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4G WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY
UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF Dr. YASHPAL SINGH (HEAD OF DEPARTMENT) COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SUBMITTED BY AJAY KUMAR (0604310005) FINAL YEAR BUNDELKHAND INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY JHANSI-284128 SESSION (2009-2010)
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the following student of Final Year Computer Science & Engineering students has worked upon and successfully accomplished the seminar titled 4G WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY under my guidance as partial fulfilment of their B.Tech degree in final year during the academic session 2009-2010. I wish all the best for his future endeavours.
Seminar Guide: Dr. Yashpal Singh HEAD OF Computer Science & Engineering B.I.E.T. Jhansi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The Beatitude, bliss & euphoria that accompany the successful completion of any task would be incomplete without the expression of gratitude to the people who made it possible with their every bit of help. As success in any work is credited to the hard work, but without a proper guidance it may be out of ones reach. So, with reverence and honour, we acknowledge all those who helped us in carrying out this project successfully. We avail this opportunity to express our profound sense of sincere and deep gratitude to Dr.YASHPAL SINGH who guided us with invaluable help in channelling my efforts in the right direction during the course of the project. We thankfully acknowledge the help that we received from all other faculty members of the Information Technology department, BIET Jhansi.
ABSTRACT
4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless and is a successor to 3G and 2G standards. The rest of this article associates 4G with International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT Advanced), though 4G is a broader term and could include standards outside IMT-Advanced. A 4G system may upgrade existing communication networks and is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure IP based solution where facilities such as voice, data and streamed multimedia will be provided to users on an "Anytime, Anywhere" basis and at much higher data rates compared to previous generations. According to the members of the 4G working group, the infrastructure and the terminals of 4G will have almost all the standards from 2G to 4G implemented. Although legacy systems are in place to adopt existing users, the infrastructure for 4G will be only packet-based (all-IP). Some proposals suggest having an open Internet platform. Technologies considered to be early 4G include: FlashOFDM, the 802.16e mobile version of WiMax (also known as WiBro in South Korea), and HC-SDMA (see iBurst). 3GPP Long Term Evolution may reach the market 12 years after Mobile WiMax is released. The 4G working group has defined the following as objectives of the 4G wireless communication standard:
A spectrally efficient system (in bits/s/Hz and bits/s/Hz/site). High network capacity: more simultaneous users per cell. A nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s while the client physically moves at high speeds relative to the station, and 1 Gbit/s while client and station are in relatively fixed positions as defined by the ITU-R. A data rate of at least 100 Mbit/s between any two points in the world, Smooth handoff across heterogeneous networks. Seamless connectivity and global roaming across multiple networks, High quality of service for next generation multimedia support (real time audio, high speed data, HDTV video content, mobile TV, etc). Interoperability with existing wireless standards. An all IP, packet switched network.
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INDEX
SNO. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22 TOPICS INTRODUCTION OBJECTIVES AND APPROACH FEATURES OF 4G WIRELESS SYSTEMS 4G MOBILE SYSTEMS COMPONENTS THE EVOLUTION OF 4G SYSTEMS THE ALL IP-MIGRATION TOWARDS 4G SYSTEM ANALYZING 4G FROM THE TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE WHAT WILL BE THE 4G STANDARDS? HOW THESE DEVELOPMENTS WILL AFFECT MIGRATION TO ALL IP-NETWORKS? WHAT ABOUT 4G TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTIONS MIMO THE EVOLUTION OF GLOBAL WIRELESS TRAFFIC DEVELOPMENTS 3G VS 4G PHYSICAL AND MAC LAYER SPECIFICATIONS HIGHER LAYER ISSUES IN 4G APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES SOME NEW CHALLENGES IN 4G CONCLUSION REFERENCE PAGE NO. 6 6 7 8 9 13 14 16 16 17 17 18 21 22 24 25 28 27 28 29 30 31
1. Introduction
The First generation wireless mobile communication systems were introduced in early eighties and second generations systems in the late 1980s were intended primarily for transmission of voice. The initial systems used analog frequency modulation where as the second as well as the subsequent mobile systems use digital communication techniques with time division multiplexing (TDM), frequency division multiplexing (FDM) or the code division multiple access (CDMA). The third generation wireless systems which are just getting introduced in the world markets offer considerably higher data rates, and allow significant improvements over the 2G systems. The 3G Wireless systems were proposed to provide voice and paging services to provide interactive multimedia including teleconferencing and internet access and variety of other services. However, these systems offer wide area network (WAN) coverage of 384 kbps peak rate and limited coverage for 2 Mbps. Hence providing broadband services would be one of the major goals of the 4G Wireless systems.
A spectrally efficient system (in bits/s/Hz and bits/s/Hz/site). High network capacity: more simultaneous users per cell. A nominal data rate of 100 Mbit/s while the client physically moves at high speeds relative to the station, and 1 Gbit/s while client and station are in relatively fixed positions as defined by the ITU-R. A data rate of at least 100 Mbit/s between any two points in the world.
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Smooth handoff across heterogeneous networks. Seamless connectivity and global roaming across multiple networks. High quality of service for next generation multimedia support (real time audio, high speed data, HDTV video content, mobile TV, etc). Interoperability with existing wireless standards. An all IP, packet switched network.
In summary, the 4G system should dynamically share and utilize network resources to meet the minimal requirements of all the 4G enabled users. 2.2 Approaches As described in 4G consortia including WINNER, WINNER - Towards Ubiquitous Wireless Access, and WWRF, a key technology based approach is summarized as follows, where Wireless-World-Initiative-New-Radio (WINNER) is a consortium to enhance mobile communication systems. Consideration points Coverage, radio environment, spectrum, services, business models and deployment types, users. Principal technologies Baseband techniques OFDM: To exploit the frequency selective channel property. MIMO: To attain ultra high spectral efficiency. Turbo principle: To minimize the required SNR at the reception side. Adaptive radio interface. Modulation, spatial processing including multi-antenna and multi-user MIMO. Relaying, including fixed relay networks (FRNs), and the cooperative relaying concept, known as multi-mode protocol.
Seamless switching, variety of services based on Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Better scheduling and call admission control techniques. Ad hoc networks and multi-hop networks.
4. 4G Mobile Systems
Figure 1.
4G Network
Fourth-generation (4G) mobile systems dictate entirely new approaches and novel infrastructure solutions to seamlessly integrate the existing wireless
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technologies including wireless broadband (WiBro), 802.16e, CDMA, wireless LAN,Bluetooth. The key features of 4G mobile systems can be summarized as follows: First, 4G mobile systems are all-IP based heterogeneous networks that allow users to use any system at any time and anywhere. Second, 4G mobile systems provide end-users with high-speed, large volume, good quality, global coverage, and flexibility to roam between different types of technologies. Finally, 4G mobile systems provide high-data-rate services to accommodate numerous multimedia applications such as video conferencing, on-line gaming, etc. Owing to such characteristics, we have to face a number of challenges to migrate current systems to 4G. The key challenges are summarized: a) Multimode User Terminals b) Wireless System Discovery/Selection c) Seamless Mobility d) Vertical Handoff e) QoS Support
5. Components
5.1 Access schemes As the wireless standards evolved, the access techniques used also exhibited increase in efficiency, capacity and scalability. The first generation wireless standards used plain TDMA and FDMA. In the wireless channels, TDMA proved to be less efficient in handling the high data rate channels as it requires large guard periods to alleviate the multipath impact. Similarly, FDMA consumed more bandwidth for guard to avoid inter carrier interference. So in second generation systems, one set of standard used the combination of FDMA and TDMA and the other set introduced a new access scheme called CDMA. Usage of CDMA increased the system capacity and also placed a soft limit on it rather than the hard limit. Data rate is also increased as this access scheme is efficient enough to handle the multipath channel. This enabled the third generation systems to use CDMA as the access scheme IS-2000, UMTS,
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HSXPA, 1xEV-DO, TD-CDMA and TD-SCDMA. The only issue with CDMA is that it suffers from poor spectrum flexibility and scalability. Recently, new access schemes like Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA), Single Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA), Interleaved FDMA and Multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) are gaining more importance for the next generation systems. WiMax is using OFDMA in the downlink and in the uplink. For the next generation UMTS, OFDMA is being considered for the downlink. By contrast, IFDMA is being considered for the uplink since OFDMA contributes more to the PAPR related issues and results in nonlinear operation of amplifiers. IFDMA provides less power fluctuation and thus avoids amplifier issues. Similarly, MC-CDMA is in the proposal for the IEEE 802.20 standard. These access schemes offer the same efficiencies as older technologies like CDMA. Apart from this, scalability and higher data rates can be achieved. The other important advantage of the above mentioned access techniques are that they require less complexity for equalization at the receiver. This is an added advantage especially in the MIMO environments since the spatial multiplexing transmission of MIMO systems inherently requires high complexity equalization at the receiver. In addition to improvements in these multiplexing systems, improved modulation techniques are being used. Whereas earlier standards largely used Phase-shift keying, more efficient systems such as 64QAM are being proposed for use with the 3GPP Long Term Evolution standards. 5.2 IPv6 support Main articles: Network layer, Internet protocol, and IPv6 Unlike 3G, which is based on two parallel infrastructures consisting of circuit switched and packet switched network nodes respectively, 4G will be based on packet switching only. This will require low-latency data transmission. By the time that 4G is deployed, the process of IPv4 address exhaustion is expected to be in its final stages. Therefore, in the context of 4G, IPv6 support is essential in order to support a large number of wireless-enabled devices. By increasing the number of IP addresses, IPv6 removes the need for Network Address Translation (NAT), a method of sharing a limited number of addresses
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among a larger group of devices, although NAT will still be required to communicate with devices that are on existing IPv4 networks. As of June 2009, Verizon has posted specifications that require any 4G devices on its network to support IPv6. 5.3 Advanced Antenna Systems Main articles: MIMO and MU-MIMO The performance of radio communications obviously depends on the advances of an antenna system; refer to smart or intelligent antenna. Recently, multiple antenna technologies are emerging to achieve the goal of 4G systems such as high rate, high reliability, and long range communications. In the early 90s, to cater the growing data rate needs of data communication, many transmission schemes were proposed. One technology, spatial multiplexing, gained importance for its bandwidth conservation and power efficiency. Spatial multiplexing involves deploying multiple antennae at the transmitter and at the receiver. Independent streams can then be transmitted simultaneously from all the antennae. This increases the data rate into multiple folds with the number equal to minimum of the number of transmit and receive antennae. This is called MIMO (as a branch of intelligent antenna). Apart from this, the reliability in transmitting high speed data in the fading channel can be improved by using more antennae at the transmitter or at the receiver. This is called transmit or receive diversity. Both transmit/receive diversity and transmit spatial multiplexing are categorized into the space-time coding techniques, which does not necessarily require the channel knowledge at the transmit. The other category is closed-loop multiple antenna technologies which use the channel knowledge at the transmitter. 5.4 Software-Defined Radio (SDR) SDR is one form of open wireless architecture (OWA). Since 4G is a collection of wireless standards, the final form of a 4G device will constitute various standards. This can be efficiently realized using SDR technology, which is categorized to the area of the radio convergence.
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This shift will place a premium on technologies that maximize bandwidth and throughput while maximizing spectral efficiency. Fourth Generation (4G) wireless architectures are rapidly maturing to address these requirements while leveraging the capabilities of Third Generation (3G) technologies, taking advantage of the features associated with an all-IP network system.
As a result of these trends, service providers are scrambling to assess, purchase and deploy new wireless service delivery technologies that will address emerging demand, while maximizing the revenue generated from traditional sources. Those organizations that most effectively manage the transition from Second Generation (2G), 3G and ultimately 4G infrastructures will be best positioned to grow through the rest of the decade and into the next. To that end, this article puts these overlapping wireless standards (2G, 3G and 4G) into a context that will explain the evolution of the wireless technology infrastructure and provide a basis for optimizing a companys investment in next generation systems and business models. Public wireless communications have evolved considerably since the emergence of 2G digital wireless cellular technologies in the early 90s. In their earliest incarnation, Group Special Mobile (GSM) and its North American counterpart Code division multiple access cdmaOne, primarily were designed for voice services (although they did support some limited data capabilities such as Short Message Service [SMS] and low-speed circuit-switched data).
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By the late 90s, 3G cellular systems emerged, driven by the need for a universal and interoperable technology with greater user performances. While 3G technologies offered an improvement on both fronts, incompatibility between different systems remained. From 2003 to 2006, early 3G technologies like Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and cdma2000 offered two key improvements over 2G:
Simultaneous use of circuit services (like voice and video calls) and packet services (like web browsing or instant messaging). Higher speeds (up to 384 kb/s for data in UMTS Release 99 and a peak value of 2.4 Mb/s for the initial release of cdma2000 Evolution Data Optimized (EV-DO).
Later, these early 3G systems were enhanced with the introduction of faster uplink and downlink packet access channels such as High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) for UMTS and EV-DO Revision A for cdma2000. These technologies, which began to be deployed in the 2005-06 timeframe, improved both the user experience and spectral efficiency for both uplink and downlink transmission. Fast and adaptive radio interface packet transmission schemes and advanced re-transmission techniques such as Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) made these benefits possible.
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) radio access evolution. IMS provides an interoperable IP-based framework for supporting multimedia services on a single network topology. Similarly, Evolved Packet System (EPS), also known as a combination of LongTerm Evolution (LTE) and System Architecture Evolution (SAE) is being defined as a major UMTS evolution, proposing an all-IP integrated architecture for both the Access Network and Core Network. A similar evolution is now under development for CDMA markets with the introduction of Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB), also known as Evolution Data Optimized (EV-DO) Revision C. Figure 3: The evolution of wireless cellular systems
During this same time period, a third major mobile access technology, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), was introduced, initially using the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16e standard. WiMAX, LTE and UMB are all based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) radio access technologies and all have adopted IP-based network architecture.
8. Toward 4G Systems
Now the industry is looking ahead to 4G systems that aim to expand the capabilities of 3G systems to meet increased demand in terms of user bit rate and capacity (which translates into spectral efficiency).
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Like the 3G/International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-2000 evolution, the framework for 4G systems will be ruled by the Radio communication group of the ITU-R under the name of IMT-Advanced. IMT-Advanced roadmap aims to finalize the requirements for candidate 4G radio access technologies by the end of January 2008 and make available the radio interface specification for the new systems by mid-2010. Completion of these steps would allow full commercial availability in 2015.
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Configurable time or frequency duplex modes to better accommodate asymmetric services. Seamless service provision in case of intra- and inter-system mobility. Security protection for user data, control signalling and subscriber information. In the future, special care has to be given to the radio frame structure definition, which is needed to enable different systems to coexist and to minimize handover time interruption when moving between disparate systems.
layers, as well as the Radio Access Network (which moves toward nonhierarchical flat-IP models, starting with LTE evolution). Beyond the complexity of network migration, its also critical to ensure a smooth transition of the subscriber base from the existing circuit-based architecture toward the new all-IP networks. There are three key points to consider:
The need to maintain the Quality of Experience, not only in terms of voice or video quality but also in terms of call set-up time and network response time. Existing circuit-based systems have been optimized since the early 90s and subscribers will not tolerate a noticeable degradation of such performance indicators. The need to maintain service continuity when moving between systems. cdma2000 EV-DO already provides a solution to ensure voice call seamless continuity between circuit-based and packet-based systems. A similar solution recently has been standardized to ensure seamless service continuity in UMTS systems between Circuit Switched and IMS domains. The need to maintain network capacity or make sure that full wireless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) does not translate into radio resource inefficiency. Circuit voice over the radio interface was initially designed in a much optimized way, based on efficient channel protection (known as UEP for Unequal Error Protection) and later extended using Adaptive MultiRate (AMR) speech codecs. In the IP domain, thanks to Robust Header Compression (RoHC) scheme, adaptive channel coding and the gains in terms of statistical multiplexing provided by the use of high-speed shared radio channels, VoIP is able to reach the same, if not better, level of performance over the radio interface. In operational networks, the first step in all-IP migration is performed at the transport level, long before the migration at the service level. This is made possible in GSM and UMTS networks thanks to the 3GPP-Release 4, which opens the possibility to dissociate the communication call control (which still relies on classical circuit-switched protocols) from the transport level. Similarly, the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network Internet Protocol (UTRAN-IP) evolution allows supporting any of the circuit or packet-based services over an IP-based access network.
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Self-configuration of the newly added site. Self-optimization for radio parameters and neighbouring list configuration. Self-adaptation to network load variation (e.g., a sports event or unpredictable condition).
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13. MIMO
In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO (commonly pronounced my-moh), is the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance. It is one of several forms of smart antenna technology. MIMO technology has attracted attention in wireless communications, since it offers significant increases in data throughput and link range without additional bandwidth or transmit power. It achieves this by higher spectral efficiency (more bits per second per hertz of bandwidth) and link reliability or diversity (reduced fading). Because of these properties, MIMO is a current theme of international wireless research.
Precoding is multi-layer beam forming in a narrow sense or all spatial processing at the transmitter in a wide-sense. In (single-layer) beam forming, the same signal is emitted from each of the transmit antennas with appropriate phase (and sometimes gain) weighting such that the signal power is maximized at the receiver input. The benefits of beam forming are to increase the signal gain from constructive combining and to reduce the multipath fading effect. In the absence of scattering, beam forming results in a well defined directional pattern, but in typical cellular conventional beams are not a good analogy. When the receiver has multiple antennas, the transmit beam forming cannot simultaneously maximize the signal level at all of the receive antenna and precoding is used. Note that precoding requires knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. Spatial multiplexing requires MIMO antenna configuration. In spatial multiplexing, a high rate signal is split into multiple lower rate streams and each stream is transmitted from a different transmit antenna in the same frequency channel. If these signals arrive at the receiver antenna array with sufficiently different spatial signatures, the receiver can separate these streams, creating parallel channels free. Spatial multiplexing is a very powerful technique for increasing channel capacity at higher Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). The maximum number of spatial streams is limited by the lesser in the number of antennas at the transmitter or receiver. Spatial multiplexing can be used with or without transmit channel knowledge. Diversity Coding techniques are used when there is no channel knowledge at the transmitter. In diversity methods a single stream (unlike multiple streams in spatial multiplexing) is transmitted, but the signal is coded using techniques called space-time coding. The signal is emitted from each of the transmit antennas using certain principles of full or near orthogonal coding. Diversity exploits the independent fading in the multiple antenna links to enhance signal diversity. Because there is no channel knowledge, there is no beam forming or array gain from diversity coding. Spatial multiplexing can also be combined with precoding when the channel is known at the transmitter or combined with diversity coding when decoding reliability is in trade-off.
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Mass evolution the growing use of electronic devices such as cameras, personal digital assistants, etc. is increasing the number of people who download exchange or share data. Virtual evolution more and more user-related content is digitized. Socialization people are becoming more comfortable with one-to many or many-to-many (peer-to-peer) forms of communications. Personalization the development of a user-centric vision induces various new types of multimedia services with new end-user behaviours.
Its hard to predict to what extent these drivers will influence wireless traffic. Still, by using world population forecasts, as well as service penetration and usage models, it is possible to make estimates (Figure 3). The ITU-R M.2072 report projects that traffic growth will be linear from 2007 to 2020, with voice traffic still dominant through 2015. But, the development of rich multimedia entertainment services like video messaging or all forms of mobile commerce will shift that trend toward more multimedia communications.
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The next figure (Figure 4) shows the total wireless cellular spectrum demand, resulting from the traffic forecast described above. This estimation takes into account the evolution in spectral efficiency brought by 3G, evolved 3G and future 4G/IMT-Advanced technologies, as well as the fact that different generations of technology will co-exist on operated networks.
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15. Developments
The Japanese company NTT DoCoMo has been testing a 4G communication system prototype with 4x4 MIMO called VSF-OFCDM at 100 Mbit/s while moving, and 1 Gbit/s while stationary. In February 2007, NTT DoCoMo completed a trial in which they reached a maximum packet transmission rate of approximately 5 Gbit/s in the downlink with 12x12 MIMO using a 100MHz frequency bandwidth while moving at 10 km/h, and is planning on releasing the first commercial network in 2010. Digiweb, an Irish fixed and wireless broadband company, has announced that they have received a mobile communications license from the Irish Telecoms regulator, ComReg. This service will be issued the mobile code 088 in Ireland and will be used for the provision of 4G Mobile communications. Digiweb launched a mobile broadband network using FLASH-OFDM technology at 872 MHz. Pervasive networks are an amorphous and at present entirely hypothetical concept where the user can be simultaneously connected to several wireless access technologies and can seamlessly move between them (See vertical handoff, IEEE 802.21). These access technologies can be Wi-Fi, UMTS, EDGE, or any other future access technology. Included in this concept is also smart-radio (also known as cognitive radio technology) to efficiently manage spectrum use and transmission power as well as the use of mesh routing protocols to create a pervasive network.
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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. On December 9, 2008, Verizon Wireless announced that they intend to build and begin to roll out a LTE network by the end of 2009. Telus and Bell Canada, the major Canadian cdmaOne and EV-DO carriers, have announced that they will be cooperating towards building a fourth generation (4G) LTE wireless broadband network in Canada. As a transitional measure, they are implementing 3G UMTS to go live by early 2010. Sprint announced it will be offering a 3G/4G connection plan for $79.99, but it is only currently available in Baltimore
16. 3G Vs 4G
The following table shows comparisons between some key parameters of 3G Vs possible 4G systems.
4G
Frequency Band
5-20 MHz Up to 2Mbps ( 384 kbps WAN) Wideband CDMA Turbo-codes Circuit/Packet 200 kmph
5-20 MHz
Up to 20 Mbps or more Multi-carrier - CDMA or OFDM(TDMA) Concatenated codes Packet 200 kmph
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1. Avoidance or prevention of the congestion. 2. Detection and recovery after congestion. The avoidance scheme will require the network to suitably implement the admission control (measurement based or pre-computed model) and scheduling techniques. The detection and recovery would require flow control and feedback traffic management. A conservative approach might be proposed for the 4G systems because of the wide variety of QoS requirements.
It is generally accepted that 4G networks will provide more than just wireless voice telecommunications. In fact, the main thrust of 4G technologies is to provide high-speed, high-bandwidth, packetsize data communications. It is generally expected that in 4G even voice traffic will be delivered to the handset in packets (as opposed to delivery via dedicated circuit switching). Circuit switching refers to the technique in which a dedicated channel is used to transmit and receive voice or data. Packetized data communications refers to the digital signaling technique in which information (voice or data) is converted into binary code and partitioned
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into short segments. These segments are then reassembled in the correct order and converted back into usable information at the destination.
Packet switching is more desirable to carriers and providers than circuit switching for a host of reasons. One reason is capacity. It is inefficient to serve only a single subscriber per channel because the full bandwidth of the channels is not being used at all times during a voice call. When a typical user makes a call, there are lulls where neither party is talking. In circuit switching, that lull is still being transmitted over the channel. The first generation of wireless (cellular) technology used this technique. Current wireless systems share channels in a packet environment to deliver voice communications. In packet switching, only actual voice content is packetized and sent to the system. Advances in technology and in multiple access techniques have made this possible. Unfortunately, todays wireless access techniques do not support high-speed or highbandwidth transmissions. This limitation is the impetus for the evolution of wireless communications. In todays wireless marketplace, users demand value-added services. With all the hype heralding third-generation (3G) services, users have come to expect that the next generation of wireless technology will be not only a voice communications medium but will have Internet-like functionality. Service providers and application developers are on the path to realizing these user expectations, but there is still a long road ahead. In reality, the dream of Internet-style functionality via wireless communications may not be fully realized in the 3G deployment. The multiple access techniques planned for 3G will not support the bandwidth and data transmission speeds required for the advanced applications users expect. 3G technologies will certainly have greater functionality than todays wireless systems; however, not until 4G deployment will these so called killer applications be supported.
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Multi-access interface, timing and recovery. Higher frequency reuse leads to smaller cells that may cause intra-cell interference or higher noise figures due to reduced power levels. The Digital to analog conversions at high data rates, multiuser detection and estimation (at base stations), smart antennas and complex error control techniques as well dynamic routing will need sophisticated signal processing. Issues in the interface with the ad hoc networks should be sorted out. 4G systems are expected to interact with other networks like the Bluetooth, hiperlan, IEEE802.11b, etc. Voice over multi-hop networks is likely to be an interesting problem because of the strict delay requirements of voice. Security will be an important issue. A new IP protocol might be needed because of the variable QoS services and the network should do better than best effort. Networking protocols that adapt dynamically to the changing channel conditions. Seamless roaming and seamless transfer of services.
22. Conclusions
4G is still in formative stages. They may become commercially available in 2010. The work on 4G systems has begun in the industry as well the academia. Ex: Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) has Ericcson, Alcatel, Nokia and Siemens AG. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a program in 1999 that calls for proposals that would look at issues involved in 4G systems. In the USA, Motorola, Lucent, AT&T, Nortel and other major companies are also working on 4G systems. Multimedia traffic will be dominant in the future. It is estimated that voice would contribute to only 20-30 % of total traffic in the future. A modified IP will be the universal network layer protocol in the future. Diverse array of applications like virtual navigation, tele-medicine, etc. The entire network would be digital and packet switched.
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REFERENCE
a. The IEEE Personal Communications Magazine, October 2001 has a collection of articles that looks at the IP based issues in the 4G wireless networks. b. Physical aspects of 4G c. Mobility Management d. Groups working on 4G: WWRF , projects funded by NSF , Lucent , AT&T, Motorola, etc. e. Research : Ga Tech , Ofdm-forum f. 4G in news g. Slide show on evolution of TDMA to 3G and 4G h. www.alcatel-lucent.com i. www.wikipedia.com j. www.networkworld.com
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