This document provides an overview of emerging communication technologies. It discusses how technologies evolve from military and research applications into commercial uses. Key areas that have transformed the industry include digital communication, wireless technology, broadband access, and the Internet. The document examines the historical development and adoption of these technologies, noting that while some emerge successfully, many others fail due to issues like cost, reliability or being superseded by newer innovations. The purpose is to help readers understand technology trends and evaluate which emerging technologies may succeed in the future.
This document provides an overview of emerging communication technologies. It discusses how technologies evolve from military and research applications into commercial uses. Key areas that have transformed the industry include digital communication, wireless technology, broadband access, and the Internet. The document examines the historical development and adoption of these technologies, noting that while some emerge successfully, many others fail due to issues like cost, reliability or being superseded by newer innovations. The purpose is to help readers understand technology trends and evaluate which emerging technologies may succeed in the future.
This document provides an overview of emerging communication technologies. It discusses how technologies evolve from military and research applications into commercial uses. Key areas that have transformed the industry include digital communication, wireless technology, broadband access, and the Internet. The document examines the historical development and adoption of these technologies, noting that while some emerge successfully, many others fail due to issues like cost, reliability or being superseded by newer innovations. The purpose is to help readers understand technology trends and evaluate which emerging technologies may succeed in the future.
In this introductory topic, we examine the present state of technology deployed
to support a range of communication services. The topic begins by considering just what makes a technology, and then by taking an historical perspective to examine some aspects of the evolution of communication technology over recent years. Key developments are highlighted, with a special emphasis on relating developments in computer technology to those in communications technology.
Broadband technology, wireless data communications and the Internet are then identified as the three key areas of development in the immediate future, and each of these areas is introduced in turn. These topics comprise a broad overview of the areas this course will later cover in much more detail. The purpose here is to give you a general map of the field, which should help you keep the big picture in mind throughout the course as you evaluate specific technologies in more detail.
Finally, a short topic on the convergence of communications technologies completes your overview of the course. T T o o p p i i c c 1 1 OBJECTIVE At the end of Topic 1, you should be able to: 1. Describe the present state of technology in the communications industry. 2. Discuss the limitations of existing technologies and the demand for new technologies. 3. Summarize recent developments in the areas of broadband, wireless data communications, and the Internet. X Introduction X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 2 Throughout this topic and the topics that follow, you will find that you need to do a lot of reading from a wide variety of sources. You may be more accustomed to some of the other courses in the communications technology degree stream that are wrapped around one or two textbooks. Here you will find that no one textbook exists that can cover the exciting and diverse areas this course will address. This means you will need to concentrate on reading critically, evaluating the materials you encounter, and considering their currency, relevance, and reliability. You will be guided throughout the course in making the most of what you read, and in acquiring and practising these critical skills.
Most of the readings you will need for this topic are included as hard copies in your course materials. For some readings and activities, however, you will find that you need to access the Internet, so you should look ahead in the topic to see when such access will be needed as you are planning your study.
Good luck as you begin your study! X INTRODUCTION We will begin with a brief discussion of the relationship between systems, products and technologies. We then examine the historical development of communication systems. From this we identify a number of important technologies that have revolutionized the industry: broadband technology, wireless technology and the Internet. These three technologies represent the most important areas of development in the near future. SYSTEMS, PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGIES As you know, a typical communication system is made up of many products, and a product is typically a combination of hardware, software, and services. In most cases, a number of different technologies go into the development of a product.
By emerging technology, however, we mean a technology that has an innovative element and may have a profound impact on the industry. Yet it is important to realize that of all the innovative technologies that have emerged in the past, very few of them have made it to success. Some will be quickly superseded by another emerging technology. Others may not even make it to the market because of their high cost or unreliability or any of a number of other reasons.
TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 3 An example of a successful technology that has emerged in recent years is GSM. CT-2 provides a good example of a technology that did make it to the market but was very short-lived. At the unsuccessful end of the spectrum is an example of an innovative technology that did not make it to the market place: the circular wave-guide. You are probably familiar with the former two examples. As for the circular wave-guide, it promised a lot of advantages, but it was superseded by fibre optics, and is now an obscure footnote in communications technology history.
When a new product emerges, therefore, we very often associate it with a certain key technology that has made it possible. For example, when a digital mobile telephone network was introduced, , we associated the new digital mobile handset with GSM technology. GSM was considered to be innovative and an emerging technology at the time. Nevertheless, you must understand that there were other equally important technologies that went into the making of such mobile handsets: li-ion technology for the handsets lightweight battery; smart card technology for the SIM card in the handset; encryption technology to ensure security; surface mount technology for the miniature circuit board; LCD technology for the display; and many others.
This topic will not attempt to identify every communication technology that has surfaced and even succeeded in the past. Instead, it will highlight several important technologies that have reshaped the communication industry. By looking into past technologies through the comfortable perspective of hindsight, we can analyse and identify the factors that led to the success or failure of some emerging technologies in the past. This will help you to scrutinize future emerging technologies so as to anticipate their chances of success. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES In the past, research and development of telecommunication was primarily driven by the military and space industries. Later on, many of these technologies found their way into civilian applications. For example, microwave technology was originally developed for radar used in World War II. Wireless communication was originally conceived for the battlefield. CDMA also has a military origin. Satellite communication is the direct result of developments in X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 4 space programmes, as well as defence industries. ARPANET, upon which the Internet was based, was developed for the US Department of Defense.
The end of the Cold War not only enabled some of the military technologies to be transferred to civilian use, but also forced technologists and companies to shift their focus to developing products for the civilian market. Thus in the 1980s and 1990s, the rapid technology progress in micro-electronics, computers and communications can be attributed in part to this shift in focus.
Traditionally, every communication system served a specific purpose and was built upon a dedicated infrastructure based on a certain transmission medium. Telephone was for distant verbal communication and was originally based on wireline communication, with long distance trunk circuits and local loops made up of copper cables. Television was broadcast as radio waves in free space or distributed through a network of cables. As technology progressed, new techniques were adopted in a communication infrastructure. New services and applications will continue to evolve. In the case of the telephone system, it now carries voice, fax and computer data. Television systems now carry video, high quality digital audio and data.
At this point we will take a closer look at several technologies that have made a big difference in recent years. Digital communication technology One of the most important developments in the past 30 years has been the changeover from analogue to digital representation of signals.
Telephone system designers were quick to adopt digital techniques for use in trunk circuits. Up to now, however, the basic subscriber loop is still analogue, even though the changeover to digital local loops is gradually taking place.
Lets put this situation into historical perspective. If you think about it, digital transmission was an emerging technology some 40 years ago. In the intervening years, it has indeed successfully replaced analogue transmission in one aspect of most telephone systems: telephone trunk circuits. On the other hand, it has been slow for over four decades in replacing analogue transmissions in the subscriber loop.
Thus you can see that an emerging technology can eventually be successful in one application, while it can also be a complete failure in another application, even if those applications are quite closely related, as is the case here. This is because apart from cost and technical merits, there are other factors which TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 5 determine whether an emerging technology can be applied to a product and make an impact on the industry.
The following activity encourages you to start thinking about what some of those factors might be. Optical communication technology Optical fibre has been another important technical development in the last 40 years. When optical fibre was conceived, it was competing with another emerging technology: the circular wave-guide. Both technologies offered wide- band capability. In the end, optical fibre was applied successfully to trunk circuits in telephone systems, while the circular wave-guide was a complete failure.
Why did this happen? The competition between optical fibre and the circular wave-guide hinged mostly upon technical merits. Optical fibre can be bent without significant loss in performance. On the other hand, even a slight bend in a circular wave-guide leads to substantial signal attenuation. The circular wave-guide was clearly the loser in this technology competition because there was not an accompanying technology to lay wave-guides in perfectly straight lines.
Now that optical fibre has successfully replaced copper in trunk circuits, it has reduced our reliance on satellite communication through the use of submarine fibre links. In another application, optical fibre was also successful in its deployment as network backbone connections in the form of FDDI.
Optical fibre is therefore an example of a technology that is successful in a variety of applications. Data communication, networking, and the personal computer An independent development, apart from telephones and television, has taken place in recent years: the massive exchange of data via computer networks. In the networking subject, as you remember, LANs and WANs were discussed, and, as you learned, the most important technologies for such networks are the switches, the network protocols, and the transmission media.
X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 6 The adoption of digital transmission in the trunk circuits made it possible to integrate voice and data services in telephone networks. This development marked the beginning of the convergence between computers and communication technology.
The advent of the Internet and World Wide Web has, of course, been another important development in computer networking. The development of the Web has coincided with the proliferation of low-cost but high-performance personal computers. Advancements in semiconductor and related technologies allowed for the rapid cost reductions and volume production of personal computers that made this proliferation possible. The sale of personal computers has continued to increase over the past few years. A personal computer with Internet access has almost become household furniture in many countries.
A unique phenomenon associated with this spread of computing and networking technology has been individual consumers contributing to the content of the World Wide Web. The amount of information provided by the Internet continues to increase phenomenally. With the huge amount of content on the Internet, net surfing has become a popular pastime for many consumers. This in turn continues to simulate the growth of the personal computer market.
The computing power of personal computers allows for the efficient execution of powerful application programs. An example of such an application is the decompression and processing of video data for use in video streaming, video- on-demand and video conferencing. Well take a closer look at this area to see what effects video transmission and compression applications have on the wider uses of the Internet and the Web.
Compression algorithms for video The transmission of digitized video requires very large bandwidth in the transmission medium. Transmission of raw (uncompressed) video data is therefore still a challenging problem for computer networks. The required bandwidth for uncompressed video far exceeds what todays networks can handle.
As you no doubt know from your own Web-surfing, however, research and development of moving picture compression algorithms in the 1980s and 1990s have brought real-time distribution of video within reach using todays technology. Video compression was applied successfully to satellite direct TV and VOD using a set-top box. However, the existing Internet is still not ready for delivering high quality video.
TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 7 Even though video compression algorithms are powerful, you can see that there is a limit to how much compression can be achieved. Fortunately, compression algorithms do allow for a trade-off between picture quality and the available bandwidth. But Internet distribution of video is possible only if we compromise on quality. Real Media, QuickTime and Windows Media are the most popular video services available on the Internet; all of them make this compromise between quality and available bandwidth. Some users can tolerate the degraded quality replayed using these applications, while others prefer to wait for the provision of wideband access hopefully in the not too distant future. Identifying todays emerging technologies You can see from the example of video compression in the preceding section, therefore, how user expectation has created a demand for broadband technology on the Internet. With sufficient broadband technology in place, high quality video from the Internet will eventually become a reality. Movies, CD-quality music, games and books will then be able to be sold and delivered more efficiently on the Internet. Businesses are anticipating the convergence between the information industry and the entertainment industry. One notable example was the merger of AOL with Time Warner and, subsequently, with EMI, the British entertainment giant.
The widespread arrival of broadband technology will undoubtedly trigger another cycle of technology development. While users will be satisfied with the speed of delivery of video, the amount of content from which the user can choose will likely become inadequate. There will then be a demand for the production of content, along with innovative applications to make use of the available bandwidth. This in turn creates a demand for more bandwidth, and the cycle goes on and on.
In the year 2000, we saw the expansion followed by the rapid collapse of the IT bubble. We saw the creation of many .com companies together with their websites and portals, in anticipation of the development into the more lucrative E-commerce and E-business activities. Then all of a sudden, in the latter half of the year, massive layoff of personnel and the drop in share values led many people to doubt the future of the industry. Nevertheless, many still believe that the next wave of innovative applications will still involve E-commerce in a significant way.
With broadband technology in mind, designers can create applications to provide an innovative shopping and trading experience to the user. This may involve real-time delivery of video, high quality audio, visualization, animation, virtual reality, etc. X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 8 With this in mind, we can identify the first two emerging technologies that well address in general later in this topic, and then in detail in later topics in this course: broadband technology, and the Internet.
The choice of our third emerging technology is perhaps even more obvious here in Malaysia. That is, it is without doubt that apart from the Internet, mobile communication is the fastest growing area in the communications industry. The Internet and mobile communication are also the areas that provide the most business opportunities and customer base. It is also in these two areas that technology innovations are emerging at a rapid rate.
When the cellular phone system was launched, an entire market for its use needed to be created. The first cellular phones were bulky and were only practical for use in automobiles. Through miniaturization of electronic components and advances in circuit design for low power operation, the hand phone came onto the market. In Malaysia, the hand phone was at one time a symbol of social status, affordable only by the elite. With the introduction of digital standards such as GSM and PCS, the capacity of the mobile network was increased significantly. Competition among the service providers led to a price reduction for the hand phones, making them affordable to the general public.
The focus of development in mobile communication was originally on the efficient use of the available radio frequency spectrum in order to increase the capacity of the network. With sufficient capacity in place, the focus of development shifted to the development of services and applications to make use of the capacity. Having identified the need for wideband access, the focus is once again shifted back to the efficient use of the radio spectrum.
In recent years, service providers have been quick to realize that in order to increase revenue, a variety of services needs to be provided to consumers. Technology progress in hand-held computers has led to the conception of an Internet computing environment based on the cellular network. At first, it was unclear whether there was a need for mobile users to connect to the Internet. Experience in Japan has demonstrated that users on the move, say for example in a commuter train will often have nothing to do. Thus composing mail messages, and ICQing become the favourite pastime among commutes. In Malaysia, with the cross-network SMS system in place, and given a more reasonable pricing scheme, there is a chance that mobile message exchanges will also take off. The demand for broadband access will come when powerful computing platforms are further miniaturized. It remains to be seen, of course, how successful broadband technology will be when applied to wireless communication. Its just this kind of uncertainty that makes the study of emerging technologies so interesting and exciting! TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 9 On the other hand, ever since the bursting of the .com bubble, there is doubt as to whether E-commerce and M-commerce will ever become successful. Again the technology is already mature. Many believe it is a matter of time for us to switch over to the culture. For the time being, the question is whether there is a need for the consumer to make a purchase through the Internet while on the move. Off the head, we can imagine while we are on the road on a Sunday afternoon, how nice it would be to surf the Internet to see what is on the cinema and to be able to make seat reservation at the same time. However, a single and very narrow application will not be enough to generate massive interests among consumers to make this a success. In the end, a successful technology must be that the consumers are addicted to using the technology, without which life would become miserable! For example, just imagine what it would like if all of a sudden, Octopus card seized to exist! Where would you find the small change to buy an MTR ticket?
You have seen how the development of various technologies in recent years has led to the convergence of communication and computing: between the Internet and the personal computer; between the information and entertainment industries; and between wireless communication and computers. We have identified three important areas of development in the immediate future: broadband technology, wireless communication, and the Internet. The developments in these areas are by no means isolated, but rather are inter-related and consistent with the above convergence phenomena.
In the next sections, we will discuss the present state of development in these three areas. Please note that our coverage here in this introductory topic is on a very general basis. You will examine each of these areas in much greater detail in the subsequent topics. BROADBAND COMMUNICATIONS The term broadband has been used for more than ten years. Inevitably, as it is an emerging technology, there exist several definitions for just what a broadband technology is. Early definitions of broadband networks include: a network that uses high-frequency analogue technology as the transport mechanism for user traffic; any network that operates above the frequency band of a conventional analogue telephone line (i.e., the voice frequency range of 300 Hz to 3.3 kHz); any network that operates above the ISDN primary rate (1.544 Mbps in North America or 2.048 Mbps in Europe).
X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 10 As you can see, some of these definitions must now be considered quite outdated! More recently, a commonly accepted definition of a broadband network is: A broadband network is one that provides a transport service for different types of applications, which include video, voice, and data services.
According to this definition, the introduction of broadband services should definitely make a positive impact on many aspects of our day-to-day lives. The following activity asks you to consider what some of these effects might be.
The development of broadband communications Until a few years ago, broadband services were only available to large organizations such as universities. Thanks to the tremendous development of communications technologies (e.g. fibre optics, high-speed and low-cost personal computers, etc.), we can now enjoy broadband services at home here in Malaysia.
Typical applications that are supported by broadband networks include: high speed (broadband) Internet access; video on demand; high-definition TV (HDTV); tele-shopping (electronic commerce); tele-surgery; tele-education.
A concise overview of the development of broadband communications is provided in the first of the readings for this topic. When you read these pages, pay particular attention to the goals of the emerging communications technologies and the bandwidth requirements of different broadband applications. Although Blacks book was written in 1997, its still very useful for tracing out the early development of this technology.
Imagine that your home is connected to a network that has infinite bandwidth. What kind of broadband services can you dream of that might really change the way you live and work? ACTIVITY 1.1 TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 11
You should now have a basic overview in mind of the development of broadband communications. Try to complete the following self-test before moving on. Be sure to check your answers against the ones provided at the end of this study topic.
Keep in mind that broadband technologies will be examined in much greater detail in later topics. WIRELESS DATA COMMUNICATIONS Wireless systems will definitely play an increasingly important role in telecommunications.
If you look at the statistics on the growth of mobile phone subscribers (both in a global sense and in Malaysia), there has been an exponential increase in the past ten years.
In addition to the tremendous growth in the number of subscribers, changes are occurring in the types of information to be carried by wireless cellular networks. Currently, more than 90% of wireless traffic is voice-based. With the introduction of a series of new technologies and services (e.g., Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), General Packet Radio Systems (GPRS), Wideband CDMA, phone banking, phone stock trading, etc.), however, the amount of data traffic (and even multimedia traffic) is expected to increase rapidly in the near future. Some analysts even predict that the volume of data traffic will eventually exceed voice traffic. Black, U (1997) Emerging Communications Technologies, 2nd edn, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 111. READING 1.1 1. According to Blacks book, what are the goals of emerging communications technologies? 2. Compare the bandwidth requirement of the following applications: video, voice, image, and text. SELF-CHECK 1.1 X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 12 A detailed description of the generations and the development of cellular wireless communications can be found in the next article youll be reading, which was published in the IEEE Communications Magazine.
This IEEE article briefly surveys the standards, technological growth, and state of the art in mobile cellular communications, starting way back a century ago. As you read this article, pay particular attention to the technological breakthroughs defining the different generations of wireless systems.
Remember, you shouldnt try to memorize all the parameters of each system. However, you should be able to identify and compare the multiple-access technique, frequency-band, bit-rate, modulation and speech coding of different systems.
After reading through the above article, try to answer the questions in the following self-test to ensure youve got the key ideas from the article.
Zeng, M, Annamalai, A and Bhargava, V K (1999) Recent advances in cellular wireless communications, IEEE Communications Magazine, Sept: 128138. READING 1.2 1. Using single-cell topology as a basis for comparison, explain the advantages of the cellular configuration. 2. When compared to first-generation wireless systems, what are the major breakthroughs in second-generation systems? 3. What are the objectives in developing third-generation wireless systems? 4. Explain why wireless local loop (WLL) is attractive for developing countries. SELF-TEST 1.1 TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 13 THE INTERNET AND E-COMMERCE In the following sections, development of the Internet and e-commerce are briefly discussed. Development of the Internet The development of the Internet can be traced back to ARPANET. ARPANET was developed in 1969 by the US Department of Defenses research people, a number of military contractors and universities. The early system was not user- friendly, and was mainly used by computer experts. In 1990, HTML was introduced for the Internet environments. HTML specifies the protocols for the transmission of graphic information on the Internet. Using HTML, each individual could create a website, which then became part of a huge and virtual hypertext network called the World Wide Web (WWW).
A timeline showing important events from 1962 to 1997 in the development of the Internet can be found in the following Reading.
Since the above timeline only summarizes important events from 1962 to 1997, there exists a gap between 1997 and 2000. Can you identify several important events on the development of the Internet in 1998 to 2000?
Read Life on the Internet: Net timeline, which is adopted from <http://www.pbs.org/internet/timeline/timeline-txt.html> READING 1.3 Search The Hobbes Internet Timeline for other important events in the development of the Internet from 1997 to 2004 at: <http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/> ACTIVITY 1.2 X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 14 The growth of the Internet As was the case with the wireless communication systems that were described in the previous section, the growth of the Internet access has also far exceeded the predictions that were made even just a few years ago.
According to The Hobbes Internet Timeline, there were more than 160,000,000 Internet hosts by the end of Feb 2002 and more than 46,000,000 websites by the end of December 2003. Exponential growth has been observed in the past five years, as the following figures demonstrate.
Figure 1.2a: Hobbes Internet Timeline: Number of hosts Source: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/Count_Host.gif
TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 15
Figure 1.2b: Hobbes Internet Timeline: Number of websites Source: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/Count_WWW.gif
After this brief review of global statistics on the Internet, the principle of Internet access is discussed in the next section. Internet access and E-commerce In the following section, we would take a closer look at a couple of current issues related to the Internet and its development: the question of Internet access, and the growth and possibilities of E-commerce.
Internet access There are several ways to access the Internet. At home, most people use telephone lines and modems, while more people (as of January 2002) are now using cable modems (e.g., fibre optics or coaxial cable) for high-speed Internet access. At offices, high-speed Internet access through LANs or direct connections (with or without a firewall) to the Internet are commonly used. With the recent introduction of WAP, people can now also use their mobile phones to access the Internet.
In the following activity, you should read and work through a concise online tutorial on Internet access. As you study this online tutorial, pay particular attention to the advantages and disadvantages of each Internet access alternative. In addition, complete the self-test questions at the end of the tutorial before proceeding to the next section. X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 16
After completing this online tutorial, you should be able to identify, describe, and comment on the most appropriate ways to access the Internet.
Electronic commerce
Electronic commerce (or E-commerce) is a relatively new term, which can be defined as:
Trade of goods and services in which the final order is placed over the Internet.
Obviously, the introduction of E-commerce is having a huge impact on the global economy. Although we will discuss the Internet and
E-commerce in full detail in other topics, we are going to guide you to read two introductory readings in E-commerce.
The first reading is again an online tutorial. This tutorial aims to give an overview of how E-commerce works, the challenges of hosting E-commerce environments, and the importance of E-commerce capabilities. When you study this online tutorial, you should also pay attention to distinct advantages of E- commerce when compared to ordinary commerce.
The following article on E-commerce is extracted from the IEEE Communications Magazine in September 1999. This article focuses on the business and policy implications related to E-commerce. When you read this article, pay more attention to these two implications.
Study the online tutorial, Internet access, which is found at: <http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/int_acc/> ACTIVITY 1.3 Work through the online tutorial, Electronic commerce, which is adopted from: <http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/e_commerce>. ACTIVITY 1.4 TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 17
MERGING OF COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES Now that you have finished working through the three previous sections introducing our main emerging technologies, you may be getting a strong feeling that the three technologies are closely related, and that it is difficult for us to completely distinguish among these three technologies.
In fact, most newly developed applications involve two or more technologies, as depicted in the following figure. Obviously, the merging (as well as emerging!) of technologies is one of the major milestones for the development of communications systems.
Figure 1.5: Merging of the three emerging communications technologies
Aaron, R, Decina, M and Skillen, R (1999) Electronic commerce: enablers and implications, IEEE Communications Magazine, Sept: 4752. <http://www.comsoc.org/ci/private/1999/sep/Skillen.html> READING 1.4 X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 18 As illustrated in the above figure, examples of newly developed applications that merge technologies include: wireless ATM (broadband and wireless technologies); broadband Internet access (broadband and Internet technologies); mobile Internet (wireless and Internet technologies); IP over wireless ATM (broadband, wireless and Internet technologies).
Here in this introductory topic we will not go into any more detail in examining each of these technologies because they will all be covered later in the course. We will discuss broadband communications, Wireless data communications and E- Commerce later in other topics.
To help you develop a clearer picture of the merging (or convergence) of technologies, try the following activity.
The above activity only shows an example of the merging of technologies. You can no doubt list many more examples by yourself.
We have now completed the first topic (an overview of emerging technologies) of this course. Before moving to the next topic, you should bear in mind that not all technologies (or products of technology) can survive. For example, the product with the highest (the best?) technology may not be the most successful product because there are other factors affecting the success of the technology. In the past 20 years, computer sets have basically only been used to access text data and restricted to data communications. With recent introduction of Voice Over IP, it is possible to use your computer to conduct voice/video communications which was used to be the area of telecommunication.
Using the Internet as a searching tool, try to answer the following questions: 1. What are the features of Voice over IP? 2. Post on the BBS your experience in using Internet Phone, Voice Chat or any Voice of IP related services. ACTIVITY 1.5 TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION W 19
In this topic, we briefly overviewed the field of emerging technologies, considering what makes a technology an emerging one, and taking into account some past examples of such technologies, both successes and failures. We also identified the three emerging technologies that well be addressing in detail throughout this course.
Next, we briefly overviewed the development and current status of these three emerging communications technologies, namely: broadband communications; wireless data communications; and the Internet and E-commerce.
A final short topic introduced the idea of technological convergence, an underlying theme throughout this topic and indeed the course as a whole. SOLUTIONS TO SELF-TEST QUESTIONS Self-test 1.1 1. The advantages of cellular configuration are: higher spectrum efficiency; better service (e.g., handoff, smaller transmit power which leads to smaller battery size); larger coverage, etc.
2. First-generation systems were based on analogue technology with frequency modulation and frequency-division multiple access. Second- generation systems employ digital modulation, time-division multiple access, and advanced call processing capability.
3. Third-generation wireless systems will evolve (they expected to be available in early 2002) from mature second-generation networks: To provide universal access. To provide global roaming. X TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION 20 To support multidimensional (multi-information media, multi- transmission media, and multi-layered networks) high-speed wireless communications. To provide wideband packet data services for wireless Internet up to 2 Mb/s.
4. WLL has the advantages of low capital costs, fast network deployment, low maintenance costs, and high flexibility in planning and deployment, which allows developing countries to upgrade their existing public switched telephone network (PSTN) infrastructure more easily and economically.