INVITED PAPER

IETE Technical Review
Vol 23, No 4, July-August 2006, pp 253-265

Fourth Generation (4g) Networks:
Roadmap- Migration to the Future

SAYAN KUMAR RAY

Department of Computer science & engineering, Heritage Institute of technology
Kolkata 700107, India.
email: raysk@rediffmail.com

and

ITI SAHA MISTA

ETCE Department, Jadavpur university, Kolkata 700 032, India.
email: itimisra@cal.vsnl.net.in

The mobile communication generations has traversed a long way through different phases of evolution since its birth early in the 1970s. the steady global boom in the number of mobile users each year has periodically spurned the development of more and more sophisticated technologies trying to strike the right chord primarily in terms of provision of seamless global roaming, quality services and
high data rate. today numerous different generation technologies with their individual pros and cons are existing globally. the coming era of 4g systems is foreseeing a potential smooth merger of all these heterogeneous technologies with a natural progression to support seamless cost-effective high data rate global roaming, efficient personalized services, typical user-centric integrated service model, high Qos and overall stable system performance. However, every step in such technological advancements presents huge research challenges. this article aims to focus upon some of these potential challenges along with different proposed feasible and non-feasible solutions in the areas of mobile terminals and users, mobile services, mobile and wireless access networks, and communication, in order to give an indepth view of the next-generation communication systems.

1.INTRODUCTION

IMAGINE a situation where while traveling in a vehicle in a large metropolis with a small handheld wireless device, a person can seamlessly visualize the entire environment ahead (like buildings, streets, highways, and shopping malls) and, at the same time can track other vehicles that may come in his way to avoid any accidents. Era of next generation of intelligent wireless systems ahead, effectively termed as 4G, is slowly taking shape to make such highly intelligent, user-focused personalized service like virtual navigation a reality. Different industry and research organizations worldwide like NTT DoCoMo, QualComm, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Alcatel, WWRF, ITU, IEEE, Mobile VCE and 4GW-PCC, to name a few, are all set to make 4G wireless systems hit the commercial market by 2010.

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Paper No 36-C; Copyright © 2006 by the IETE..

 

Network systems evolution starting way back at 1970 when the design of the analog-voice-oriented First Generation (1G) systems began. The transition to digital voice and data-oriented Second Generation (2G) systems in 1991 marked the beginning of a multi-service platform from the previous mono-service era. Low bit-rate data and mono-media systems like GSM, cdmaOne, IS-95 and TDMA are still existing in multiple global locations. The 2.5G systems (like GPRS), an interim step between 2G and 3G, provided enhanced channel capacity, higher data rate and throughput and optimized packet-data transmission enhancing Internet access from different wireless devices. The commercialized transition to 3G systems in 2002 marked the beginning of a truly multimedia era [1] where more person-to-machine interactions than person-to-person interactions are prevalent. Core packet networked systems like cdma2000 and WCDMA provide higher channel capacity, broadband data up to 2 Mbps, high speed multimedia transmission and global roaming across a cellular network.

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