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In this article, Owen Green summarises some of the core innovations that defined each generation of mobile communications technology, starting from a time before the ‘G’ even existed.
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It’s hard to believe that the folding glass slabs we call mobile phones evolved from the clunky plastic bricks found in the pockets of ‘80s bankers. Nowadays, most of us wouldn’t think twice about firing off a text on the tube, or downloading an album while taxiing to the runway, but it’s easy to forget just how rapidly mobile communications technology has evolved. While most of us will now be accustomed to seeing a ‘5G’ icon floating somewhere near the battery indicator, the numerical evolution of ‘Generation’ has transformed how we connect with each other, and the world.
0(?)G – Pre-1980s
The first mobile communication networks were more like a collection of rudimentary mobile radio systems – think long-range walkie-talkies in suitcases – used by the likes of the military or emergency services. Voice signals could be transmitted over dedicated radio frequencies, allowing two devices to communicate wirelessly.
1G – 1980s
The first real ‘cellular mobile networks’ launched under 1G in Japan, before spreading globally. 1G cellular networks commercialised voice calls, and, for the first time, civilians could reach you from the comfort of their cars, or while walking down the street. At the time, this was revolutionary, even though call quality was poor, security was non-existent, and there was no handover between radio towers, meaning calls dropped if you moved too far.
1G used analog signals and circuit-switched technology. Essentially, each call established a dedicated path through the network – a sort of private lane on a motorway connecting one phone to another via a radio tower. Come rush hour, you had to wait for the network to free up before placing a call.
2G – 1990s
2G marked the transition from analogue to digital transmission, leading to better call quality and greater capacity on the network through technologies such as Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) methods. TDMA let multiple users share the same slice of the radiofrequency spectrum by taking rapid turns in time slots.
Most notably, however, 2G introduced SMS, better known as text messaging. The arrival of SMS fundamentally changed the way people communicated, allowing network users to communicate with one another more or less instantly via groups of 160 characters. 2G also enabled call encryption, and roaming between networks, allowing your phone to stay connected while moving across regions covered by different mobile operators.
US7801539B2, directed to SMS messaging, details a way in which SMS messages may be sent between devices on GSM networks (the dominant 2G standard utilising TDMA) and CDMA networks (a network implementation more commonly used in the US, which encodes transmitted data differently). Basically, a translation process is performed on messages sent by a device on one network such that they may be delivered to a device on the other, allowing a larger number of users to communicate with one another, regardless of how they spell aluminium.
US7801539B2, Fig. 3.
3G – 2000s
The dawn of the millennium brought us The Matrix, MySpace, and 3G – the first generation of mobile network to truly support the mobile internet. Through increased data rate and more efficient data transfer, 3G added support for multimedia services, allowing images, video, and web content to be delivered to your phone – in addition to the regular old digital voice calls and text messages – albeit relatively slowly.
3G ultimately ushered in the dawn of the ‘smartphone’ – a rather expensive upgrade to your old phone, marketed as a phone-come-camera-come-navigator-come-inbox.
4G –2010s
With 4G, mobile networks became speedy enough to rival home broadband, without the need for a router on the sideboard. Streaming HD video, online gaming, and video conferencing on the go became easy and reliable thanks to 4G’s superior transfer speeds and latency.
4G fully embraced IP-based networking, meaning that everything was transmitted over the Internet Protocol. While 3G had dabbled with packet switching (a concept where data is chopped up into small packets and sent over the internet), 4G adopted this approach universally, meaning that even voice calls now also used the internet using Voice over LTE, or VoLTE. This meant no more switching back to a separate circuit-switched voice channel for voice as per 3G, though helpfully, devices could fall back to 3G if needed.
5G – 2020s
Nowadays, everything is ‘smart’ – your doorbell, toothbrush, even your fridge – and 5G serves as the communication backbone for smart cities, self-driving cars, and the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s not just about human users anymore – it’s about connecting everything. 5G enables massive machine-to-machine communication at blazing speeds, and can serve far more devices with lower latency than before.
Key innovations of 5G include beamforming – a process which focuses signals directly at devices, improving transmission range and efficiency, instead of spraying data in all directions. Beamforming essentially upgrades a transmitter from a data lightbulb to a data laser, by transmitting data from multiple transmitters in a way so as to constructively interfere, amplifying the signal in the direction of a user.
For example, US9629122B2 relates to a method and apparatus for beamforming in a wireless device, and describes the sending and receiving of data between two devices, 310 and 300. Upon recognising that a user is swiping a file to be transferred to the right, the device 310 can setup a beam 304 corresponding to the direction of the swipe (i.e., towards device 300, also located to the right). Similarly, the receiving device 310, having been informed of the direction of the swipe, can setup a receiving beam 302 ready to receive the incoming file.
US9629122B2, Fig. 3A.
A similar idea is at play in how 5G towers communicate with mobile devices, using signal feedback and device location estimates to direct signals more precisely – one of the conspiratorial uses of 5G radio towers.
6G – The future
While not yet commercially available, 6G is expected to (further) dramatically boost data throughput in mobile networks, with some recent lab tests touting speeds of 938 gigabits per second – that’s around 117 gigabytes per second, the same amount of data as roughly 10 hours of 4k video streaming.
Maybe with 6G I’ll finally be able to get a signal in central London.
From humble car-phone beginnings, mobile communication networks have become essential to our digital lives. The generational shift in mobile networks isn’t just a story of faster speeds (although it certainly is that too) – it’s the story of how connectivity has evolved from a novelty to a necessity, transforming the world in the process.
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