Mobile Phone Generations
0G
0G refers to pre-cellphone mobile telephony
technology, such as radio telephones that some
had in cars before the advent of cellphones.
One such technology is the Autoradiopuhelin
(ARP) launched in 1971 in Finland as the
country's first public commercial mobile phone
network.
1G
1G (or 1-G) is
short for first-generation wireless telephone
technology, cellphones. These are the analog
cellphone standards that were introduced in the
80's and continued until being replaced by 2G
digital cellphones.
One such standard is NMT (Nordic Mobile
Telephone), used in Nordic countries, Eastern
Europe and Russia. Another is AMPS (Advanced
Mobile Phone System) used in the United States.
Anticedant to 1G technology is the mobile radio
telephone, or 0G.
2G
2G (or
2-G) is short for second-generation wireless
telephone technology. It cannot normally
transfer data, such as email or software, other
than the digital voice call itself, and other
basic ancillary data such as time and date.
Nevertheless, SMS messaging is also available as
a form of data transmission for some standards.
2G services are frequently referred as Personal
Communications Service or PCS in the US.
2G technologies can be divided into TDMA-based
and CDMA-based standards depending on the type
of multiplexing used. The main 2G standards are:
GSM (TDMA-based), originally from Europe but
used worldwide
IDEN (TDMA-based), proprietary network used by
Nextel in the United States and Telus Mobility
in Canada
IS-136 aka D-AMPS, (TDMA-based, commonly
referred as simply TDMA in the US), used in the
Americas
IS-95 aka cdmaOne, (CDMA-based, commonly
referred as simply CDMA in the US), used in the
Americas and parts of Asia
PDC (TDMA-based), used exclusively in Japan
2.5G services are already available in many
countries and 3G will be widely available in
many countries during 2004. Work on 4G has
already started although its scope is not clear
yet.
2.5G
2.5G is a
stepping stone between 2G and 3G cellular
wireless technologies. The term "second and a
half generation" is used to describe 2G-systems
that have implemented a packet switched domain
in addition to the circuit switched domain. It
does not necessarily provide faster services
because bundling of timeslots is used for
circuit switched data services (HSCSD) as well.
While the terms "2G" and "3G" are officially
defined, "2.5G" is not. It was invented for
marketing purposes only.
2.5G provides some of the benefits of 3G (e.g.
it is packet-switched) and can use some of the
existing 2G infrastructure in GSM and CDMA
networks. The commonly known 2.5G technique is
GPRS. Some protocols, such as EDGE for GSM and
CDMA2000 1x-RTT for CDMA, officially qualify as
"3G" services (because they have a data rate of
above 144kbps), but are considered by most to be
2.5G services (or 2.75G which sounds even more
sophisticated) because they are several times
slower than "true" 3G services.
2G is the current generation of full digital
mobile phone systems. It transmits primarily
voice but is used for circuit-switched data
service and SMS as well.
3G is now the third generation of mobile phone
systems. They provide both a packet-switched and
a circuit-switched domain from the beginning. It
requires a new access network, different from
that already available in 2G systems. Due to
cost and complexity, rollout of 3G has been
somewhat slower than anticipated.
2.75G
A 2G
mobile phone is a circuit switched digital
mobile phone. A 3G mobile is a digital phone
with rapid data according to one of the
standards being a member of the IMT-2000 family
of standards. After those terms were defined,
slow packet switched data was added to 2G
standards and called 2.5G. 2.75G is the term
which has been decided on for systems which
don't meet the 3G requirements but are marketed
as if they do (e.g. CDMA-2000 without
multi-carrier) or which do, just, meet the
requirements but aren't strongly marketed as
such. (e.g. EDGE systems).
The term 2.75G has not been officially defined
anywhere, but as of 2004 is beginning to be used
quite often in media reports.
3G
3G (or
3-G) is short for third-generation mobile
telephone technology. The services associated
with 3G provide the ability to transfer both
voice data (a telephone call) and non-voice data
(such as downloading information, exchanging
email, and instant messaging).
3G Standards
3G
technologies are an answer to the International
Telecommunications Union's IMT-2000
specification. Originally, 3G was supposed to be
a single, unified, worldwide standard, but in
practice, the 3G world has been split into three
camps.
UMTS (W-CDMA)
UMTS
(Universal Mobile Telephone System), based on W-CDMA
technology, is the solution generally preferred
by countries that used GSM, centered in Europe.
UMTS is managed by the 3GPP organization also
responsible for GSM, GPRS and EDGE.
FOMA, launched by Japan's NTT DoCoMo in 2001, is
generally regarded as the world's first
commercial 3G service. However, while based on
W-CDMA, it is not generally compatible with UMTS
(although there are steps currently under way to
remedy the situation).
CDMA2000
The other
significant 3G standard is CDMA2000, which is an
outgrowth of the earlier 2G CDMA standard IS-95.
CDMA2000's primary proponents are outside the
GSM zone in the Americas, Japan and Korea.
CDMA2000 is managed by 3GPP2, which is separate
and independent from UMTS's 3GPP.
TD-SCDMA
A less
well known standard is TD-SCDMA which is being
developed in the People's Republic of China by
the companies Datang and Siemens. They are
predicting an operational system for 2005.
List of countries that have deployed 3G
Countries
that have commercial 3G networks include:
Argentina (CDMA2000 1x)
Australia (W-CDMA) (CDMA2000 1x)
Austria (W-CDMA)
Azerbaijan (CDMA2000 1x)
Belarus (CDMA2000 1x)
Bermuda (CDMA2000 1x)
Brazil (CDMA2000 1x)
Canada (CDMA2000 1x)
Chile (CDMA2000 1x)
China (CDMA2000 1x)
Colombia (CDMA2000 1x)
Cyprus (W-CDMA)
Denmark (W-CDMA)
Dominican Republic (CDMA2000 1x)
Ecuador (CDMA2000 1x)
Finland (W-CDMA)
Georgia (CDMA2000 1x)
Germany (W-CDMA)
Greece (W-CDMA)
Guatemala (CDMA2000 1x)
Hong Kong (W-CDMA)
India (CDMA2000 1x)
Indonesia (CDMA2000 1x)
Israel (W-CDMA)
Italy (W-CDMA)
Jamaica (CDMA2000 1x)
Japan (W-CDMA, CDMA2000 1x)
Kazakhstan (CDMA2000 1x)
Kyrgyzstan (CDMA2000 1x)
Mexico (CDMA2000 1x)
Moldova (CDMA2000 1x)
Netherlands (W-CDMA)
New Zealand (CDMA2000 1x) (W-CDMA in testing)
Nicaragua (CDMA2000 1x)
Nigeria (CDMA2000 1x)
Norway (W-CDMA)
Pakistan (CDMA2000 1x)
Panama (CDMA2000 1x)
Peru (CDMA2000 1x)
Poland (CDMA2000 1x)
Portugal (W-CDMA)
Romania (CDMA2000 1x)
Russia (CDMA2000 1x)
Singapore (W-CDMA)
Slovenia (W-CDMA)
South Korea (CDMA2000 1x)
South Africa (W-CDMA in testing)
Spain (W-CDMA)
Sweden (W-CDMA)
Taiwan (CDMA2000 1x)
Thailand (CDMA2000 1x)
United Arab Emirates (W-CDMA)
United Kingdom (W-CDMA)
United States (CDMA2000 1x) (W-CDMA in testing)
Uzbekistan (CDMA2000 1x)
Venezuela (CDMA2000 1x)
Vietnam (CDMA2000 1x)
References
External Links
3.5G
High-Speed
Downlink Packet Access or HSDPA is a mobile
telephony protocol. Also called 3.5G (or "3½G").
High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a
packet-based data service in W-CDMA downlink
with data transmission up to 8-10 Mbit/s (and 20
Mbit/s for MIMO systems) over a 5MHz bandwidth
in WCDMA downlink. HSDPA implementations
includes Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC),
Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO), Hybrid
Automatic Request (HARQ), fast cell search, and
advanced receiver design.
HSDPA is beginning to reach deployment status in
North America. Cingular has announced that they
will begin to deploy UMTS with expansion to
HSDPA in 2005.
In 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP)
standards, Release 4 specifications provide
efficient IP support enabling provision of
services through an all-IP core network and
Release 5 specifications focus on HSDPA to
provide data rates up to approximately 10 Mbit/s
to support packet-based multimedia services.
MIMO systems are the work item in Release 6
specifications, which will support even higher
data transmission rates up to 20 Mbit/s. HSDPA
is evolved from and backward compatible with
Release 99 WCDMA systems.
4G
4G (or 4-G) is short for fourth-generation the
successor of 3G and is a wireless access
technology. It describes two different but
overlapping ideas.
High-speed mobile wireless access with a very
high data transmission speed, of the same order
of magnitude as a local area network connection
(10 Mbits/s and up). It has been used to
describe wireless LAN technologies like Wi-Fi,
as well as other potential successors of the
current 3G mobile telephone standards.
Pervasive networks. An amorphous and presently
entirely hypothetical concept where the user can
be simultaneously connected to several wireless
access technologies and can seamlessly move
between them (See handover). These access
technologies can be Wi-Fi, UMTS, EDGE or any
other future access technology. Included in this
concept is also smart-radio technology to
efficiently manage spectrum use and transmission
power as well as the use of mesh routing
protocols to create a pervasive network.
External Links
-
Mobile Mesh Networking (http://mcabiling.persozone.net/mobilemesh/)
News and info on Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless Broadband and 4G
-
Ambient Networks Project (http://www.ambient-networks.org/)
An EU financed research project for "Mobile
and Wireless Systems Beyond 3G"
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