Vijay K. Garg
The cellular system employs a different design approach than most commercial radio and television systems use [1,2]. Radio and television systems typically operate at maximum power and with the tallest antennas allowed by the regulatory agency of the country. In the cellular system, the service area is divided into cells. A transmitter is designed to serve an individual cell. The system seeks to make effi cient use of available channels by using low-power transmitters to allow frequency reuse at much smaller distances. Maximizing the number of times each channel can be reused in a given geographic area is the key to an effi cient cellular system design.
During the past three decades, the world has seen signifi cant changes in the telecommunications industry. There have been some remarkable aspects to the rapid growth in wireless communications, as seen by the large expansion in mobile systems. Wireless systems consist of wireless wide-area networks (WWAN) [i.e., cellular systems], wireless local area networks (WLAN) [4], and wireless personal area networks (WPAN) (see Figure 1.1) [17]. The handsets used in all of these systems possess complex functionality, yet they have become small, lowpower consuming devices that are mass produced at a low cost, which has in turn accelerated their widespread use. The recent advancements in Internet technology have increased network traffi c considerably, resulting in a rapid growth of data rates. This phenomenon has also had an impact on mobile systems, resulting in the extraordinary growth of the mobile Internet.
Wireless data offerings are now evolving to suit consumers due to the simple reason that the Internet has become an everyday tool and users demand data mobility. Currently, wireless data represents about 15 to 20% of all air time. While success has been concentrated in vertical markets such as public safety, health care, and transportation, the horizontal market (i.e., consumers) for wireless data is growing. In 2005, more than 20 million people were using wireless e-mail. The Internet has changed user expectations of what data access means. The ability to retrieve information via the Internet has been “an amplifi er of demand” for wireless
data applications.
More than three-fourths of Internet users are also wireless users and a mobile subscriber is four times more likely to use the Internet than a nonsubscriber to mobile services. Such keen interest in both industries is prompting user demand for converged services. With more than a billion Internet users expected by 2008, the potential market for Internet-related wireless data services is quite large.
In this chapter, we discuss briefl y 1G, 2G, 2.5G, and 3G cellular systems and outline the ongoing standard activities in Europe, North America, and Japan.
We also introduce broadband (4G) systems (see Figure 1.2) aimed on integrating WWAN, WLAN, and WPAN. Details of WWAN, WLAN, and WPAN are given in Chapters 15 to 20.
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