4 Generations of Cellular Wireless Systems

Abstract

In this article, the standards of the first, second, second and half, third generation mobile cellular radiosystems and a path toward the fourth generation mobile multimedia communication are reviewed. Non-cellularmobile wireless evolution is historically given. First generation wireless standards designed in the Europeancountries, US and Japan were voice-only analog cellular systems. Explosive growth of the demands in limitedspectrum resulted in the second generation that was all based on digital. The second generation systems arecategorized by the multiple access techniques: TDMA and CDMA. It turned out that TDMA-based GSM hasbecome the dominant mobile system all over the world yielding to international roaming. Further developmentof half generation to 2.5G was evolved to speed data rates and packet data transmission to integrate voice anddata applications. Seamless integration of the existing second generation wireless networks, global roaming,broadband data services and mobile multimedia up to 2 Mbps data rate with the same quality as that of wirelineare all the main goals of the third generation standards, called IMT-2000, which have now been deployed.Motivated by the rapid growth of Internet, mobile Internet will be an extension of the third generation services.The fourth generation systems will be able to interwork over heterogeneous networks based on a common IPplatformand smart terminals controlled by reconfigurable software radio. It is also expectedly to support higherdata rate than the third generation possible by data compression techniques in broadband radio transmission.Some perspectives of the coming fourth generation are concluded.