Wireless Communication

Introduction
 How it all started
• Looking at the history of communications we find
that wireless communication is actually the oldest
form
• Shouts and jungle drums did not require any wires or
cables to function
• Even the oldest electromagnetic (optical)
communication are wireless: smoke signals are based
on propagation of optical signals along a line-of-sight
connection
 How it all started
• Wireless Communication as we know it started only with the
work of Maxwell and Hertz who laid the basis for our
understanding of the transmission of electromagnetic waves
• It was not long after their groundbreaking work that Tesla
demonstrated the transmission of information via these
waves- in essence the first wireless communication system
• In 1898 Marconi made his well-publicized demonstration of
wireless communications from a boat to the Isle of Wight in
the English Channel
• It is noteworthy that while Tesla was the first to succeed in
this important endeavor, Marconi had the better public
relations and is widely cited as the inventor of wireless
communications, receiving a Nobel prize in 1909
 Introduction
• The ability to communicate with people on the move has
evolved remarkably since Marconi first demonstrated radio’s
ability to provide continuous contact with ships in 1898
• Since then new wireless communications methods and
services have been enthusiastically adopted by people
throughout the world
• Mobile radio communications industry has grown by orders of
magnitude fueled by digital and RF circuit fabrication
improvements, new large-scale circuit integration and other
miniaturization technologies which make portable radio
equipment smaller, cheaper and more reliable
 Evolution of Mobile Radio
Communication
• In 1946 the first mobile telephone system was
installed in the USA(St Louis). This system did have
an interface to the Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)
• However with a total of six speech channels for the
whole city the system soon met it limits
 Evolution of Mobile Radio
Communication
• This motivated investigations of how the number
of users could be increased even though the
allocated spectrum would remain limited
• Researchers at AT&T’s Bell Labs found the
answer: the cellular principle where the
geographical area is divided into cells; different
cells might use the same frequencies
• To this day this principle forms the basis for the
majority of wireless communications
 Evolution of Mobile Radio
Communication
• The following market penetration data show
how wireless communications in the
consumer sector has grown in popularity
• The figure shows that the first 35 years of
mobile telephony saw little market
penetration due to high cost and the
technological challenges involved but it has
grown rapidly
 The electronics
boom

Figure 1.1 The growth of mobile telephony as compared with other popular inventions of the 20 th century.
 Evolution of Mobile Radio
Communication
• Wireless communication is enjoying its fastest
growth period in history due to enabling
technologies which permit widespread
deployment
• The ability to provide wireless communications to
an entire population was not even conceived
until Bell Laboratories developed the cellular
concept in the 1960s and 1970s
• Despite the theoretical breakthrough, cellular
telephony did not experience significant growth
during the 1960s
 Analog Cellular Systems
• The 1970s saw a revived interest in cellular
communications
• Nippon Telephone and Telegraph(NTT)
established a commercial cellphone system in
Tokyo in 1979
• However it was a Swedish company Ericsson
that built up the first system with large
coverage and automated switching
 Analog Cellular Systems
• Ericsson had been mostly known for telephone switches
while radio communications was of limited interest to them
• However it was just that expertise in switching technology
and the (for that time, daring) decision to use digital
switching technology that allowed them to combine
different cells in a large area into a single network and
establish the Nordic Mobile Telephone(NMT) system
• Note that while the switching technology was digital, the
radio transmission technology was still analog and the
systems therefore became known as analog systems
 Analog Cellular Systems
• Other countries developed their own analog
phone standards
• The system in the U.S.A was called Advanced
Mobile Phone System (AMPS)
 Analog Cellular Systems
• The analog systems paved the way for the wireless
revolution
• During the 1980s they grew at a frenetic pace and
reached market penetration of up to 10% in Europe,
though their impact was somewhat less in U.S.A
 Analog Cellular Systems
• In the beginning of the 1980s, the phones were
portable but definitely not handheld. They were
just called “car phones” because the battery and
transmitter were stored in the trunk of the car
and were too heavy to be carried around
• At the end of 1980s, handheld phones with good
speech quality and quite acceptable battery
lifetime abounded
• The quality had become so good that in some
markets digital phones had a difficult time
establishing themselves
 GSM and the Worldwide Cellular
Revolution
• Due to rapid growth of the cellular market, operators
had a high interest in making room for more customers
• Also research in communications had started its
inexorable turn to digital communications, and that
included digital wireless communications as well
• In the late 1970s and the 1980s research in digital
communication was conducted in research labs
throughout the world
• It became clear that the real-world systems would soon
follow the research
 GSM and the Worldwide Cellular
Revolution
• Again it was Europe that led the way
• The European Telecommunications Standards
Institute(ETSI) group started the development of a
digital cellular standard that would become
mandatory throughout Europe and was later
adopted in most parts of the world: Global System
for Mobile communications(GSM)
 GSM and the Worldwide Cellular
Revolution
• The system was developed throughout the 1980s;
deployment started in the early 1990s and user
acceptance was swift
• Due to additional features, better speech quality
and possibility for secure communications, GSM
based services overtook analog services within 2
years of their introduction
• In the U.S.A the change to digital systems was
somewhat slower, but by the end of the 1990s,
this country also was overwhelmingly digital
 GSM and the Worldwide Cellular
Revolution
• Digital phones turned cellular
communications, which was already on the
road to success, into a blockbuster
• By the year 2000 market penetration in
Western Europe and Japan had exceeded 50%
and though the U.S.A showed a somewhat
delayed development growth rates were
spectacular as well
Examples of Wireless Communication
Systems-Paging System
• Paging systems are communication systems that
send brief messages to a subscriber
• The paging system transmits the page throughout
the service area using base stations which
broadcast the age
• Paging systems vary widely in their complexity
and coverage area. While simple paging systems
may cover a limited range of 2 to 5 km, or may
even be confined to within individual buildings,
wide area paging systems can provide worldwide
coverage
Wide Area Paging System
Examples of Wireless Communication
Systems-Cordless Telephone Systems
• Cordless telephone systems are full duplex
communication systems that use radio to
connect a portable handset to a dedicated
base station, which is then connected to a
dedicated telephone line with a specific
telephone number on PSTN
• Cordless telephone systems provide the user
with limited range and mobility
A cordless telephone System
Examples of Wireless Communication
Systems-Cellular Telephone Systems
• A cellular telephone system provides a
wireless connection to the PSTN for any user
location within the radio range of the system
• Cellular systems accommodate a large number
of users over a large geographic area within a
limited frequency spectrum
• Cellular radio systems provide high quality
service that is often comparable to that of the
landline telephone system
Cellular Telephone System
 Cellular Telephone System
• High capacity is achieved by limiting the
coverage of each base station transmitter to a
geographic area called a cell so that the same
radio channels may be reused by another base
station located some distance away
• A sophisticated switching technique called a
handoff enables a call to proceed
uninterrupted when the user moves from one
cell to another