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Seminar report

On

4G Wireless Systems
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of degree
Of CSE

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

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Preface
I have made this report file on the topic 4G Wireless Systems; I have tried my best to elucidate
all the relevant detail to the topic to be included in the report. While in the beginning I have tried
to give a general view about this topic.

My efforts and wholehearted co-corporation of each and everyone has ended on a successful
note. I express my sincere gratitude to …………..who assisting me throughout the preparation of
this topic. I thank him for providing me the reinforcement, confidence and most importantly the
track for the topic whenever I needed it.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank respected Mr…….. and Mr. ……..for giving me such a wonderful
opportunity to expand my knowledge for my own branch and giving me guidelines to present a
seminar report. It helped me a lot to realize of what we study for.

Secondly, I would like to thank my parents who patiently helped me as i went through my work
and helped to modify and eliminate some of the irrelevant or un-necessary stuffs.

Thirdly, I would like to thank my friends who helped me to make my work more organized and
well-stacked till the end.

Next, I would thank Microsoft for developing such a wonderful tool like MS Word. It helped
my work a lot to remain error-free.

Last but clearly not the least, I would thank The Almighty for giving me strength to complete
my report on time.
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CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION

 LIMITATIONS OF 3G AND DRIVERS FOR 4G

 4G VISIONS MAPPING TO RESEARCH TOPICS

 RESEARCH CHALLENGES

 CONCLUSION

 REFERENCES
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Introduction

Pick up any newspaper today and it is a safe bet that you will find an article somewhere
relating to mobile communications. If it is not in the technology section it will almost certainly
be in the business section and relate to the increasing share prices of operators or equipment
manufacturers, or acquisitions and take-overs thereof. Such is the pervasiveness of mobile
communications that it is affecting virtually everyone’s life and has become a major political
topic and a significant contributor to national gross domestic product (GDP).

The major driver to change in the mobile area in the last ten years has been the massive
enabling implications of digital technology, both in digital signal processing and in service
provision. The equivalent driver now, and in the next five years, will be the all pervasiveness of
software in both networks and terminals. The digital revolution is well underway and we stand at
the doorway to the software revolution. Accompanying these changes are societal developments
involving the extensions in the use of mobiles. Starting out from speech-dominated services we
are now experiencing massive growth in applications involving SMS (Short Message Service)
together with the start of Internet applications using WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and i-
mode. The mobile phone has not only followed the watch, the calculator and the organiser as an
essential personal accessory but has subsumed all of them. With the new Internet extensions it
will also lead to a convergence of the PC, hi-fl and television and provide mobility to facilities
previously only available on one network.

The development from first generation analogue systems (1985) to second generation
(2G) digital GSM (1992) was the heart of the digital revolution. But much more than this it was a
huge success for standardisation emanating from Europe and gradually spreading globally.

However, world-wide roaming still presents some problems with pockets of US standards
IS-95 (a code division multiple access [CDMA] rather than a time division multiple access
[TDMA] digital system) and IS- 136 (a TDMA variant) still entrenched in some countries.
Extensions to GSM (2G) via GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data
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rates for GSM Evolution) (E-GPRS) as well as WAP and i-mode (so called 2.5G) will allow the
transmission of higher data rates as well as speech prior to the introduction of 3G.

Mobile systems comprise a radio access together with a supporting core network. In
GSM the latter is characterised by MAP (Mobile Applications Protocol), which provides the
mobility management features of the system.

GSM was designed for digital speech services or for low bit rate data that could fit into a
speech channel (e.g. 9.6kbit/s). It is a circuit rather than a packet oriented network and hence is
inefficient for data communications. To address the rapid popularity increase of Internet services,
GPRS is being added to GSM to allow packet (Internet Protocol [IP]) communications at up to
about 100kbit/s.

Third generation (3G) systems were standardised in 1999. These include IMT-2000
(International Mobile Telecommunications 2000), which was standardised within ITU-R and
includes the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) European standard from
ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), the US derived CDMA 2000 and the
Japanese NTT DoCoMo W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) system. Such
systems extend services to (multirate) high-quality multimedia and to convergent networks of
fixed, cellular and satellite components. The radio air interface standards are based upon W-
CDMA (UTRA FDD and UTRA TDD in UMTS, multicarrier CDMA 2000 and single carrier
UWC-136 on derived US standards). The core network has not been standardised, but a group of
three—evolved GSM (MAP), evolved ANSI-41 (from the American National Standards
Institute) and IP-based— are all candidates. 3G is also about a diversity of terminal types,
including many non-voice terminals, such as those embedded in all sorts of consumer products.
Bluetooth (another standard not within the 3G orbit, but likely to be associated with it) is a short-
range system that addresses such applications. Thus services from a few bits per second up to
2Mbit/s can be envisioned.

For broadband indoor wireless communications, standards such as HIPERLAN 2 (High

Performance Local Area Network—ETSI’s broadband radio access network [BRAN]) and IEEE
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802.lla have emerged to support IP based services and provide some QoS (quality of service)
support. Such systems are based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) rather
than CDMA and are planned to operate in the 5GHz band.

Whereas 2G operates in 900 and 1800/1900MHz frequency bands, 3G is intended to

operate in wider bandwidth allocations at 2GHz. These new frequency bands will provide wider
bandwidths for some multimedia services and the first allocations have been made in some
countries via spectrum auctions (e.g. in the UK, Holland and Germany) or beauty contests (in
France and Italy). The opportunity has also been taken to increase competition by allowing new
operators into the bands as well as extending existing operator licences. These new systems will
comprise microcells as well as macrocells in order to deliver the higher capacity services
efficiently. 3G and 2G will continue to coexist for some time with optimisation of service
provision between them. Various modes of delivery will be used to improve coverage in urban,
suburban and rural areas, with satellite (and possibly HAPS—high altitude platform stations)
playing a role.

The story of the evolution of mobile radio generations is summed up in Fig. 1.

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Already, as we move from 2G to 3G the convergence of communications and computing

is central to the realisation of the new generation of services and applications. Digital technology
enables dynamic adaptation of systems, and intercommunicating software embedded in networks
and terminals allows efficient control of the new networks. This is accentuated as we move from
3G to 4G, extending the range and bit rate of services and bringing about the convergence of
fixed, mobile and broadcast networks, service provision and terminal types.

This paper introduce the basic ideas and thinking behind the second phase research
programme (1999-2003) of the UK’s Virtual Centre of Excellence in Mobile and Personal
Communications (Mobile VCE) in the form of ‘visions for 4G’. A Visions Group has been set up
to produce and maintain an evolving picture of 4G and to communicate these ideas down to the
work areas and researchers. The aim is to provide an umbrella vision to harmonise the research
work in the various areas.

The next section explain the limitations of 3G systems and derive the drivers for 4G. The
subsequent sections present ‘the 4G vision’ and some of the research challenges that this
presents. The approach that is taken here is one of developing a technical vision. However it is
based upon likely user scenarios that have been developed within the Mobile VCE
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Limitations of 3G and drivers for 4G

From its basic conception to the time of roll-out took around ten years for 2G; a similar
period will apply to 3G, which will commence service in 2001/2 and reach full deployment by
2005. Thus by 2010 it will be time to deploy 4G networks and, working backwards with the ten
year cycle, it is clear that the year 2000 is appropriate to start with visions for 4G and a research
programme aimed at the key issues. The Mobile VCE’s second phase research programme has
been constructed to meet this aim.

The starting point was to look at current trends. Here we see a phenomenal growth in
mobiles with an estimated global user base that will exceed one billion by 2003. Already mobile
communications exceed fixed communications in several countries and it is foreseen that mobile
communications will subsume fixed by 2010 (fixed—mobile convergence will be complete).
Currently short messaging is booming, especially among the younger generation, with averages
of upwards of 100 messages per month dominating monthly bills. Business take-up of SMS via
information services is also increasing and providing a start for mobile e-commerce, but this is
currently very much limited by the bit rates available. This will be improved with the
introduction of GPRS.

In Europe the WAP system (using Wireless Markup Language—WML) has been slow to
gain market ground; in contrast, in Japan NTT DoC0oMo’s ‘i-mode’ system had over 10 million
subscribers by summer 2000 and is picking up 50000 new customers per day. Customers are
already browsing the Internet, exchanging e-mail, conducting banking and stock transactions,
making flight reservations and checking news and weather via HTML- based (Hyper Text
Markup Language) text information on their phones. Java is expected to be available on i-mode
phones soon, allowing the download of agents, games etc. and the introduction of location-based
services. In Japan, the number of net phones has now passed the number of wired Internet
customers and is setting the trend that others will surely follow when 3G opens up more
bandwidth and improved quality.
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Thus 3G will provide a significant step in the evolution of mobile personal

communications. Mobility appears to be one of the fundamental elements in the evolution of the
information society. As service provision based on ‘network centric’ architectures gradually
gives way to the ‘edge-centric’ architectures, access is needed from more and more places at all
times. But can 3G deliver?

It is true that 3G can support multimedia Internet-type services at improved speeds and
quality compared to 2G. The W-CDMA based air-interface has been designed to provide
improved high-capacity coverage for medium bit rates (384 kbit/s) and limited coverage at up to
2Mbit/s (in indoor environments). Statistical multiplexing on the air also improves the efficiency
of packet mode transmission. However, there are limitations with 3G as follows:

 Extension to higher data rates is difficult with CDMA due to excessive interference
between services.
 It is difficult to provide a full range of multirate services, all with different QoS and
performance requirements due to the constraints imposed on the core network by the
air interface standard. For example, it is not a fully integrated system.

In addition, the bandwidth available in the 2GHz bands allocated for 3G will soon
become saturated and there are constraints on the combination of frequency and time division
duplex modes imposed by regulators to serve different environments efficiently.

By the year 2010, one of the key enabling technology developments will be embedded
radio—the widespread availability and use of the $1 radio chip, which will evolve from short-
range wireless developments such as Bluetooth. Embedded radio will eventually become as
common as embedded microprocessors are today, with perhaps 50 such devices in the typical
home, the user being mostly unaware of their presence. As they interact, in response to the user
arriving home for example, they will form a home area network (HAN). Similarly, such devices
will be present in large numbers in vehicles (the vehicular area network, or VAN), in personal
belongings (the personal area network, or PAN), in the public environment, etc. Such chips will
serve as a means of short-range communication between objects and devices, offering
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capabilities for monitoring and control, in most cases without the knowledge or intervention of
the user.

As a person moves between these environments such short-range links will allow their
personal profiles and preferences to move with them, with the hotel room automatically
configuring itself to their personal preferred temperatures, TV channels/interests, lighting etc.
However, the integration of such links with wide-area mobile access will enable far more
powerful service concepts, as mobile agents access this pervasive network of sensors and access
information on the user’s behalf to perform and even pre-empt their needs and wishes.

In the 1G to 2G transition, as well as a transition from analogue to digital we saw a

mono-service to multi-service transition. From 2G to 3G, as well as a mono-media to multimedia
transition we are also seeing a transition from person-to-person to person-to-machine
interactions, with users accessing video, Internet/intranet and database feeds. The 3G to 4G
transition, supported by such technologies, will see a transition towards a pre-dominance of
automated and autonomously initiated machine-to-machine interactions.

Such developments will of course be accompanied by ongoing evolution of already

anticipated 3G services, such as:
 send/receive e-mail
 Internet browsing (information)
 on-line transactions (e-business)
 location-dependent information
 company database access
 large-file transfer.

These services in themselves represent an increase in requirements for accessing

information, for business and commercial transactions, as well as for a raft of new location-
dependent information services, all including significantly higher bit-rate requirements. There is
a requirement for a mixture of unicast, multicast and broadcast service delivery with dynamic
variation between application services both spatially and temporally. Above all, there is a
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demand for ease of user access and manipulation, with minimal user involvement—complexity
hidden from the user—and intelligence to learn and adapt with use.

From the above it will be seen that 4G will need to be highly dynamic in terms of support
for:

 the users’ traffic

 air interfaces and terminal types
 radio environments
 quality-of-service types
 mobility patterns.

4G, then, must itself be dynamic and adaptable in all aspects, with built-in intelligence.
Thus a ‘software system’ rather than a hard-and-fixed physical system is indicated. Integration,
needed to reflect the convergence issues already mentioned, is also a key to 4G, in particular
integration of the radio access and the core network elements, which must be designed as a
whole rather than segmented as in the past. Key drivers to 4G will be:

 a multitude of diverse devices (distributed, embedded, wearable, pervasive)

 predominance of machine-to-machine communications
 location-dependent and e-business applications
 the extension of IF protocols to mobility and range of QoS
 privacy and security
 dynamic networking and air-interfaces
 improved coverage mechanisms
 improved and dynamic spectrum usage.
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4G visions mapping to research topics

The Mobile VCE vision for 2010 is embodied in the five key elements shown in Fig. 2
and detailed as follows:

 Fully converged services: Personal communications, information systems, broadcast

and entertainment will have merged into a seamless pool of content available according
to the user’s requirement. The user will have access to a wider range of services and
applications, available conveniently, securely and in a manner reflecting the user’s
personal preferences.
 Ubiquitous mobile access: The dominant mode of access to this pool of content will
be mobile, accounting for all voice communications, the majority of high-speed
information services, and a significant proportion of broadcast and entertainment
services. Mobile access to commercial and retail services will be the norm, replacing
current practices in most cases.
 Diverse user devices: The user will be served by a wide variety of low-cost mobile
devices to access content conveniently and seamlessly. These devices will commonly
be wearable—in some cases disposable— and will normally be powered independently
of the mains. Devices will interact with users in a multi sensory manner, encompassing
not only speech, hearing and sight but also the other human senses, and biological and
environmental data pertinent to the application. Special devices tailored for people with
disabilities will be common place
 Autonomous networks: Underlying these systems will be highly autonomous adaptive
networks capable of self-management of their structure to meet the changing and
evolving demands of users for both services and capacity. Efficient and cost-effective
use of the radio spectrum will be an essential element of their operation, and here, too,
autonomy and self- management will be the norm.
 Software dependency: Intelligent mobile agents will exist throughout the networks
and in user devices, and will act continually to simplify tasks and ensure transparency
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to the user. These mobile agents will act at all levels, from managing an individual
user’s content preferences to organising and reconfiguring major elements of networks.
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Research challenges

Analysis of the underlying technical challenges raised by the above vision and its five
elements has produced three research areas: Networks and services, Software based systems,
Wireless access. These form the basis of the Mobile VCE Phase 2 research programme.

Networks and services

The aim of 3G is ‘to provide multimedia multirate mobile communications anytime and
anywhere’, though this aim can only be partially met. It will be uneconomic to meet this
requirement with cellular mobile radio only. 4G will extend the scenario to an all-IP network
(access + core) that integrates broadcast, cellular, cordless, WLAN (wireless local area network),
short-range systems and fixed wire. The vision is of integration across these network—air
interfaces and of a variety of radio environments on a common, flexible and expandable platform
— a ‘network of networks’ with distinctive radio access connected to a seamless IP-based core
network a (Fig. 3).

The functions contained in this vision will be:

 a connection layer between the radio access and the IP core including mobility
management
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 internetworking between access schemes — inter and intra system, handover, QoS
negotiations, security and mobility
 ability to interface with a range of new and existing radio interfaces

A vertical view of this 4G vision (Fig. 4) shows the layered structure of hierarchical cells
that facilitates optimisation for different applications and in different radio environments. In this
depiction we need to provide global roaming across all layers.

Both vertical and horizontal handover between different access schemes will be available
to provide seamless service and quality of service.

Network reconfigurability is a means of achieving the above scenario. This encompasses

terminal reconfigurability, which enables the terminal to roam across the different air interfaces
by exchanging configuration software (derived from the software radio concept). It also provides
dynamic service flexibility and trading of access across the different networks by dynamically
optimising the network nodes in the end-to- end connection. This involves reconfiguration of
protocol stacks, programmability of network nodes and reconfigurability of base stations and
terminals.

The requirement is for a distributed reconfiguration control. Fig. 5 demonstrates both

internal node and external network reconfigurability.
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For internal reconfiguration the functionality of the network nodes must be controlled
before, during and after reconfiguration and compliance to transmission standards and
regulations must be facilitated.

External reconfiguration management is required to monitor traffic, to ensure that the

means for transport between terminals and network gateways (or other end points) are
synchronised (e.g. by conforming to standards) and to ensure that the databases/content servers
needed for downloadable reconfiguration software are provided.

The research challenges are to provide mechanisms to implement internal and external
configuration, to define and identify application programming interfaces (APIs) and to design
mechanisms to ensure that reconfigured network nodes comply with regulatory standards.

An example of evolved system architectures is a combination of ad hoc and cellular

topologies. A ‘mobile ad hoc network’ (MANET) is an autonomous system of mobile routers
(and connected hosts) connected by wireless links. The routing and hosts are free to move
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randomly and organise themselves arbitrarily; thus the network wireless topology can change
rapidly. Such a network can exist in a stand-alone form or be connected to a larger internet (as
shown in Fig. 6).

In the current cellular systems, which are based on a star-topology, if the base stations are
also considered to be mobile nodes the result becomes a ‘network of mobile nodes’ in which a
base station acts as a gateway providing a bridge between two remote ad hoc networks or as a
gateway to the fixed network. This architecture of hybrid star and ad hoc networks has many
benefits; for example it allows self-reconfiguration and adaptability to highly variable mobile
characteristics (e.g. channel conditions, traffic distribution variations, load-balancing) and it
helps to minimise inaccuracies in estimating the location of mobiles.

Together with the benefits there are also some new challenges, which mainly reside in the
unpredictability of the network topology due to mobility of the nodes; this unpredictability,
coupled with the local-broadcast capability, provides new challenges in designing a
communication system on top of an ad hoc wireless network. The following will be required:
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 distributed MAC (medium access control) and dynamic routing support

 wireless service location protocols
 wireless dynamic host configuration protocols
 distributed LAC and QoS-based routing schemes.

In mobile IP networks we cannot provide absolute quality-of-service guarantees, but

various levels of quality can be ‘guaranteed’ at a cost to other resources. As the complexity of
the networks and the range of the services increase there is a trade-off between resource
management costs and quality of service that needs to be optimised. The whole issue of resource
management in a mobile IP network is a complex trade-off of signaling, scalability, delay and
offered QoS.

As already mentioned, in 4G we will encounter a whole range of new multirate services,

whose traffic models in isolation and in mixed mode need to be further examined. It is likely that
aggregate models will not be sufficient for the design and dynamic control of such networks. The
effects of traffic scheduling, MAC and CAC (connection admission control) and mobility will be
required to devise the dimensioning tools needed to design 4G networks.

Software systems

We have already seen in the previous subsection that to effect terminal and network node
reconfigurability we need a middleware layer. This consists of network intelligence in the form
of object-oriented distributed processing and supporting environments that offer the openness
necessary to break down traditional boundaries to interoperability and uniform service provision.
The mobile software agent approach is an especially important building block as it offers the
ability to cope with the complexities of distributed systems. Such building blocks may reside at
one time in the terminal and then in the network; or they may be composed of other objects that
themselves are mobile. Within the mobile system there exists a range of objects whose naming,
addressing and location are key new issues. A further step in this development is the application
of the Web-service-model rather than the client/server principle; recent industry tendencies show
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a shift towards this paradigm and XML (extensible Markup Language) is seen as the technology
of the future for Web-based distributed services. However this technology has yet to prove its
scalability and suitability for future application in mobile networks.

In addition to the network utilities there will be a range of applications and services
within 4G that also have associated with them objects, interfaces (APIs) and protocols. It is the
entirety of different technologies that underlies the middleware for the new 4G software system.

The ‘killer application’ for 4G is likely to be the personal mobile assistant (PMA)—in
effect the software complement to the personal area network—that will organise, share and
enhance all of our daily routines and life situations. It will provide a range of functions
including:

 Ability to learn from experiences and to build on personal experiences, i.e. to

have intelligence
 Decision capability to organise routine functions with other PMAs and network
data bases, e.g. diary, travel arrangements, holidays, prompts (shopping, haircut,
theatre, birthdays, etc.)
 A range of communication modes: voice, image (with image superimposition via
head-up displays such as glasses or retinal overlays), multiparty meetings
(including live action video of us and our current environment), etc.
 Provision of navigation and positioning information and thus of location-
dependent services:
 Detecting and reporting the location of children, pets and objects of any sort
 Vehicle positioning and route planning, auto pilot and pedestrian warnings
 Automatic reporting of accidents (to insurance companies, rescue services and
car dealers)
 Knowledge provision via intelligent browsing of the Internet
 E-business facilities for purchasing and payment
 Health monitoring and provision of warnings
 Infotainment: music, video and, maybe, virtual reality
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Of course the key to all this is ‘mobility’—we need to have the ‘PMA’ whenever and
wherever we are, and this places additional complexity on network and service objects and the
agents that process them.

Specifically we need to consider what the metrics are that determine which objects follow
the user. Some objects can move anywhere; others can move in some directions or within a
constrained area. If they can move, how will the existing service determine if resources are
available to support them in their new (temporary) home? Will they still be able to function?
What kind of computing architecture and middleware platforms will be capable of supporting
thousands, perhaps millions, of such objects?

Aspects of security pervade the whole of this area. Rules of authentication,

confidentiality, scalability and availability must now be applied to objects that are continuously
mobile. A whole set of conditions that are valid at one time and place maybe invalid if
transferred to another. Integrity and correctness issues must be considered when mechanisms that
support applications are used in practice in the presence of other; distributed algorithms. For
issues such as liveness, safety and boundedness—consistency, isolation and durability—
execution semantics need to be evidenced for extension to the mobile environment.

Distributed management tools, in a complementary way, will allow a certain level of

monitoring (including collection of data for analysis), control and troubleshooting. The
management tools currently available do not encompass mobility efficiently and hence this is
another important area of research.

The aim of the research in this area is to develop tools that can be used in 4G software
systems. The following specific scenarios are being addressed in order to focus the issues:
 E-commerce, including microtransactions, share trading and internal business
transactions
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 Home services, ranging from terminal enhancements (e.g. enhancing the display
capabilities by using the TV screen as a display unit for the terminal) to security
systems and housekeeping tasks
 Transportation systems: Itinerary support, ticketing and location services are to
be targeted in this area.
 Infotainment on the move: This will demonstrate the need for software and
terminal reconfiguration and media-adaptation.
 Telemedicine and assistance services: Emergency team support, remote/virtual
operations and surveillance of heart patients are possible stages for this scenario.

This list of scenarios can be expanded arbitrarily and also into non-consumer areas (i.e.
military and emergency services), however the preconditions for service delivery and demands
on the network infrastructure remain the same: they will have to be adaptable to meet the user-
requirements current in 2010. Support for these scenarios may be given by intelligent agents,
which may represent the terminal within the network to manage the adaptations or
customisations of the communication path. On an application or service layer they may
additionally be used to complete business transactions for the user (e.g. booking a theatre ticket
or a flight) or to support other services. Furthermore, distributed software entities (including the
variety of models from objects, via agents, to the Web-service model) will encompass
management and support for applications and services as well as for user and terminal mobility.

Wireless access

In the previous two sections we have looked at the type of network and the software
platforms needed to reconfigure, adapt, manage and control a diversity of multimedia, multirate
services and network connections. We have seen that there will be a range of radio access air
interfaces optimised to the environments and the service sets that they support. The
reconfigurability and the middleware flow through to the wireless access network. The radio part
of the 4G system will be driven by the different radio environments, the spectrum constraints and
the requirement to operate at varying and much higher bit rates and in a packet mode. Thus the
drivers are:
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 Adaptive reconfigurability—algorithms
 Spectral efficiency—air interface design and allocation of bandwidth
 Environment coverage—all pervasive
 Software—for the radio and the network access
 Technology—embedded/wearable/low-power/high communication time/displays.

It has been decided within Mobile VCE not to become involved in technology issues or
in the design of terminals. This is a large area, which is much closer to products and better suited
to industry. The remaining drivers are all considered within the research programme.

It is possible, in principle, to increase significantly the effective bit rate capacity of a

given bandwidth by using adaptive signal processing at both the base station and the mobile. In
3G systems adaptive signal processing has been restricted to the base station and so the challenge
is to migrate this to the terminal and, most importantly, to make the two ends co-operative. Such
techniques require close co-operation between the base and mobile stations in signalling
information on channel quality, whilst making decisions and allocating resources dynamically. In
addition, the capabilities of both ends of the link must be known reciprocally as the channel
varies in both time and space. In order to optimise a link continuously, the wireless network must
acquire and process accurate knowledge of metrics that indicate the current system performance,
e.g. noise, inter- and intra-system interference, location, movement variations, and channel
quality prediction. Such information and its accuracy must be passed to the higher layers of the
system protocol that make decisions and effect resource allocation. The emphasis on the base
station in 3G systems is obvious as this has the resources, real estate and capacity to implement
the spatial—temporal digital signal processing needed for antenna arrays together with advanced
receiver architectures. The challenge will be to migrate this to the much smaller terminal via
efficient electronics and algorithms that will still allow a range of services and good call time.
The availability of individual link metrics can also be used at a network level to optimise
dynamically the network radio resources and to produce a self-planning network.
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Arguably the most significant driver in the wireless access is the bandwidth availability
and usage and whereabouts in the spectrum it will fall. Currently 3G technology is based around
bands at 2GHz, but limited spectrum is available, even with the addition of the expansion bands.
The higher bit rates envisaged for 4G networks will require more bandwidth. Where is this to be
found? The scope for a world-wide bandwidth allocation is severely constrained and, even if this
were feasible, the bandwidth would be very limited. The requirements are thus for much more
efficient utilisation of the spectrum and, perhaps, new ideas for system co-existence. If the
bandwidth is fixed we need to seek a spectrally more efficient air interface and this involves a
consideration of various multiple access, modulation, coding, equalisation/interference
cancellation, power control, etc. schemes. In view of our previous comments it is clear that all
components of this air interface must be dynamically adaptive. As the whole network is to be IP
based this will mean extremely rapid adaptation on a burst basis. In 4G systems we need to
accomplish this at much higher and variable bit rates as well as in different environments
(indoor, outdoor, broadcast, etc.) and in the presence of other adaptive parameters in the air
interface. In time-domain systems equalisers would need to be adaptive and this raises questions
of complexity. For CDMA, systems could use multicodes and adaptive interference cancellation,
which again raise complexity issues. Alternatively one could move to OFDM-like systems (as in
WLANs), which offer some reduction in complexity by operating in the frequency domain but
raise other issues, such as synchronisation. The choice of the air interface’s multiple access
scheme and adaptive components will need to be based upon the ease of adaptation and
reconfigurability and on the complexity. There are also significant research challenges in this
area of flexible advanced terminal architectures that are not rooted solely in physical layer
problems.

A further aspect of spectrum efficiency relates to the way in which regulators allocate
bandwidth. The current practice of exclusive licensing of a block of spectrum is arguably not the
most efficient. It would be much more efficient to allow different operators and radio standards
to co-exist in the same spectrum by dynamically allocating spectrum as loading demands.
Indeed, the higher bit-rate services may need to spread their requirements across several
segments of spectrum. There would then be a need for a set of rules to govern the dynamic
allocation of the spectrum—a self organising set of systems to maximise the use of spectrum and
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balance the load. Given the degree of co-operation and the processing already envisioned this
should be a realistic aim.

A great deal of work on the characterisation of radio environments has already been
performed in the 2GHz and 5GHz bands within the first phase of Mobile VCE’s research, and
spatial—temporal channel models have been produced. However, 4G systems will incorporate
smart antennas at both ends of the radio link with the aim of using antenna diversity in the tasks
of canceling out interference and assisting in signal extraction. This implies that direction-of-
arrival information, including all multipath components, will be an important parameter in
determining the performance of array processing techniques. There is a need to augment models
with such data for both the base station and the terminal station. A more open question is where
to position the next frequency bands for mobile communications. An early study is needed here
in advance of more detailed radio environment characterisations.

Coverage is likely to remain a problem throughout the lifetime of 3G systems. The

network-of-networks structure of 4G systems, together with the addition of multimedia, multirate
services, mean that coverage will continue to present challenges. We have already seen that the
likely structure will be based upon a hierarchical arrangement of macro-, micro- and picocells.
Superimposed on this will be the megacell, which will provide the integration of broadcast
services in a wider sense. Until now, it has been assumed that satellites would provide such an
overlay, and indeed they will in some areas of the world. However, another attractive alternative
could be high-altitude platform stations (HAPS), which have many benefits, particularly in
aiding integration.

HAPS are not an alternative to satellite communications, rather they are a complementary
element to terrestrial network architectures, mainly providing overlaid macro-/microcells for
underlaid picocells supported through ground-based terrestrial mobile systems. These platforms
can be made quasi- stationary at an altitude around 21—25 km in the stratospheric layer and
project hundreds of cells over metropolitan areas (Fig. 7).
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Due to the large coverage provided by each platform, they are highly suitable for
providing local broadcasting services. A communication payload supporting 3G/4G and
terrestrial DAB/DVD air interfaces and spectrum could also support broadband and very
asymmetric services more efficiently than 3G/4G or DAB/DVD air- interfaces could
individually. ITU-R has already recognised the use of HAPS as high base stations as an option
for part of the terrestrial delivery of IMT-2000 in the bands 1885—1980 MHz, 2010—2025
MHz and 2110—2170 MHz in Regions 1 and 3, and 1885—1980 MHz and 2110—2160 MHz in
Region 2 (Recommendation ITU-R M (IMT-HAPS)).

HAPS have many other advantages in reducing terrestrial real-estate problems, achieving
rapid roll-out, providing improved interface management to hundreds of cells, spectrally efficient
delivery of multicast/broadcast, provision of location-based services and, of course, integration.
The research challenge is to integrate terrestrial and HAPS radio access so as to enhance spectral
efficiency and preserve QoS for the range of services offered.

Software, algorithms and technology are the keys to the wireless access sector. Interplay
between them will be the key to the eventual system selection, but the Mobile VCE’s research
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programme will not be constrained in this way. The aim is to research new techniques which
themselves will form the building blocks of 4G.
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Conclusion

It is always dangerous to predict too far ahead in a fast- moving field such as mobile
communications. Almost by definition the eventual 2010 scene will not match exactly that
depicted in the 4G vision described herein.

However, the key elements—fully converged services, ubiquitous mobile access, diverse user
devices, autonomous networks and software dependency—will persist. The 4G Vision is a living
document which intends to update and amend as time and knowledge progress.

It will act as the umbrella vision to a large research programme and place in context the detailed
research work that will take place in the various areas. In this respect it will help to continuously
steer the research as it progresses and, therefore, to make it more relevant and beneficial.
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References

 www.google.com
 www.wikipedia.com
 www.studymafia.org