Evolution of communication, 1G to 4G towards 5G

Has it ever struck your curious mind how 4G evolved from simple Push to talk system ? Is there any governing body which regulatesthe spectrum ? what kind of services we will have in next generation of communication? 

So friends, Lets start the journey of wirelesscommunication. Mobile radio telephones were introduced formilitary communications in the early 20th century. Car-based telephones was first testedin Saint Louis in 1946. This system used a single large transmitter on top of a highrise building. A single channel was used for sending and receiving similar to a half duplexsystem. To talk, the user pushed a button that enabled transmission and disabled reception.Due to this, these became known as “push-to-talk” systems in the 1950s. To allow users to talkand listen at the same time, IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone System) was introduced in the 1960s. It used two channels one for sending and one for receiving bringing telecommunicationto full duplex mode. In the 1970s Private companies have starteddeveloping their own systems to evolve the existing system further.Those private systems areAnalogue Mobile Phone System, used in America, Total Access Communication System and NordicMobile Telephone, used in parts of Europe and Japanese Total Access Communication System,used in Japan and Hong Kong.

                     Independently developed systems are calledas 1st Generation communication. It was introduced in 1982 by Bell Labs and popularly known asAdvanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS). The key idea here was to divide geographical areasinto cells. and each cell was served by a base station so that frequency reuse can beimplemented. As a result AMPS could support 5 to 10 times more users than IMTS. Majorconcern for the 1st generation was weak Security on air interface, full analog mode of communication.and No roaming. Now, To implement roaming. Individual organisationsstarted working under one umbrella, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and developed 2nd Generation system. 

                                            Second generation cellular telecom networkswere commercially launched in 1991 in Finland based on GSM standards. It could deliver dataat the rate of up to 9.6 Kbps. Three primary benefits of 2G networks overtheir predecessors were. phone conversations were now digitally encrypted.It was significantly more efficient on the spectrum and allowed far greater mobile phonepenetration level. 2G introduced data services for mobile, startingwith SMS text message. Further To achieve higher data rates GSM carriersstarted developing a service called General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). This system overlaida packet switching network on the existing circuit switched GSM network. GPRS could transmitdata at up to 160 Kbps The phase after GPRS is called Enhanced DataRates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). It introduced 8 PSK modulation and could deliver data atup to 500 Kbps using the same GPRS infrastructure. During this time the internet was becomingpopular and data services were becoming more prevalent. Post 2.5G, Multimedia servicesand streaming started growing and Phones now started supporting web browsing.Development of 3G, 3GPP UMTS, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System succeeded EDGE in 1999.This system uses Wideband CDMA ( W-CDMA) to carry theradio transmissions, and often the system is referred to by the name WCDMA. Now before we go further let us understandhow the governing bodies were developed. In the interests of producing truly globalstandards, the collaboration for both GSM and UMTS was expanded further from ETSI toencompass regional Standards Development Organizations such as ARIB and TTC from Japan, TTA fromKorea, ATIS from North America and CCSA from ChinaThe successful creation of such a large and complex system specification required a well-structuredorganization. This gave birth to 3GPP and which worked under the observation of ITU-R.ITU-R is one of the sector of ITU, Its role is to manage the international radio-frequencyspectrum and to ensure the effective use of spectrum. ITU-R defines technology familiesand associates specific parts of the spectrum with these families. ITU-R also proposed requirementfor radio technology. 

                3 organization started developing standardsto meet the requirements proposed by ITU-R. 3GPP, 3GPP2, IEEEEvolution of 3gpp, started from GSM to Long term evolution Advanced.Evolution of 3GPP2, started from IS95 to CDMA Revision B.Evolution of IEEE started from 802.16 Fixed Wimax, to 8o2.16M Since 3GPP was dominated and widely accepted,we will only incorporated roadmap evolved by 3GPP. Now coming back to 3rd Generation.The goal of UMTS or 3G wireless systems was to provide a minimum data rate of 2 Mbit/sfor stationary or walking users, and 384 kbit/s in a moving vehicle. 3GPP designated it asRelease 99. The upgrades and additional facilities wereintroduced at successive releases of the 3GPP standard.Release 4: This release of the 3GPP standard provided for the efficient use of IP, thiswas a key enabler for 3G HSDPA. Release 5: This release included the coreof HSDPA. It provided reduced delays for downlink packet and provided a data rate of 14 Mbps.Release 6: This included the core of HSUPA with a reduction in uplink delay it enhanceduplink raw data rate of 5.74 Mbps. This release also included MBMS for broadcasting services.Release 7: This release of the 3GPP standard included downlink MIMO operation as well assupport for higher order modulation of up to 64-QAM. Either MIMO or 64-QAM could beused at a time.Evolved HSPA provides data rates up to 28 Mbit/s in the downlink and11 Mbit/s in the uplink. This brings us to the most awaited part. 4th generation System. Long term evolution (LTE) Initial goal of telecommunication was mobilityand global connectivity, but as the technology evolved the Services started expanding. NowServices were not restricted to Voice and SMS only. For This expansion and efficientexecution in LTE, whole new architecture was adopted for both non Radio part ( SAE SystemArchitecture Evolution) and Radio part using pure IP Architecture (packet switching) To fulfill the requirement proposed by ITU-R,Study group formed and LTE standardization began in 2004. Large number of telecom companiescollaborated to achieve their common vision. In June 2005 Release 8 was finally crystallizedafter series of refining. Some of the significant features of Release8 were- 

• reduced delays, for both connection establishmentand transmission latency; • increased user data throughput;• increased cell-edge bit-rate, for uniformity of service provision;• reduced cost per bit, implying improved spectral efficiency.• simplified network architecture; • seamless mobility, including between differentradio-access technologies; • reasonable power consumption for the mobileterminal. These requirements were fulfilled by advancementin the underlying mobile radio technology. The three fundamental technologies that haveshaped the LTE radio interface design were: multicarrier technology, multiple-antennatechnology, and the application of packet-switching to the radio interface. As a result of intense activity by a largernumber of organisations, the specifications for the Release 8 was completed by December2007. The first commercial deployment took place by the end of 2009 in northern Europe. In The subsequent releases multiple servicessuch as Multi Cell HSDPA, HETNET, Coordinate Multipoint, Carrier Aggregation, Massive MIMOand many more were targeted for a rich customer experience. Now it's time to move from services to multiservicesapproach, in other word from LTE Advanced to next Generation communication system whichis 5th Generation. Features have been planned to be added inthe 5th Generation Or next generation systems are,Pervasive networks : where a user can concurrently be connected to several wireless access technologiesand seamlessly move between them. Group cooperative relay: This is a techniquethat is being considered to make the high data rates available over a wider area ofthe cell. Cognitive radio technology: it would enablethe user equipment / handset to look at the radio landscape in which it is located andchoose the optimum radio access network, modulation scheme and other parameters to configure itselfto gain the best connection and optimum performance. Smart antennas: Another major element of any5G cellular system will be that of smart antennas. Using these it will be possible to alter thebeam direction to enable more direct communications and limit interference and increase overallcell capacity. So friends, here we have covered history ofwireless communication starting from single channel based Push to Talk system to, multipleservices based purely advanced digital communication system.In the future videos we will start exploring fundamental of advanced communication whichwill help us to understand next generation system better . Don't forget to visit again. Well' met again with new topic.