Wireless videophones Essay Example for Free

Wireless videophones Essay Wireless videophones and high-speed Internet access are a reality with the worlds first Third Generation mobile serviced, which were launched on October 1st 2001 by NTT DoCoMo in Tokyo, Japan. These has symbolized that human had enter a new era in mobile network technology. Facing with the ever advancing technologies, mobile network had integrated deep into our daily life style, cater for the needs to interact between friends and business organizations in a more effective, efficient and convenient way. At this moment, as we are discussing, there is a lot of network companies busily preparing for 3G or the Third Generation in mobile telephone devices. The precursors to this technology had began and entered the markets in year 2001 and 3G itself is due to have proliferated in the earnest by 2005. Singapore Telco, Singtel had announced a trail on the 3G network within CBD area at the last quarter of 2003. If 3G delivers what the developers promise, by 2004 we can look at broadband speeds via our mobile phones, plus a variety of new generation mobile devices that combine PC, PDA, camera, you name it, functionality. With 3G, data speeds will reach upwards of 2 Megabits per second (Mbps), which will give us high speed Web access and superlative quality video access via our trusty mobile communication devices. 3G also promises roaming capability throughout Europe, Asia and North America. 3G devices will deliver all that GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) can do, except a whole lot faster. Just imagine, how about catching up with that important client who never has time for a face to face meeting when hes in a taxi on his way to an airport at the other side of the globe? Consider watching your favourite television programmes on the MRT on your way home from work. How about consider connecting to your network, downloading files, transferring data, zipping off an email? With transfer speeds of more than 2 Mbps, tasks like these can be completed within seconds. Nokias concept team, for example, are currently considering four different categories for their 3G terminals: Â  Communicators These would be business tools, allowing users to quickly and efficiently log onto their networks, transfer information, wrote emails and synchronise information with conventional PC devices. Media phones These would perhaps give access to Internet services and include Personal Information Management, audio and data functions. Â  Imaging phones Sending of photos and video clips to our friends on the other side of the world within seconds. Â  Entertainment phones How about playing a game with friend at the other side of the globe. Or sending your distributor teams a video clip of your new office? To introduce, switch or implement a new technology can never be an easy task. It involved a lot of technology know how, equipments and researches. The bottom line is, a huge sum of money will be required. Take for example, other than GPRS technology, some other technology will be required to kick off the 3G network system. One of them is WCDMA, or Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, a wideband radio technique providing high data rates, and EDGE, or Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, a high-speed modulation technique that triples the capacity of GPRS. The various networks have spent a lot of money on this technology and will spend even more before the services are launched. In UK mobile networks have paid (22 billion just to use the required radio spectrum. According to Gartnet Dataquests survey in May 2002, Singapore will spend an estimate of US$19. 9 million in 2003 and US$102. 9 million in 2004 on the WCDMA infrastructure alone. That is not all, according to reports from Europe and Japan, which had started the 3G networking, had been under a lot of criticize. Most of their problems were mainly from the handsets and the network integration. Those countries in the preparation for the 3G launch had been very cautious on the setup. Europe and Japan experience will serve as a guidance for their future operation. Introduction. 3G wireless networks are capable of transferring data at high speeds of up to 384Kbps. Average speeds for 3G network will range between 64Kbps and 384Kbps, quite a jump when compared to common wireless data speeds in the U. S that are often slower than a 14. 4Kb modem. 3G is considered high speed or broadband mobile Internet access, and as time to come, 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps. In order to know the evolution of 3G, it might be interesting to get an idea on the history on the revolution of mobile networking . History of Mobile Networking System First Generation (1G). The first generation of mobile cellular telecommunications system appeared in the 1980s. The first generation was not the beginning of mobile communication, as there were several mobile radio networks in existence before then, but they are not cellular systems. The capacity of those early networks was much lower than that of mobile networks. And the support for mobility was weak. In mobile cellular networks the coverage area is divided into small cells, and thus the same frequencies can be used several times in the network without disturbing interference. This increase the system capacity. The first generation used analog transmission techniques for traffic, which was almost entirely voice. There was no dominant standard but several competing ones. The most successful standards were Nordic(TACS), and Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS). Note that although the world is now busy moving into 3G networks, these first-generation networks, and many existing networks are growing. First Generation networks ( Extract from Introduction To 3G Mobile Communication) System Countries TACS/ETACS Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Philippines. Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, UAE, UK AMPS Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Canada, China, Georgia, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, USA, Vietnam, Western Samoa Second Generation (2G), 2G evolve in the year 1991, in Finland. Second generation mobile network system use digital radio transmission. Thus the boundary line between first and second generation systems is obvious: it is the analog/digital split. The second generation networks have much higher capacity than the first generation systems. One frequency channel is simultaneously divided among several users (either by code or time division). Hierarchical cell structures- in which the service area is covered by macro and picocells enhance the system capacity even further. There are four main standards for second-generation systems,: Global System for Mobile ( GSM ) communications and its derivatives, Digital AMPS (D-AMPS), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA {IS-95}) and Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) GSM uses the 900-MHz band is by far the most successful and widely used 2G system. PDC was eventually adopted by Japan. Generation 2. 5 (2. 5G), 2. 5G is a designation that broadly includes all advanced upgrades for the second generation networks. These upgrades may in fact sometimes provide almost same capabilities as the planned 3G systems. The boundary line between 2G and 2. 5G is a hazy one. It is difficult to say when a 2G becomes a 2. 5G system in a technical sense. When the wireless industry realized that it was going to be costly and technologically challenging to upgrade to 3G networks, 2. 5G emerged as an interim stage. These networks transfer data at speeds of up to 114Kbps, which is faster than traditional digital (2G) network. They are always on. A phone with 2. 5G services can alternate between using nets, sending or receiving test messages, and making calls without losing its connection to the Internet and email. Analysis of 3G Technology In the old days, when all phones were fixed rather than mobile, making a call involved establishing a direct electrical connection between your handset and the one you were calling. The same happens with 2G and 2. 5G networks, but instead of setting up a dedicated circuit, a small portion of the airwaves are reserved for your call. This is a really bad way of dividing up the available airwaves because it means that the spaces and pauses in speech get the same priority as the words. 3G networks change all this. Instead of reserving airspace each conversation is chopped up into packets, each one of which is labelled with a code denoting which dialogue it is from. The wireless literate generation of today (aged 12 35) provides a snapshot of tomorrows society and its drivers. The new generation is creating new usage patterns in favour of messaging and visual content. For them, messaging e. g SMS text messaging is the most natural way of personal communication. Instant communication is about being able to create and consume content (greetings, notes, snapshots/ postcards, moving pictures, instant voicemail) on the fly, and about filling transit moments with meaningful experiences. The mobile phone has become a personal trusted device that is capable of life management and enrichment, thanks to higher data rates and evolutionary user interfaces that have increased the simplicity and usability of terminals. Traditionally the major service has been voice but there has been an evolutionary step in 3G from Short Messaging Service (SMS) to 3GPP defined Multimedia Messaging, incorporating digital images and video clips with text or voice annotations. Industry analysts estimate that vendors are currently allocating from $200 billion in research and development resources to specify, design and manufacture infrastructure for evolving 3G networks. Of the 3G licenses currently awarded, more than 90 percent of those operators have specified WCDMA as their core 3G technology. Observers point out that, given this expected dominance of WCDMA as the 3G standard, this technology will undoubtedly receive the majority of RD funding and will yield the earliest, most extensive and most reliable product availability. What is WCDMA? WCDMA Wideband Code Division Multiplex Access (WCDMA) is the radio frequency technology indicated for all UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Services) networks, and WCDMA is widely expected to be the dominant technology for 3G networks worldwide. WCDMA supports high capacity, multiple simultaneous services and bit-rate performance of up to 2Mbit/s. But as a wideband (5 MHz channels) technology, WCDMA presents deployment challenges when implemented on narrow frequency allocations. When evaluating WCDMA infrastructure, operators should consider system solutions that provide well-established Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)-compatibility and that the resource allocation capabilities follow UMTS traffic class guidelines and Quality of Service attributes, allowing operators to optimize service differentiation. Modular designs allow these solutions to scale quickly to meet escalating network traffic demands. These same design advantages will allow these WCDMA solutions to be adapted to meet the demand for location-based services, personalized messaging and packet data traffic volumes that will define the coming wireless IP networks. These advanced WCDMA systems will also support seamless integration with GSM networks. 3G Concepts And Technology for Business 3G will be primarily driven by services and applications, not technology, although technologies such as Java, WAP, Bluetooth, SynchML and IPv6 have enabled third party application developments to meet users end-to-end service needs and expectations. The Mobile Internet will bring an explosion in the number of new applications a 3G hypermarket of services creating new marketing and revenue channels. Few business leaders are likely to turn down an opportunity to get an extra 10% of productivity from their mobile workforces, especially if it only costs a fraction of the reward. Third-generation (3G) wireless networks could facilitate this kind of return on investment (ROI) by extending desktop business-application, database, and intranet access into the mobile environment. 3G is an improvement over current networks, which deliver data and voice at no more than double the speed of dialup modems. The 3G infrastructure will eventually be able to transmit text, voice, video, and multimedia to a mobile handset with an always-on connection that is five times faster than a dialup modem. Initially, data-transfer rates may only equal todays dialup modem speeds, but that is still fast enough to make wireless service attractive to businesses seeking efficiency gains. Japans NTT DoCoMo turned on the worlds first 3G network in October 2001. Other mobile operators are conducting 3G trials in the United States and Europe, with plans to go live this year. The challenges include the complexity and costs of upgrading carrier networks and telephone handsets to handle 3G multimedia transmissions. Companies that adopt 3G networking for their mobile workforces within the next two years should expect limited coverage areas and the typical problems associated with any emerging technology. IDC recommends that company executives seeking 3G wireless connectivity should decide exactly why they want the service and pinpoint the efficiency points they need in order to recoup their investment costs in less than two years. Early adopters should measure the specific benefits of connecting mobile employees-reduced paperwork, faster collection of customer data, higher accuracy-and know which group of mobile employees will get the service first and why. In Europe, if an operator does not move fast into wireless data (3G) then the market will start to move without it threatening disintermediation for the laggards. At such, licences of the wideband connection, which carry new content-rich data and video-streaming services, cost up to US$10 billion in Italy and $45 billion in Germany respectively. (Source : Global Telecoms Business magazine). In both Japan and Korea, there is also a significant raise in the subscription in 3G mobile usage, stimulating the economic movement in the countries. In what ways can 3G networks be applied ? Application and Advantages, Multimedia Messaging Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS, is a messaging service for the mobile environment standardized by the WAP Forum and 3GPP. For consumers, MMS is very similar to Short Message Service (SMS): it provides automatic, immediate delivery of user-created content sent primarily from phone to phone. MMS also provides support for email addressing, so messages can be sent to email. In addition to text, an MMS message sent to or from the Nokia 6650 phone can contain still images, voice or audio clips, and video. An MMS message is a multimedia presentation in one entity; it is not a text file with attachments. MMS delivers a location independent, total communication experience and is a simple, logical extension of SMS, also providing a similarly solid and reliable platform on which the operator can build additional services and increase service differentiation. Rich Call Rich call is an audio conversation supported by concurrent access to an image or data and allows users to not only listen to what I say but also see what I mean. Multiple simultaneous media types such as messaging, voice and video games can be started and ended independently but without the need to obtain the information first and then call back. Mobile Internet Mobile Internet is not just todays internet accessed from a mobile device (although it will of course still be possible,) but instead applications will provide users with personalised, context dependent and interworking applications. The scope of these services will cover areas such as information, entertainment, travel and personal information management. Many will be wholly or partly sponsored by advertisers, be location aware and have mCommerce integration. Multimedia streaming and downloading In 3G, enhanced bandwidth capabilities and advanced terminals enable video and audio, either real time or near real time or download. Eg, two way video conferencing with audio, video streaming. Streaming Media Services Audio streaming (eg MP3) is seen as the first widespread mainstream service to generate revenue through increased data traffic, attracting well off, music consuming and impatient twenty to thirty something generation consumers to subscribe to higher Quality of Service access. Although these services are available, to some extent, through 2. 5G terminals and networks, the bandwidth vs capacity evolution suggests that the real enabler for mass market service is WCDMA radio access. Streaming alleviates the need for a large memory resource in the terminal since only a small sample of the video or music data resides there at any one time. Copyright is also less of an issue because at no time is the entire data stored in the device. Entertainment There are two types of entertainment passive and interactive (games and media ie TV. ) Users will be able to connect to online multi platform gaming experiences or download, try out and purchase games. Handsets will allow inter operability though WAP, GPRS, Java and Symbian OS, making play possible across handset manufacturers. 3G Problems and Disadvantages, As we have mentioned earlier on, 3G is not flawless. Japan NTT was hit with the lack of delicated applications written for broadband speeds of 384 Kbps and handsets were designed for voice-centric application. Many people had to carry 2 handsets to ensure national coverage. Handset Problems, all the extra tasks will put something of a burden on the handset. At the moment screens on phones are small, they are difficult to type or get data into and they typically only work with one mobile phone technology.