Data Communication assignment - 4G Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Data Communication assignment - 4G - Essay Example It all started with 1st generation mobile communications that were focused on analogue means of communication, this was followed by 2nd generation which resulted in a total shift of medium from analogue to digital(Palanivelu & Nakkeeran 2009). Ever since the introduction of digital sources of communication there has been no looking back, and the current standings are at 3rd, 4th generation and beyond. Furtherance and change being natural phenomena, mobile communications have seen a revolution in the manner in which they are operate today. State of the art technology exists in the field of mobile communication that has made the once impossible, possible. 4G is a generic term that represents a family of number of standards that are around in use. The family encompasses all those elements that are beyond 3G, namely Wimax, L.T.E, Wimax 2.0, HSDPA, Advanced L.T.E and all other standards that fulfill the demands and specifications being presented by International Telecommunication Union (W ang, Kondi & Luthra 2009). 4G standards provide data rates nearly ten times higher 3G (Aktas & Ismail 2004) with focus on resolving the last mile issues once for all by reaching to even the most remote of areas across the globe. The most prevalent of 4G family is Wimax. It has been around for 6 to 7 years now and has made inroads into the market on commercial scale. More promise is being shown by L.T.E which is termed as the true representation of 4th generation technologies that will set the platform for coming generations in telecommunication world. The journey towards 4th generation technologies started with Wimax in early 21st century. Wimax is an acronym for World Wide Interoperability Microwave Access. It is another name for ubiquitous internet connection, be it on the go or under the roof. Work was in place for last few years and it was first introduced on commercial scale for public use in South Korea. Many more countries have joined the caravan and have implemented 4G on co mmercial scale. The recently published requirements for a true 4G system specified by I.T.U, demand more than Wimax and L.T.E initial versions offered, Wimax 2.0 and L.T.E Advanced fulfill the requirements being stated by I.T.U as the just members of 4th generation(Cox 2012). Wimax has made rapid progress in last few years and has a cluster scattered in various parts of the world already. Few of the companies that have implemented Wimax include Sprint, Etisalat, and Nexter to name a few. T-Mobile is aiming at L.T.E implementation on fully commercial scale in coming days. 802.16d vs. 802.16e: Improvements have been made in the Wimax technology periodically, the initially launched version was 802.16d which provided limited or no mobility. In order to capture large scale market and attract customers to itself, a new version 802.16e was introduced later in 2005 which provided ease of movement and had focus on mobility Features of Wimax: Wimax provides large number of features compared t o its predecessors and few of them are: OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access): An interface aimed to overcome the short comings of OFDM, provides the feature of entertaining multiple users at the same time and brings about more stability and reliability in the network. The use of Fast Fourier Transform (F.F.T) by the incumbent allows increased number of bits being transformed from one source to another (spectral efficiency) .802.16d made use of OFDM while the later version (802.16e)