an access network. Here we will go through each major generation to understand what the fundamental change is and how it is impacting as a normal user.

1G - The first generation

1G refers to the first-generation of wireless telephone technology, mobile telecommunications. It was using analog telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s. It has the ability to transfer calls from one site to the next as the user travelled between cells during a conversation, as 1G was based on Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) for transfer between cells. It was very vague and had a low capacity. These services are provided with circuit switching. This allows users to make voice calls in 1 country.

2G -The second generation

In the 1990s, the 'second generation' mobile phone systems emerged; primarily using the GSM standard. It was their first major upgrade when they went from 1G to 2G. This leap effectively took cell phones from analog to digital. With this second generation introduced a new variant of communication called SMS or text messaging. Across the world, many operators adopted the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) standard, which used Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)

• Planned for voice transmission with digital signal and the speeds up to 64kbps

• 2G was the digital handsets that we are used today, with 2.5G representing handsets with data capabilities over GPRS

3G - The third generation

As the use of 2G phones became more widespread and people began to utilize mobile phones in their daily lives, it became clear that demand for data services (such as access to the internet) was growing. If we can expect 3- 5 mbps of speed, which is actually equal to cable/DSL kind of speed in to a moving device! That’s what all about 3G. This enabled faster data-transmission speeds, greater network capacity and more advanced network services, basically turns your cell phones to a mini computer.

Another thing to be noted in case of 3G is that Wide Band Voice Channel, by this the world has been contracted to a little village because a person can contact with other person located in any part of the world and can even send messages too. 3G gives clarity of voice as well can talk without any disturbance simultaneously. Not only these but also have entertainments such as Fast Communication, Internet, Mobile T.V, Video Conferencing, Video Calls, Multi Media Messaging Service (MMS), 3D gaming, Multi-Gaming etc are also available with 3G phones. It does this by using High speed downlink packet access and universal mobile telephone system.

• Developed in the late 1990s until present day.

• Japan is the first country having introduced 3G nationally.

• It gives Global roaming facility.

• Superior voice quality and video conference

• Data always add–on services (e-mail, personal organizer, etc.)

• Information for web surfing, music, news, corporate intranet, transportation service etc.

• On-line shopping facility.

• Transmission speeds from 125kbps to 2Mbps

• In 2005, 3G is ready to live up to its performance in computer networking (WCDMA, WLAN and Bluetooth) and mobile devices area (cell phone and GPS)

What are the issues on 3G?

Basically the main drawback is the high input fees for 3G service licenses. Also for the many telecommunication companies it is still a challenge to build the necessary infrastructure for 3G. Some people argue on the health aspects of the effects of electromagnetic waves using in 3g signals. More over 3g phones are expensive bulk , and less coverage area as still it is in development phase in many countries.

4G - The fourth generation

4G is an entirely different animal. As more features become available through the Internet, so raises the need to create a faster and more reliable Internet connection. This is where Fourth Generation Internet comes in. Some of the additional features such as Multi-Media Newspapers, also to watch T.V programs with the clarity as to that of an ordinary T.V. In addition, we can send Data much faster that of the previous generations. It allows multitasking like, while surfing on net you can continue talking in a faster way. 4G system is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure all-IP based solution where facilities such as IP telephony, ultra-broadband Internet access, gaming services and streamed multimedia may be provided to users. 4G Internet is the next generation of web service, and is four times faster than 3G. See some of the bullet points.

• Streaming high definition movies.

• Playing graphically intensive games online.

• 4G is a conceptual framework and a discussion point to address future needs of a high speed wireless network.

• It offer both cellular and broadband multimedia services everywhere

• Expected to emerged around 2010 - 2015

• 4G should be able to provided very smooth global roaming ubiquitously with lower cost

• Theoretically, 4G is set to deliver 100mbps to a roaming mobile device globally, and up to 1Gbps to a stationary device. With this in mind, it allows for video conferencing, streaming picture perfect video (i.e. tele-medicine, tele-geo processing application etc.)

• 4G will bring almost perfect real world wireless or called “WWWW: World Wide Wireless Web

5G - The fifth generation

Wireless systems becoming an important infrastructure in our society. A virtual global system is a good solution that can efficiently connect many dedicated wireless systems including 2G to 4G cellular systems, wireless LAN, broadcasting systems, etc. Here comes the 5G for you...

5G technologies which are on hand held phone offering more power and features than at least 1000 lunar modules. A user can also hook their 5G technology cell phone with their Laptop to get broadband internet access. 5G technology including camera, MP3 recording, video player, large phone memory, dialing speed, audio player and much more you never imagine. With this a user being sitting in India proficient to get access to Germany phone as a local phone. With the coming out of cell phone alike to PDA now your whole office in your finger tips or in your phone. 5G technology has extraordinary data capabilities and has ability to tie together unrestricted call volumes and infinite data broadcast within latest mobile operating system

• 5G is a completed wireless communication with almost no limitation; somehow people called it REAL wireless world

• 5G wireless system is only theory and not real.

The ultimate aim is to communicate any type of Information with anyone at anytime anywhere with no time. In this journey we have seen some of the major generation of wireless networks and there benefits .I am sure we have missed out lot of internal topics here to limit our scope. Anyway Thanks for reading this.