Addis Ababa Institiute of Technology

Department of Electrical and Computer

Engineering
4G Wireless Technology: Technical
details and challenges
Abel Hailu
31/05/2011
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Abstract
The last decade of the 20th century has been witness to remarkable
technological developments in the area of wireless communication technologies.
Following the commercial deployment and subsequent worldwide
success of 2nd generation mobile telecommunication systems, such
as GSM, standardization bodies, industry partners and regulatory fora
from around the globe joined forces in producing the standards for 3rd
generation mobile telecommunication systems. In parallel, the academic
research community has been gradually shifting its focus in defining the
scope of 4th generation systems. The Third-Generation (3G) wireless
technologies offer wireless web, SMS, MMS, EDGE, WCDMA, GPRS etc
but 4G comes with the promise of increased bandwidth, higher speeds,
greater interoperability across communication protocols, and user friendly,
innovative, and secure applications. 4G is a packet switched technology
(the IPv6 protocol will be used), uses bandwidth much more efficiently,
allowing each user’s packets to compete for available bandwidth. It solves
the non-standardization problems associated with 3G. Fourth generation
wireless systems (4G) are likely to reach the consumer market in another
4-5 years. In this paper, fundamentals of 4G, its technical details and
challenges are explained briefly. Technical challenges include mobility
management, quality of service, interoperability, high data rate, security,
survivability, spectrum, intelligent mobile devices, middleware, and network
access.
Keywords: Fourth generation (4G) wireless system, convergence, challenges,
interoperability, mobility management, quality of service (QoS).
1 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 in
creasing
share prices of operators or equipment manufacturers, or acquisitions
and take-overs. Consumers demand more from their technology. Whether it is
a television, cellular phone or home appliances, the latest technology purchase
must have new features. With the advent of the Internet, the most-wanted feature
is better, faster access to information.
A number of technologies currently exist to provide users with high-speed digita
l
wireless connectivity; Bluetooth and 802.11 are examples. These two standards
provide very high-speed network connections over short distances, typically in
the tens of meters. Meanwhile, cellular providers seek to increase speed on thei
r
long-range wireless networks. The goal is the same: long-range, high-speed wirel
ess,
which for the purposes of this report will be called 4G, for fourth-generation
wireless system. Such a system does not yet exist, nor will it exist in today’s
market without standardization. The fourth-generation wireless (4G) technology
implements designs that will take the wireless telecommunication industry
beyond 2010. The infrastructure of the 4G will function on top of the current
existing CDMA, GSM and TDMA. It extends the 3G capabilities. These technical
opportunities strengthen the user mobility and encourage the deployment
of the mobile technologies for the development of various (mobile) applications
providing information, orientation (routing) and other helpful services.
The ITU has recently issued requirements for IMT-Advanced, which constitutes
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the official definition of 4G. Requirements include operation in up-to-40 MHz
radio channels and extremely high spectral efficiency. The ITU recommends
operation in upto-100 MHz radio channels and peak spectral efficiency of 15
bps/Hz, resulting in a theoretical throughput rate of 1.5 Gbps. Previous to the
publication of the requirements, 1 Gbps was frequently cited as a 4G goal. No
available technology meets these requirements yet. It will require new technolog
ies
such as LTE-Advanced (with work already underway) and IEEE 802.16m.
Some have tried to label current versions of WiMax and LTE as ”4G”, but this is
only accurate to the extent that such designation refers to the general approach
or platform that will be enhanced to meet the 4G requirements. With WiMax
and HSPA significantly outperforming 3G requirements, calling these technologies
3G clearly does not give them full credit, as they are a generation beyond
current technologies in capability. But calling them 4G is not correct. Unfortun
ately,
the generational labels do not properly capture the scope of available
technologies and have resulted in some amount of market confusion.
2 Generations of Wireless Technology
Mobile wireless industry has started its technology creation, revolution and
evolution since early1970s. In the past few decades, mobile wireless technologie
s
have experience 4 or 5 generations of technology revolution and evolution,
namely from 0G to 4G. The cellular concept was introduced in the 1G technology
which made the large scale mobile wireless communication possible. Digital
communication has replaced the analogy technology in the 2G which significantly
improved the wireless communication quality. Data communication, in
addition to the voice communication, has been the main focus in the 3G technolog
ies
and a converged network for both voice and data communication is
emerging. With continued R and D, there are many killer application opportunitie
s
for the 4G as well as technological challenges.
Figure 1: Generations of Wireless Communication
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3 BasicConcept
3.1 What is 4G?
When talking about 4G, a question that comes to our mind is what 4G Technology
is. 4G Technology is basically the extension in the 3G technology with
more bandwidth and services offers in the 3G. But at this time nobody exactly
knows the true 4G definition. Some people say that 4G technology is the future
technologies that are mostly in their maturity period. However, the earliest
vision about 4G (often termed as the ’linear vision’ of 4G) is that it will be
a super-enhanced version of 3G. That is, an entirely packet switched network
with all digital network elements, and a high available bandwidth of 1 Gbps
standstill and of 100 Mbps in motion. This view is much more prevalent in Asia
than in other places of the world. Another definition of 4G (often termed as the
’concurrent vision’ of 4G) is that it will be a convergent platform that will consis
t
of heterogeneous networks and heterogeneous systems. Researchers believe
that 4G will be much more than an advanced version of 3G. 4G is definitely
not another technology driven approach, not another new access scheme, nor
another extension of the capabilities of current mobile systems. The researchers’
vision of 4G consists of five key elements:
1. fully converged services that allow seamless, secure, and personalized delive
ry
of services to users,
2. ubiquitous mobile access that transcends different types of networks working
on different technological standards,
3. diverse user devices that are adaptable and intelligent,
4. autonomous networks that provide self-management according to the needs
of the users, and
5. dependency on mobile middleware agents that simplify activities and provide
transparency to users.
Many Technologies appear in many different flavours and have many diverse
tags attached to them, but that does not really indicate that they are moving
in dissimilar tracks. The technologies that fall in the 4G categories are
UMTS, OFDM, SDR, TD-SCDMA, MIMO and WiMAX to the some extent.
After successful implementation, 4G technology is likely to enable ubiquitous
computing, that will simultaneously connects to numerous high date speed network
s
offers faultless handoffs all over the geographical regions. Many network
operators possibly utilize technologies for example; wireless mesh networks and
cognitive radio network to guarantee secure connection and competently allocates
equally network traffic and bandwidth. The network supporting 4G will
have a heterogeneous, distributed, and all-IP architecture so that users will be
able to access it anytime and anywhere. ’Integration’ will be the key word for
4G. It will be backward compatible with 2G, 2.5G, and 3G systems, and will
be fully IP-based. The all-IP feature will allow integration with many systems
from satellite broadband to 3G systems. Although it is hard to provide a clear
definition of 4G, NTT DoCoMo is defining 4G by introducing the concept of
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’MAGIC’, an acronym for Mobile multimedia communications; Anywhere, anytime
with anyone; Global mobility support; Integrated wireless solution; and
Customized personal service [Sun et al., 2001].
3.2 Why 4G?
In a fourth-generation wireless system, cellular providers have the opportunity
to offer data access to a wide variety of devices. The cellular network would
become a data network on which cellular phones could operate as good as any
other data device. Sending data over the cell phone network is a lucrative busin
ess.
In the information age, access to data is the ”killer app” that drives the
market. The most telling example is growth of the Internet over the last 10
years. Wireless networks provide a unique twist to this product: mobility. This
concept is already beginning a revolution in wireless networking, with instant
access to the Internet from anywhere.
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). Statisti
cal
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 differen
t
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. therefore, it was necessary to develop another technol
ogy.
In Short 4G technology was necessary due to the following reasons:
• 3G performances insufficient to meet high performance future needs.
• Multiple incompatible standards. Global mobility and service portability
required
• Need for hybrid networks for both WLAN and cellular network design.
• Need for All IP network with converged voice and data capability.
• Wider bandwidth
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4 4G Hardware
4.1 Ultra Wide Band Networks
Ultra Wide Band technology, or UWB, is an advanced transmission technology
that can be used in the implementation of a 4G network. The secret to UWB
is that it is typically detected as noise. This highly specific kind of noise do
es
not cause interference with current radio frequency devices, but can be decoded
by another device that recognizes UWB and can reassemble it back into a signal.
Since the signal is disguised as noise, it can use any part of the frequency
spectrum, which means that it can use frequencies that are currently in use by
other radio frequency devices.
UWB provides greater bandwidth as much as 60 megabits per second, which
is 6 times faster than todays wireless networks. It also uses significantly less
power, since it transmits pulses instead of a continuous signal. UWB uses all
frequencies from high to low, thereby passing through objects like the sea or
layers of rock. Nevertheless, because of the weakness of the UWB signal, special
antennas are needed to tune and aim the signal.
4.2 Smart Antennas
Multiple smart antennas can be employed to help find, tune, and turn up signal
information. Since the antennas can both listen and talk, a smart antenna can
send signals back in the same direction that they came from. This means that
the antenna system cannot only hear many times louder, but can also respond
more loudly and directly as well.
Although UWB and smart antenna technology may play a large role in a 4G
system, advanced software will be needed to process data on both the sending
and receiving side. This software should be flexible, as the future wireless wor
ld
will likely be a heterogeneous mix of technologies.
5 4GSoftware
4G will likely become a unification of different wireless networks, including wi
reless
LAN technologies (e.g. IEEE 802.11), public cellular networks (2.5G, 3G),
and even personal area networks. Under this umbrella, 4G needs to support a
wide range of mobile devices that can roam across different types of networks.
These devices would have to support different networks, meaning that one device
would have to have the capability of working on different networks.
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4G Software includes:
• SDR(Software-Defined Radio)
• Packet layer
• Packet (IPv6 system)
6 Requirements for 4G
In the last three and a half decades wireless systems moved from being used only
for military and scientific communication to affecting the everyday life of a la
rge
portion of the globe. As the technology evolved over time, the needs of the user
s
and the services also changed. Initially, the wireless systems were designed onl
y
to carry voice communication. As the Internet became more and more popular,
users felt the need to access the Internet through their mobile devices. This
attitudinal change gave rise to the requirement of data communication through
wireless systems. The transformation from 1G to 2G was fueled by the requirement
to improve quality of voice communication. The transformation from 2G
to 3G was fueled by the need to allow voice and data communication through
the mobile devices. An important question to answer is therefore what will be
the requirements that will speed up the transformation from 3G to 4G.
These are some examples:
1. Bandwidth
2. Seamless Access, Interoperability, and Convergence
3. Quality of Service (QoS)
4. Efficient use of frequency spectrum
5. Advanced mobile devices
7 Technical Challenges for 4G Systems
Several technical issues need to be resolved before practical implementation of
4G is possible.Research is ongoing to find feasible solutions to overcome the te
chnical
hurdles. This section describes the various technology related challenges
that will be faced by 4G systems and possible solutions that current technology
offers to meet these challenges.
7.1 Mobility Management
In 4G systems, mobility may occur in two ways: (1) by the user moving from
place to place (personal mobility) and (2) by the user accessing the network usi
ng
different devices at different places (terminal mobility). For example, a user
may access a video message using a desktop computer at work, a PDA on the
road, and a laptop at home. In terminal mobility the user moves through the
network while accessing the application using the same mobile device. Management
of personal mobility can be achieved in 4G systems by using the Session
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Initiation Protocol (SIP). It can help to locate one or more IP addresses where
the user can receive multimedia streams so the user can change the access device
without notifying the callers. The protocol of choice for terminal mobility
is mobile IPv6. In mobile IPv6, each mobile device will have a permanent home
IP address and a care-of IP address. In the roaming mode, the call will be forwa
rded
to the care-of address and the caller will be notified of this forwarding.
Because mobile IPv6 is not designed for real time communication, service disrupt
ions
are possible during handoffs. The most important aspect of terminal
mobility is to provide the capability for seamless vertical handoffs (when users
move between different wireless systems) as well as horizontal handoffs (when
users move between cells) in 4G systems. For handoff situations, the challenge
is to authenticate and manage user profiles and to allow transparent movement
to users.
The solution to this problem is to develop preemptive context aware handoff.
For example, if the user is moving from one location to another on a train, it
can be predetermined which access points of which networks should take up the
call during the course of the journey. This situation may be preprogrammed in
the operating systems of the handheld device. In 4G systems, vertical handoff
becomes a necessity due to the converged nature of the networks. Vertical
handoff is complicated because several factors must be considered before vertica
l
handoff can take place. The information about available bandwidth and traffic
condition, cost of operation, and reliability of operation of the different avai
lable
networks have to be considered and a complex multi-network optimization
problem has to be solved before the decision to handoff to a different network
can take place. The next Figure shows how a vertical and horizontal handoff
may take place in a 4G network.
7.2 Quality of Service (QoS)
The current wireless systems can be broadly classified into two categories: non-
IP-based and IPbased. With the development of 4G systems, all these networks
will converge to a single transparent network. This convergence creates a QoS
challenge because different wireless systems will have different properties such
as bit rates, channel characteristics, bandwidth allocation, fault-tolerance lev
els,
and handoff support. Existing networks can guarantee QoS by the use of bearer
services proposed by the 3G Partnership Project. However, bearer services are
inadequate for guaranteeing end-to-end QoS in 4G networks as multiple wireless
networks will be involved. To guarantee end-to-end QoS in 4G networks, developer
s
will have to improve the current QoS schemes at the packet, transaction,
circuit, user, and network levels.
Another concept which should become popular with 4G systems is the idea of alway
s
best connected. In this scenario, it is imagined that the user mobile device
will have the embedded intelligence to automatically switch between different
types of services (e.g., wireless to satellite or vice versa) according to need
in a
transparent manner. The device will be programmed to find the service which
provides lowest delay or lowest price-to-performance ratio according to the need
specified by the user. This arrangement should improve utilization of network
resources and provide higher QoS on a real-time basis in 4G systems.
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Figure 2: 4G network Showing Horizontal and Vertical Handoff
7.3 Security
The existing security schemes for 2G and 3G networks are inflexible and are not
suitable for use in 4G networks consisting of different technologies and devices
.
This inflexibility largely results from the fixed sizes of keys and fixed encryp
tion
and decryption algorithms that work for specific networks. With 4G networks,
a flexible security system needs to be designed. One of the major challenges
is that different networks in a 4G system may use different security protocols,
which may or may not be compatible. Handling the security of a transaction
seamlessly during handoffs will be complicated. It is probable that a third part
y
security provider will be used to oversee that security protocol transfers take
place smoothly during handoffs.
7.4 Interoperability
Since operators will deploy networks with multiple standards and protocols, 4G
systems will allow interconnection with different networks and provide seamless
and robust universal mobility. An all-IP based architecture will be used for 4G
systems. The traditional ATM backbone networks will be replaced by an all-IP
backbone that will handle IP traffic and VoIP calls. The common all-IP based
core network will be commonly accessed by five different layers. These layers
include:
• a digital broadcast layer which will carry television signals,
• a cellular layer which will carry voice traffic,
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• a hot spot layer which will carry data traffic,
• a nomadic layer which will be used for private wireless data access, and
• a personal network layer which will carry short range communication between
household devices.
There are other technical challenges like High data rate, Survivability, Spectru
m,
Middleware, Network access etc...
8 Conclusion
As a conclusion, 4G is the next upcoming wireless technology. It holds a lot
of promises in solving today’s problems and tomorrows needs. 4G will also
make worldwide roaming using a single handheld device. 4G networks may
eventually deliver on all the promises. At times, it seems that technological
advances are being made on a daily basis. These advances will make high-speed
data/voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) networks a reality. In the meantime,
it is important for industry to develop a strong 3G offering that is palatable f
or
the general public. Equally as important, industry must ensure that expectations
are realistic and that services meet and exceed those expectations. If all
goes according to what the industry envisions, it may be sooner, rather than
later that we will see wireless communications evolve. This evolution will give
the general public as well as the public safety community amazing functionality
from the convenience of a single handheld device.
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9 References
1. http : //www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/mobileovertakes/Resources/MobileovertakesPape
r.pdf
2. Katz, M. and Fitzek, F.H.P. (2005a) Cooperative Techniques and Principles
Enabling Future 4G Wireless Networks, in Proceedings of the International
Conference on Computer as a Tool, EUROCON 2005, Belgrade,
Serbia and Montenegro, 22-24 November, pp. 1-4.
3. Indranil Bose, ”FOURTH GENERATION WIRELESS SYSTEMS: REQUIREMENTS
AND CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT FRONTIER”,
Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 17,
2006), 693-713 , The University of Hong Kong.
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