What is 4G?

Why the need of 4G?

The 4G Technology.

Possibilities with 4G.

Why has the transition to 4G not yet happened?

Economics behind the migration.

India’s Perspective.

• 4G = 4th Generation mobile communications

• 4G = B3G = Beyond 3rd Generation (UMTS, IMT-2000) mobile communications

• Foreseen to become available after 2010.

• 2 major goals: broadband for all, access everywhere

• ITU Recommendation ITU-R M.1645: ”Systems beyond IMT-2000 will be realized by

functional fusion of existing, enhanced, and newly developed elements of IMT-2000, nomadic wireless access systems and other wireless systems, with high commonality and seamless interworking.”

a mix of many interacting systems is foreseen (not

one standard).

• Targeted data rates (with wide area coverage and significant mobility) are in the area of 50 to 100 Mbits/s.

“ High data rates, high mobility along with wide area coverage

are the hallmarks of future Mobile Broadband services”

“Odds are good that mobile data services become popular”

Characteristics 3G 4G

Major requirement driving Architecture

Predominantly voice driven –data was an add on.

Converged voice,video and data over IP.

Network architecture Wide Area Cell based Integration of wireless Lan/Wan(Wifi,Wimax,LtE)

Speed 144kbps to 2.1Mbps(fixed) 20 to 100 Mbps

Frequency Band 1800-2400 Mhz Higjer Frequency Bands (2-8)GhZ

Bandwidth 1.25/5 MHz(CDMA 2000) 100 MHz or more

Switching scheme Circuit and packet All digital with packet based voice

RF transmission technology W-Cdma,1xRTT,3xRTT,EV-DO,Edge,GPRS

OFDMA and MC-CDMA(multi Carrier CDMA)

Component Design Optimised antenna design,multi band adapters

Smart antennas(MIMO),software multiband and wide band radios

Internet Protocol A number air link protocols, including IP v5.0

All IP (IP v6.0)

With WCDMA based 3G, as the data speed increases the coverage area of the cell become smaller and smaller.

For data rates of 2 Mbps and above, a WCDMA cell can cover only an area of 10 meter radius ie. about 300 sq. meters.

eg : To provide 2Mbps data connectivity to an Air port terminal of say, 600 meter square (360,000 Sq.Mtr.), there should be 1200 W-CDMA cells.

As far as mobility is concerned; using W-CDMA cells, with increase in data rate the speed of movement of user terminal also becomes lesser and lesser.

eg : For 2Mbps, the speed of movement will be limited to 10 meters /second, ie. a vehicle moving at 36 K.M per hour.

“It is like using a "Claw bar for a toothpick" or a "Space shuttle instead

of Boeing" to travel between cities.”

Specifications by ITU to Qualify under 4G:

As of yet no specific standard for 4G

exists .

The Candidates

1. LTE Advanced(Long term Evolution)

• A preliminary mobile communication

standard submitted as a candidate for

4G

• LTE Advanced

•

WiMax – Worldwide interoperability for

Microwave Access

Current Wimax revision provides speed

upto 40Mb/s. However with 802.16m

revision will be able to offer speeds upto

1Gb/s.

The IEEE 802.16 standard forms the Basis

of mobile WiMax.

Also reffered to as WiMax Release 2.

IEEE 802.16m is one of the major candidates to be standardised by ITU.

Like LTE it provides strong backward compatibility.

It is expected that M- WiMax deployment will be after 2012.

The current Protocol Incorporates:

Ultrawide broadband(UWB).

Multiple input multple output(MIMO).

Orthogonal frequency divison multiple access (OFDMA).

• Virtual Presence: 4G system gives mobile users a "virtual presence" (for example, always-on connections to keep people on event).

• Virtual navigation: a remote database contains the graphical representation of streets, buildings, and physical characteristics of a large metropolis. Blocks of this database are transmitted in rapid sequence to a vehicle

• Tele-medicine: 4G will support remote health monitoring of patients.

• Tele-geoprocessing: Queries dependent on location information of several users, in addition to temporal aspects have many applications.

•Crisis-management applications

• Education

# 3 Scenarios

1. Nobody Makes the

conversion to 4G.

2. Everyone makes the

conversion to 4G

3. Some of the players make

the conversion to 4G

Some sample costs in 4G space

1. Backhaul upgrade

› $30-60M to convert 10,000 base stations from 2 to 4G technology.

2. WiMAX (Sprint) buildout

› $3B investment, 3 years to cover 200 M pop

3. Migrating CDMA2000 to 1xEVDOrA (Verizon Wireless)

› $6B over 3 years for a “nationwide” footprint

4G Hardware provides high speeds, QoS and control mechanisms; hardware costs tend to be “commoditized”, so volume will drive them down.

The key costs for 4G lie in the software that ties everything together

“Software being labor intensive, 4G costs can be considerably high,requiring higher returns

than 3G “

.