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Wired communication started with the first commercial telegraph line between
Washington and Baltimore in 1843, and Alexander Graham Bell’s invention and
marketing of the telephone in 1876 (others tried marketing before but did not succeed,
e.g., Philip Reis, 1834-1874, discovered the telephone principle in 1861).
In Berlin, a public telephone service was available in 1881, the first regular public
voice and video service (multimedia) was available in 1936 between Berlin and
Leipzig.
The first radio broadcast took place in 1906 when Reginald A. Fessenden (1866-
1932) transmitted voice and music for Christmas. In 1915, the first wireless voice
transmission was set up between New York and San Francisco. The first commercial
radio station started in 1920.
In 1981, the northern European countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden
agreed upon the Nordic mobile telephone (NMT) system. The analogue NMT uses a
450 MHz carrier.
In 1983, the US system advanced mobile phone system (AMPS) started. AMPS are
an analog mobile phone system working at 850 MHz.
Telephones at homes went wireless with the standard CT1 (cordless telephone) in
1984 (following its predecessor the CT0 from 1980).
In 1991, ETSI adopted the standard digital European cordless telephone (DECT)
for digital cordless telephony. DECT works at a spectrum of 1880-1900 MHz with a
range of 100-500 m.120 duplex channels can carry up to 1.2 Mbit/s for data
transmission.
Finally in 1991,GSM came, that works at 900 MHz and uses 124 full-duplex
channels.GSM offers full international roaming, automatic location services,
authentication, encryption on the wireless link, efficient interoperation with ISDN
systems, and a relatively high audio quality. Its data rate is 9.6 kbit/s. Up to now; over
Then, IEEE published 802.11b offering 11 Mbit/s at 2.4 GHz. The same spectrum is
used by Bluetooth, a short-range technology to set-up wireless personal area networks
with gross data rates less than 1 Mbit/s.
The wireless application protocol (WAP) started at the same time as i-mode in Japan.
The year 2000, came with higher data rates and packet-oriented transmission for
GSM.
Most of the hype is over, but the third generation of mobile communication started in
2001 in Japan with the FOMA service, in Europe with several field trials. In e.g.,
Korea with cdma2000.
IEEE released a new WLAN standard, 802.11a; operating at 5 GHz and offering
gross data rates of 54 Mbit/s. This standards uses the same physical layer as
HiperLAN2.
Each mobile uses a separate, temporary radio channel to talk to the cell site. The cell
site talks to many mobiles at once, using one channel per mobile.
Radio energy dissipates over distance, so mobiles must stay near the base station to
maintain communications. The basic structure of mobile networks includes telephone
systems and radio services.
The mobile radio service operates in a closed network and hence has no access to the
telephone system. The mobile telephone service on the other hand allows
interconnection to the telephone network.
0G:
PTT
MTS
IMTS
AMTS
0.5G
Autotel/PALM
ARP
1G
NMT
AMPS
Hicap
CDPD
Mobitex
DataTAC
2G
GSM
iDEN
D-AMPS
IS-95/CDMAONE
PDC
CSD
PHS
2.5G
GPRS
HSCSD
2.75G
CDMA,2000 IXRTT/IS-2000
EDGE
3G
W-CDMA
UMTS
FOMA
IXEV-DO/IS-856
TD-SCDMA
GAN/UMA
3.5G
HSDPA
3.75G
HSUPA
4G
Frequency bands
SMR
Cellular
PCS
1.3.1 1 G
It is the first generation wireless telephone technology, cellphones. These are analog
cellphone standards introduced in 80’s and were later replaced by 2G digital
cellphones.
Radio signals used by 1G networks are analog and 2G is digital. But, both systems
use digital signaling to connect the radio towers to the rest of the telephone system.
But the call itself is encoded to digital signals in 2G whereas; 1G is only modulated to
high frequency. One such standard is NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) used in
Nordic countries, Eastern Europe and Russia.
Others include AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) used in US. TACS (Total
Access Communication System) in UK, C-450 in West Germany, Portugal and South
Africa, Radiocom2000 in France and RTMI in Italy.
2G Standards
2G technologies are of two types: TDMA based and CDMA based, depending on the
type of multiplexing used.
1.3.3 2.5G
The second and a half generation is a stepping stone between 2G and 3G cellular
wireless technologies. It has implemented a packet switched domain in addition to the
circuit switched domain.
It does not necessarily provide faster services (HSCSD) as well. 2.5G was invented
only for marketing purpose and is not officially defined as 2G and 3G, 2.5G provides
some benefits of 3G (e.g., it is packet switched) and can use some of the existing 2G
infrastructure in GSM and CDMA networks.
GPRS is 2.5 technology used by GSM operators. Some protocols, such as EDGE for
GSM and CDMA-2000 IXRTT for CDMA, can qualify as 3G, because of data rate
above 144 kbps; but are considered by most to be 2.5G or 2.75G, as they are many
times slower than true 3G services.
1.3.4 3G
It is the third generation technology with ability to transfer both voice and non-voice
data. It was introduced on a large commercial scale in Japan.
In marketing 3G services, video telephony has often used as the flag ship killer
application for 3G. But, real life usage of video telephony on 3G network is only a
very small fraction of all services.
Downloading of music finds very strong demand by customers. 3G networks are not
IEEE 802.11 networks. IEEE 802.11 networks are short range, primarily internet
access networks, while 3G wireless networks are the evolution of wide area cellular
telephone networks which hope to incorporate high speed internet access and video
telephony to these networks.
This wireless access technology is the fourth generation successor of 3G. The IEEE
official name for 4G is “3G and beyond”.
Ideally, 4G would provide users with on demand high quality video and audio. Video
is one of the big differences between 4G and 3G. 4G may use OFDM (Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing), and also OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiple Access) to better allocate network resources to multiple users.
4G devices may use SDR (Software Defined Radio) receivers, which allow for better
use of available bandwidth as well as making use of multiple channels
simultaneously.
Unlike 3G networks, which are a jumble of circuit and packet switched networks, 4G
will be based on packet switching only. This will allow low-latency data transmission.
Multiple access schemes are used to allow many mobile users to share simultaneously a finite
amount of radio spectrum. The sharing of spectrum is required to achieve high capacity by
simultaneously allocating the available bandwidth (or the available amount channels) to
multiple users. For high quality communication, this must be done without severe
degradation in the performance of the system.
Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) controls the radiated energy for each user in
space. It serves different users by using spot beam antennas.
These different areas covered by the antenna beam may be served by the same
frequency (in a TDMA or CDMA system) or different frequencies (in an FDMA
system).
The reverse link presents the most difficulty in cellular systems for several reasons.
First; the base station has complete control over the power of all the transmitted
signals on the forward link.
MS
MS
MS
Figure: 1.1 Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) by using filtered base station.
However, because of different radio propagation path between each user and the base
station, the transmitted power from each subscriber unit must be dynamically
controlled to prevent any single user from driving up the interference level for all
other users.
If the base station antenna is made to spatially filter each desired user so that more
energy is detected from each subscriber, then the reverse link for each user is
improved and less power is required.
Adaptive antenna used at the base station promise to mitigate some of the problems
on the reverse link.
In the limiting case of infinitesimal beam width and infinitely fast tracking ability,
adaptive antennas implement optimal SDMA, thereby providing a unique channel that
is free from the interference of all other users in the cell.
With SDMA, all users within the system would be able to communicate at the same
time using the same channel.
These channels are assigned on demand to users who request service. During the
period of the call, no other user can share the same channel.
In FDD systems, the users are assigned a channel as a pair of frequencies; one
frequency is used for the forward channel, while the other frequency is used for the
reverse channel.
Code
Frequency
F1 F2 - - - - - - - FN
Time
Figure: 1.2 FDMA where different channels are assigned different frequency bands.
If an FDMA channel is not in use, then it sits idle and cannot be used by other users to
increase or share capacity. It is essentially a wasted resource.
After the assignment of a voice channel, the base station and the mobile transmit
simultaneously and continuously.
The bandwidths of FDMA channels are relatively narrow (30 kHz in AMPS) as each
channel supports only one circuit per carrier. That is, FDMA is usually implemented in
narrowband systems.
The symbol time of a narrowband signal is large as compared to the average delay
spread. This implies that the amount of inter-symbol interference is low and, thus little
or no equalization is required in FDMA narrowband systems.
Since FDMA is a continuous transmission scheme, fewer bits are needed for overhead
purposes (such as synchronization and framing bits) as compared to TDMA.
FDMA systems have higher cell site system cost as compared to TDMA systems,
because of the single channel per carrier design, and the need to use costly bandpass
filters to eliminate spurious radiation at the base station.
The FDMA mobile unit uses duplexers since both the transmitter and receiver operate
at same time. This results in an increase in the cost of FDMA subscriber units and base
stations
Disadvantages of FDMA
In a FDMA system, many channels share the same antenna at the base station. The
power amplifiers or the power combiners, when operated at or near saturation for
maximum power efficiency, are nonlinear.
The nonlinearities causes signal spreading in the frequency domain and generate inter-
modulation (IM) frequencies.IM are undesired RF radiation which can interfere with
other channels in the FDMA systems.
Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems divide the radio spectrum into time
slots and in each slot only one user as allowed either transmit or receive.
It can be seen from figure that each user occupies a cyclically repeating time slot, so a
channel may be thought of as a particular time slot that reoccurs every frame, where N
time slots comprise a frame.
TDMA systems transmit data in a buffer and burst method, thus the transmission for
any user is non-continuous. This implies that, unlike in FDMA systems which
accommodate analog FM, digital data and digital modulation must be used with
TDMA.
FN
-
-
- Frequency
F1
Time
Figure: 1.3 TDMA schemes where each channel occupies a cyclically repeating time slot.
TDMA shares a single carrier frequency with several users, where each user makes use
of non-overlapping time slots. The number of time slots per frame depends on several
factors, such as modulation technique, available bandwidth, etc.
Data transmission for users of a TDMA system is not continuous, but occurs in burst.
This results in low battery consumption, since the subscriber transmitter can be turned
off when not in use.
TDMA uses different time slots for transmission and reception, thus duplexers are not
required. Even if FDD is used, a switch rather than a duplexer inside the subscriber unit
is all that is required to switch between transmitter and receiver using TDMA.
In TDMA, the guard time should be minimized. If the transmitted signals at the edges
of a time slot are suppressed sharply in order to shorten the guard time, the transmitted
spectrum will expand and cause interference to adjacent channels.
In Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, the narrowband message signal
is multiplied by a very large bandwidth signal called the spreading signal. The
spreading signal is a pseudo-noise code sequence that has a chip rate which is order of
magnitude greater than the data rate of the message.
All users in a CDMA system use the same carrier frequency and may transmit
simultaneously. Each user has its own pseudorandom codeword which is
approximately orthogonal to all other codeword.
The receiver performs a time correlation operation to detect only the specific desired
codeword. All others codeword appear as noise due to decorrelation.
For detection of the message signal, the receiver needs to know the codeword used by
the transmitter. Each user operates independently with no knowledge of the other
users.
In CDMA, the power of multiple users at a receiver determines the noise floor after
decorelation. If the power of each user within a cell is not controlled such that they do
not appear equal at the base station receiver, then the near-far problems occur.
Code
Channel 1
-
-
- Frequency
-
-
-
-
Channel N
Time
Figure: 1.4 CDMA scheme.
Many users of a CDMA system share the same frequency. Either TDD or FDD may be
used.
Unlike TDMA or FDMA, CDMA has a soft capacity limit. Increasing the number of
users in a CDMA system raises the noise floor in a linear manner.
Multipath fading may be substantially reduced because the signal is spread over a large
spectrum.
Channel data rates are very high in CDMA systems. Consequently, the symbol duration
is very short and usually much less than the channel delay spread.
CDMA uses co-channel cells; it can use macroscopic spatial diversity to provide soft
handoff. Soft handoff is performed by the MSC, which can simultaneously monitor a
particular user from two or more base stations.
Self-jamming is a problem in CDMA system. Self jamming arises from the fact that the
spreading sequences of different users are not exactly orthogonal.
The near-far problem occurs at a CDMA receiver if an undesired user has a high
detected power as compared to the desired user.
a) A mobile unit
b) A cell site
c) A mobile telephone switching office(MTSO)
a) Mobile units:
A mobile telephone unit contains a control unit, a transceiver, and an antenna system.
b) Cell site:
The cell site provides interface between the MTSO and the mobile units. It has a control
unit, radio cabinets, antennas, a power plant, and data terminals.
The switching office, the central coordinating element for all cell sites, contains the
cellular processor and cellular switch. It interfaces with telephony company zone offices,
control call processing, and handles billing activities.
The radio and-speed data links connect the three subsystems. Each mobile unit can only use
one channel at a time for its communication links. But the channel is not fixed; it can be any
one in the entire band assigned by the serving area, with each site having multichannel
capabilities that can connect simultaneously too many mobile units.
Voice circuits
MS Voice link
Data link
Cell 1 Cell 2
The MTSO is the heart of the cellular mobile system. Its processor provides central
coordination and cellular administration.
The cellular switch, which can be either analog or digital, switches calls to connect
mobile subscribers to other mobile subscribers and to the nationwide telephone
network.
It uses voice trunks similar to telephone company interoffice voice trunks. It also
contains data links providing supervision links between the processor and the switch
and between the cell sites and the processor.
The radio link carries the voice and signaling between the mobile unit and the cell
site. The high-speed data links cannot be transmitted over the standard telephone
trunks.
And therefore must use either microwave links or T-carriers. Microwave radio links
or T-carriers carry both voice and data between the cell site and the MTSO.
1) Voice quality
Voice quality is very hard to judge without subjective tests from users opinions. In
this technical area engineers cannot decide how to build a system without knowing
the voice quality that will satisfy the users.
In military communications, the situation differs: armed forces personnel must use the
assigned equipment.
For any given commercial communications system, the voice quality will be based
upon the following criterion: a set value x at which y percent of customers rate the
system voice quality (from transmitter to receiver) as good or excellent, the top two
circuit merits(CM) of the five listed below:
As the percentage of customers choosing CM4 and CM5 increases, the cost of
building the system rises.
The average of the CM scores obtained from all the listeners is called mean opinion
score (MOS).Usually the toll-quality voice is around MOS>=4.
2) Service quality
i. Coverage:
The system should serve an area as large as possible. With radio coverage, however,
because of irregular terrain configurations, it is usually not practical to cover 100 percent
of the area.
Therefore, systems usually try to cover 90 percent of an area in flat terrain and 75
percent of an area in hilly terrain. The combined voice quality and coverage criteria in
AMPS cellular systems state that 75 percent of users rate the voice quality between good
and excellent in 90 percent of the served area, which is generally flat terrain. The voice
quality and coverage criteria would be adjusted as per decided various terrain conditions.
For a normal start-up system the grade of service is specified for a blocking probability
of 0.02 for initiating calls at the busy hour. This is an average value.
However, the blocking probability at each cell site will be different. At the busy hour,
near freeways, automobile traffic is usually heavy.
So the blocking probability at certain cell sites may be higher than 2 percent, especially
when car accidents occur. To decrease the blocking probability requires a good system
plan and a sufficient number of radio channels.
During Q calls in an hour, if a call is dropped and Q-1 calls are completed, then the call
drop rate is 1/Q.
This drop rate must be kept low .A high drop rate could be caused by either coverage
problems or handoff problems related to in adequate channel availability.
3) Special features
A system would like to provide as many special features as possible, such as call forwarding,
call waiting, voice stored (VSR) box, automatic roaming, or navigation services. However
and sometimes the customers may not be willing to pay extra charges for these special
services.
The shape of cells are never perfect circles or hexagons, but depend on the
environment (buildings, mountains, valley etc.), on weather conditions, and
sometimes even on system load.
Typical systems using this approach are mobile telecommunication systems, where a
mobile station within the cell around a base station communicates with this base
station and vice versa.
1.7 Advantages of cellular systems with small cells are the following:
1) Higher capacity:
Huge cells do not allow for more users. On the contrary, they are limited to less
possible users per square km. this is also the reason for using very small cells in cities
where many more people use mobile phones.
While power aspects are not a big problem for base stations, they are indeed
problematic for mobile stations. A receiver far away from a base station would need
much more transmit power than the current few watts. But energy is a serious
problem for mobile handheld devices.
Having long distances between sender and receiver results in even more interference
problems. With small cells, mobile stations and base stations only have to deal with
local interference.
4) Robustness:
Cellular systems are decentralized and so, more robust against the failure of single
components. If one antenna fails, this only influences communication within a small
area.
Cellular systems need a complex infrastructure to connect all base stations. This
includes many antennas, switches for call forwarding, location registers to find a
mobile station etc, which makes the whole system quite expensive.
2) Handover needed:
The mobile station has to perform a handover when changing from one cell to
another. Depending on the cell size and the speed of movement, this can happen quite
often.
3) Frequency planning: