Mapping the Wireless Technology Migration Path: The Evolution to 4G Systems

Wireless service providers around the world are at a business and technological tipping point. Having made investments in legacy technologies that were designed primarily to support voice traffic they now need to cope with new standards, protocols and business imperatives. In so doing, existing business models and technology platforms will be rendered moot. Consider this:
• While the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-R M.2072 expects voice traffic to account for the lion’s share of volume through 2015, a shift is already underway for revenue to be driven by rich multimedia entertainment services like video messaging or all forms of mobile commerce.
• 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 company’s 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, Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) and its North American counterpart Code division multiple access cdmaOneTM, 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).
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)
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By J.-P. Rissen

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