This post covers Wireless Communications: Principles and Practices by Theodore S. Rapport.

Basic Ideas

• The 1G - Fundamental System Design

  • Since the mid 1990s, the cellular communications industry has witnessed explosive growth.

  • The worldwide cellular and personal communication subscriber base surpassed 600 million users in late 2001, while the number of individual subscribers projected to reach 2 billion (about 30% of the world’s population) by the end of 2006

  • Indeed, most countries throughout the world continued to experience cellular subscription increase of 40% or more per year.

  • The widespread adoption of wireless communications accelerated in the mid 1990s, when governments throughout the world provided increased competition and new radio spectrum licenses for personal communications services (PCS) in the 1800–2000 MHz frequency bands.

  • The rapid worldwide growth in cellular telephone subscribers demonstrated conclusively that wireless communications is a robust, viable voice and data transport mechanism.

  • The widespread success of cellular led to the development of newer wireless systems and standards for many other types of telecommunication traffic besides mobile voice telephone calls.

  • For example, next generation cellular networks are being designed to facilitate high speed data communications traffic in addition to voice calls. New standards and technologies are being implemented to allow wireless networks to replace fiber optic or copper lines between fixed points several kilometers apart.

  • Similarly, wireless networks have been increasingly used as a replacement for wires within homes, buildings, and office settings through the deployment of WLANs.

  • The evolving modem standard promises to replace troublesome appliance communication cords with invisible wireless connections within a person’s personal workspace.

  • Used primarily within buildings, WLANs and Bluetooth use low power levels and generally do not require a license for spectrum use.

  • These license-free networks provide an interesting dichotomy in the wireless market, since ad-hoc high data rate networks are being deployed by individuals within buildings without a license, whereas wireless carriers who own the spectrum licenses for mobile cellular telephone service have focused on providing outdoor voice coverage and have been slow to provide reliable in-building coverage and high data rate services to their cellular subscribers.

  • It appeared that the in-building wireless access market will become a huge battleground between licensed and unlicensed services, and today’s popular cellular standards would be required to design high data rate packet-based networking capabilities in the next generation of cellular technology.

  • The first mobile phone system (1G) in the market was AMPS. It was the firrst U.S. cellular telephone system, deployed in Chicago in 1983. The main technology of this first generation mobile system was FDMA/FDD and analog FM.