Overview
Wireless communications have come a long way since electromagnetic waves were discovered by Rudolf Hertz in 1887. Guglielmo Marconi deployed first wireless communication system in 1898 to communicate the Britain royalty, and subsequently in transatlantic communications for ships such as the Titanic. After those events, wireless communications were improved and employed only for government or wealthy people.
In the 1970s generation 0 of wireless communication achieved maturation to became mobile and focused on people communication, but User Equipment was heavy. In 1980s, generation 1 was launched and since then each wireless communications generation has evolved approximately ten years in steps called generations.
Generation 5 started in 2019 with the deployment of non-standalone (using Legacy LTE Core networks) 5G networks and then standalone 5G networks all around the world in an accelerated way. Simultaneously, improvements started generation 6 which is expected to be a revolution by enabling the hyperconnectivity of everything all around the world in 2030s.
Wireless networks evolved to include standardized technology advances were integrated to boost and optimize data rates, frequency efficiency, power consumption, quality of service (QoS), coverage, latency, handover and more.
5G cellular networks integrated technologies such as OFDMA, MIMO, network slicing, numerologies, dual connectivity, full-duplex, spectrum sharing, carrier aggregation, small cells, cloud and edge computing, microservice orchestration, artificial intelligence and machine learning among others.
This is evolved further to harmonize with open-source software employing general purpose processors, open interfaces, and radio units in new mobile network operator trends called commoditization, containerization, and Open RAN to focus more on software innovation than hardware and promote new flexible services with stringent requirements to adapt wireless technologies to continuously changing people needs.
To add to this complexity, standardized wireless technologies can now choose between unicast, broadcast, and multicast transmissions in order to boost spectrum efficiency that depends on the user’s service selection.
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OFDMA
Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access helps organize the spectrum in time (subframes) and frequency (subcarriers) to share the channel for many users at the same time.
MIMO
Multiple Input Multiple Output uses multiple antennas to increase linearly the capability of the network, and to focus beams toward users.
Network slicing
This overlays multiple virtual networks on top of a shared network infrastructure.
Cloud and Edge Computing
This enable private or public clouds for centralized and next-to-user applications.
Microservices
A big monolithic application is divided into microservices that are connected between them to foster scalability, efficiency, flexibility, security, and self-healing.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
These algorithms are employed for wireless systems to learn network behavior and enable forecasts based on learned information.
Carrier aggregation
Combines different carriers to widen the bandwidth and improve the data rate or throughput.
Dual connectivity
A radio access network capability to connect users to concurrent eNBs or between eNB/gNBs. This allowed the easy initial deployment of non-standalone 5G networks.
Numerologies
This refers to subcarrier spacing employed to reduce the latency or control the phase noise.
Spectrum Sharing
Dynamically manages the available spectrum between two generation of cellular networks and allocated bandwidths that depends on the user demand.
