Beyond 3rd Generation (B3G) - Step in to the Next Generation of Mobile Communication
1. Introduction
The usage of mobile telephony services offered by 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation systems has surpassed many people’s expectations. Mobile user expectations are continually increasing with regard to the variety of services and applications. User expectations are varying from simple voice-oriented calls to dynamic multimedia data services. In particular, users will expect more bandwidth consuming or high quality voice and data applications. These multimedia services, including e-mail, file transfers, messaging and distribution services are ranging from a non-real-time download to a real-time. In many countries, most notably in the Scandinavian region and
With the available information of the world population (1999-2006) and actual mobile users, researchers have estimated future mobile subscribers of B3G. The mobile users are increasing linearly (at approximately 30% – 35 %) every year and the population of the world is increasing every year (at approximately 20%-30%) [1, 3]
2. Overview
In recent years, we have seen the beginning of convergence between the telecommunications and Internet communities. The success of 2G mobile systems prompted the take up and development of 3G mobile systems. 3G mobile systems are designed to provide higher data rate services such as multimedia, videoconferencing, web browsing, e-mail, paging, fax, navigation maps [1, 2].
Prior to understand the concepts of B3G technologies, it is necessary to first learn the evolution of mobile communication standards.
2.1 Evolution of
Communication Standards
- 1st Generation: 1G devices were in the market in early 1980s. The only concern of 1G devices were voice transmission. Almost all of the devices of this generation used analog technologies. These systems were not secure and could often be listened by third parties (eavesdropping). 1G devices were not highly popular as they were only able to provide relatively low quality voice services with limited capacity.
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2nd Generation: 2G devices were popular in early 1990s. The 2G networks hanged on to the cellular structure of the original networks but dramatically improved on the quality of communication by using digital circuit switching technology rather than analog. Text messaging came in to play. 2G facilities were cheaper compared to 1G and systems were easy to maintain. Those made a rapid growth in mobile communication industry. Some of the main standards used in both 2G and 2.5G were GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), HSCSD (High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data) etc. Because of the huge popularity of 2G services network traffic was increasing. So a solution was needed to overcome this matter. 3G was introduced with the intention of catering the growing demands in network capacity, providing rates required for high speed data transfer and multimedia applications. Standards like EDGE (Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution), EGPRS were introduced in order to transit from 2G to 3G..
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3rd Generation (3G): Mobile internet became more popular among mobile users. It made a heavy traffic on networks. In order to cater the growing demands in network capacity, rates were required for high speed data transfer. 3G standards started evolving as a solution. High speed connections of 144Kbps to 2Mbps allow for global roaming and video transmissions. The goal of 3G was to give wireless phones the same functionalities as a telephone, TV, and PC. Some standards used are W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) etc.
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What’s next? Beyond 3G (B3G)/4th Generation (4G): Beyond 3G is the official IEEE designation for the next stage of wireless technology that some people call 4G or fourth-generation radio [7]. Research groups that are working on 4G, predicts that the infrastructure and the terminals of 4G will have almost all the standards from 2G to 4G deployed
Although legacy systems are in place to adopt existing users, the infrastructure for 4G will be all IP based. The technologies which are being considered as pre-4G are the following, WiMax, WiBro, iBurst, 3GPP Long Term Evolution and 3GPP2 Ultra Mobile Broadband. Figure 2 shows how data transmission rates have changed with the Mobile Evolution.
2.2 Requirements to be fulfilled in order to step on to B3G technologies
- Improve the system capacity for each base station by reducing interference using adaptive array antennas and interference cancellers,
- Improve the transmission rate per bandwidth by implementing high-efficiency adaptive modulation and antenna signal processing techniques,
- Appreciate low-delay and highly reliable radio transmission using error control techniques,
- Flexible allocation of radio resources depending on the required transmission rates and communication quality,
- Ability to support a maximum terminal movement speed of more than 100 kmph.
The research community is considering what form the next (4th) generation of fixed and mobile communications systems will take. A popular view in the telecommunications industry is that the 4th generation should evolve naturally from 2nd and 3rd with incremental improvements being brought about without any fundamental architectural changes being necessary. Another view is that it will be totally IP based.
An all IP-based 4G wireless network has intrinsic advantages over its predecessors. IP is compatible with, and independent of, the actual radio access technology.
"IP tolerates a variety of radio protocols. It lets you design a core network that gives you complete flexibility as to what the access network is.” The core (IP) network can evolve independently from the access network. That's the key for using all IP [1].
A 4G IP wireless network will enjoy a financial advantage over 3G as well. According to internet sources 4G equipments cost are four to ten times cheaper than equivalent circuit-switched equipment for 2G and 3G wireless infrastructures. An open system IP wireless environment would probably further reduces costs for service providers by ushering in an aera of real equipment interoperability. Wireless service providers would no longer be bound by single system vendors of proprietary equipment.
B3G mobile communication systems are expected to realize interconnection between different access networks, and the handsets are required to support multiple radio accesses capable of connecting with multiple networks. Single, dual mode terminals compatible with both cellular networks and WLAN have been introduced recently. The total required bandwidth for the 2G, 3G and B3G mobile communications systems can be combined and is expected in the range of GHz. So allocation of appropriate frequency bands is considered as a possible issue towards a working model for B3G.
3. Major Researches in B3G
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The Japanese company ‘NTT DoCoMo’ has been testing a 4G communication system prototype with data transmission rates of 100 Mbit/s while moving, and 1 Gbit/s while stationary. NTT DoCoMo is planning on releasing the first commercial network in around 2010.
- The NTRG 4th Generation Testbed: At Trinity College, Dublin, the Networks and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG) has been investigating the form of 4th generation mobile systems since 1998.
- ‘Sprint’ has announced WiMax service called Xohm. Tested in Chicago, this speed was clocked at 100 Mbit/s.
- Verizon Wireless announced on September 20, 2007 that it plans a joint effort with the Vodafone Group to transition its networks to the 4G standard LTE. The time of this transition has yet to be announced.
4. Service Vision of B3G
No matter what the infrastructure is, no matter what are behind the scene, how the consumers going to feel B3G is, through the services provided by the respective companies. And there are user expectations for B3G (4G) technologies as well(Figure 3).So when talking about B3G it’s really important to take a look at the service vision of B3G mobile communication.
Figure 3: GPRS, EDGE and 3G Mobile Phone Subscribers Worldwide [3]
4.1 Concerns when migrating from 3G to B3G
In the process of a system migrating from existing 3G to B3G it is required to take into consideration the convenience of users, such
Figure 4: Users’ expectations for 4G mobile systems [4]
The B3G mobile systems require new radio systems in comparison to 3G. During the transition stage from 3G to B3G, both mobile communications might share roles to provide different services, with 3G providing voice calls and e-mail and B3G used for downloading and multimedia communications at broadband capabilities. Alternatively, 3G and B3G may split roles according to the service area. B3G mobile communications are required to provide the flexibility to accommodate different services and cover various service areas. B3G system can be installed at low costs to provide seamless services by enabling handover between different environments, and to realize maximum throughputs according to each environment.
4.2 Service Objectives
The basic service objectives in 4G are higher data rate and service convergence. Other than these two fundamental objectives there are some other 4G service objectives as well. They can be categorized into three kinds.
1. Bearer-related
– Support of high data rate needs of portable computing users
– Flexible allocation of required system capacity
– Support of enhanced multimedia communications requirements
– Provision of Quality of Service for real time services.
2.Service-related
– Support terminal and personal mobility
– Usability on variable environments (high/low tier movement, indoor, satellite, etc.)
– Global roaming and hand-over support to other different systems
3. Other
– Support of many forms of user access devices (e.g. phones, PDAs, PCs, hybrids) and advanced user applications in such devices (gaming, entertainment, etc.)
– Robustness of network entities and terminals
– Ease of access to applications and services
– Support for advanced security features management and performance features (e.g. validation and authentication etc.)
4.3 Service Personalisation
One of the major trends in the current information society is personalisation. Personalisation is the concept of adapting (mobile) services to the context, such as user preferences, user location, network and terminal capabilities.
Personalisation is considered as being the key factor for success of mobile devices and services. Information and services become increasingly tailored to individual user preferences and characteristics. The primary goal behind this kind of personalisation is to make usage easier and the view of these information services more pleasant to users, and to enable personalised filtering of the enormous amount of available data. Another goal of personalisation, in a more commercial context, is to increase the perceived value of offered services.
4.4 Market Trends and Predictions
Current mobile market has been highly competitive and it’s not going to be anyway reduced. When we are going beyond 3rd generation i.e. to 4th generation, companies&organizations that competed in different markets are coming in to one battlefield.
In 3G scenario, mobile handsets manufacturers like Nokia had to battle with other handset manufacturers and mobile service providers such as Vodafone to gain more. But in
4G it’s going to be different. The battle is going to be between Mobile players& Internet players. Currently giants like Apple Inc, Google have entered in to the mobile market. Nokia is expanding its wings towards service sector (ex: ‘Nokia Ovi’). And mobile service providing companies have entered into mobile manufacturing (ex: - Vodafone with Huawei).
5. Applications of B3G
There are some candidate killer applications that will make use of advantages of 4G such as rich call, Multimedia messaging and instant messaging, Internet infotainment, Games, and location based services. This expectation on killer applications can be seen mainly based on today’s mobile telecommunication and Internet market and technology understandings. Voice call will still remain as a major application with rich media. Following short message service, which is the best selling mobile data service today, multimedia message service and instant message service will position as killer applications. Internet information and entertainment and game will success its business as they force success of fixed Internet.
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Applications |
Examples |
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Communication |
Call, chatting, messaging, internet access, etc. |
|
Mobility/ Traffic |
Locationing, path search, map, navigation, etc. |
|
Business/ Commerce |
Banking, financing, shopping, etc. |
|
Entertainment |
Broadcasting, sports, game, etc. |
|
Telemedicine/ Health |
Patient’s medical consult& treatment, health&disease, etc. |
|
Emergency/ Disaster |
Disaster location, first-aid, etc. |
|
News/ Weather/ Public |
News, weather, poll, vote, etc. |
|
Life |
Organizer, home, learning, etc. |
|
Table 1:B3G Application categories[8] |
|
6. Future directions
A number of research and development activities are being conducted by related international organizations or research centres to take the initiative for B3G mobile communications. Companies such as Flarion, Arraycom, Nokia, Lucent, Marconi, Samsung, Qualcomm, Motorola, and Ericsson are competing for the leadership in the standardization of B3G. However, till today there is no clear definition of B3G or 4G [3].
Table 2 shows some of the issues related to researches on B3G.
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I. High speed and large-capacity wireless transmission technologies |
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II. Network constructional technologies |
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III. High performance and advanced function terminal technologies |
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IV. Mobile system technologies |
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Table 2 : Major Research Issues[4] |
Mobile service providers are banking that the B3G/4G services will become widely popular among mobile users (Figure 4).
The world is going to experience the wonders of the next generation soon. It will change the human life style, and take the human life status to a higher place. How it is going to happen, we will have to wait and see.
Are you ready?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G
http://www.mobileinfo.com/3G/4GVision&Technologies.htm
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