What is 1G or First generation of wireless telecommunication technology?

The First generation of wireless telecommunication technology is known as 1G was

introduced in 1980. The main difference between then existing systems and 1G was
invent of cellular technology and hence it is also known as First generation of analog
cellular telephone. In 1G or First generation of wireless telecommunication technology
the network contains many cells (Land area was divided into small sectors, each sector
is known as cell, a cell is covered by a radio network with one transceiver) and so same
frequency can be reused many times which results in great spectrum usage and thus
increased the system capacity i.e. large number of users could be accommodated easily.
Use of cellular system in 1G or First generation of wireless telecommunication technology
resulted in great spectrum usage. The First generation of wireless telecommunication
technology used analog transmission techniques which were basically used for
transmitting voice signals. 1G or first generation of wireless telecommunication
technology also consist of various standards among which most popular were Advance
Mobile Phone Service (AMPS), Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT), Total Access
Communication System (TACS). All of the standards in 1G use frequency modulation
techniques for voice signals and all the handover decisions were taken at the Base
Stations (BS). The spectrum within cell was divided into number of channels and every
call is allotted a dedicated pair of channels. Data transmission between the wire part of
connection and PSTN (Packet Switched Telephone Network) was done using packetswitched network.
Different standards of 1G were used worldwide like:
In 1982 Advance Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) was employed in United States and later
it was used in Canada, Central America, South America, Australia, Argentina, Brazil,
Burma, Brunei, Bangladesh, China ,Cambodia, Georgia, Hong Kong, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Mongolia, Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Guinea,
Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri lanka, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Thailand,
Vietnam, Western Samoa.
Total Access Communication System (TACS) / Extended Total Access Communication
System (ETACS) was employed in United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait,
Macao, Bahrain, Malta, Singapore.
Nordic Mobile Telephone-450 (NMT-450) was employed in Austria, Belgium, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Spain,
Sweden, Thailand, turkey and Ukraine.
Nordic Mobile Telephone-900 (NMT-900) was employed in Cyprus, Denmark, Finland,
France, Greenland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Thailand.
C-NETZ (C-NETZ in German refers to C Network which was the first cellular wireless
telephone network in Germany) was employed in Germany, Portugal and South Africa.

Radiocom2000 was employed in France.

Radio Telephone Mobile System (RTMS) was employed in Italy
Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) was first employed in Japan and later NTACS
(Narrowband Total Access Communications System) and JTACS (Japanese Total
Access Communication System) were also employed.
Use of Analog signals for data (in this case voice) transmission led to many
problems
those
are:
1. Analog Signals does not allow advance encryption methods hence there is no security
of data i.e. anybody could listen to the conversion easily by simple techniques. The user
identification number could be stolen easily and which could be used to make any call
and the user whose identification number was stolen had to pay the call charges.
2. Analog signals can easily be affected by interference and the call quality decreases.
Source: http://www.cleardoubts.com/technology/what-is-1g-or-first-generation-ofwireless-telecommunication-technology/

What are 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G networks ?

Tags: GPRS, UMTS, Edge, WiMAX, LTE, CDMA, WCDMA
The "G" in wireless networks refers to the "generation" of the underlying wireless
network technology. Technically generations are defined as follows:
1G networks (NMT, C-Nets, AMPS, TACS) are considered to be the first analog
cellular systems, which started early 1980s. There were radio telephone systems even
before that. 1G networks were conceived and designed purely for voice calls with
almost no consideration of data services (with the possible exception of built-in modems
in some headsets).
2G networks (GSM, CDMAOne, D-AMPS) are the first digital cellular systems launched
early 1990s, offering improved sound quality, better security and higher total capacity.
GSM supports circuit-switched data (CSD), allowing users to place dial-up data calls
digitally, so that the network's switching station receives actual ones and zeroes rather
than the screech of an analog modem.
2.5G networks (GPRS, CDMA2000 1x) are the enhanced versions of 2G networks with
theoretical data rates up to about 144kbit/s. GPRS offered the first always-on data
service.
3G networks (UMTS FDD and TDD, CDMA2000 1x EVDO, CDMA2000 3x, TDSCDMA, Arib WCDMA, EDGE, IMT-2000 DECT) are newer cellular networks that have
data rates of 384kbit/s and more.
The UN's International Telecommunications Union IMT-2000 standard requires

stationary speeds of 2Mbps and mobile speeds of 384kbps for a "true" 3G.
4G technology refers to the fourth generation of mobile phone communication
standards. LTE and WiMAX are marketed as parts of this generation, even though they
fall short of the actual standard.
The ITI has taken ownership of 4G, bundling into a specification known as IMTAdvanced. The document calls for 4G technologies to deliver downlink speeds of 1Gbps
when stationary and 100Mbps when mobile, roughly 500-fold and 250-fold increase
over IMT-2000 respectively. Unfortunately, those specs are so aggressive that no
commercialized standard currently meets them.
Historically, WiMAX and Long-Term Evolution (LTE), the standard generally accepted to
succeed both CDMA2000 and GSM, have been marketed and labeled as "4G
technologies," but that's only partially true: they both make use of a newer, extremely
efficient multiplexing scheme (OFDMA, as opposed to the older CDMA or TDMA),
however, WiMAX tops at around 40Mbps and LTE at around 100Mbps theoretical
speed. Practical, real-world commercial networks using WiMAX and LTE range between
4Mbps and 30Mbps. Even though the speeed of WiMAX and LTE is well short of IMTAdvanced's standard, they're very different than 3G networks and carriers around the
world refer to them as "4G". Updates to these standards -- WiMAX 2 and LTEAdvanced, respectively -- will increase througput further, but neither has been finalized
yet.
Source: http://www.speedguide.net/faq/what-are-1g-2g-3g-and-4g-networks-365

4G, 3G, GPRS and "E"

These indicate which wireless technology your phone currently uses and it refers to
your data connection. Explanations below
GPRS stands for General Packet Radio Service and it is the slowest one, it is a data
connection standard available in GSM networks - the second generation cellular
networks (2G). GSM traditionally work on 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz and they were
initially designed for circuit-switched voice service. Channels are spaced 200 kHz,
usually several of them per base station, each channel having 8 time-slots. A single
voice connection would occupy one time slot, so this is a combination of FDD and TDD
- Frequency Division Duplex and Time Division Duplex. Later came HSCSD (circuit
switched data) which worked in a similar manner to a dial-in modem connection, but it
was GPRS that made the wireless cellular data revolution - in GPRS data is sent in
packets, just like on computer networks (as opposed to circuit-switching). This of course
required a major redesign of the operator's core network, adding packet-switching
nodes to support IP packet data, hence a GSM network with GPRS is sometimes called
2.5G. Expect speeds of several tens of kbps.

E stands for EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) and it's sometimes called
Enhanced GPRS. It is basically what the name says - enhances the GPRS standard by
adding a few more modulation schemes with higher data throughput. The network
architecture is almost unchanged, but the data speeds increased noticeably - expect
data rates above 100 kbps. Sometimes called 2.75G.
3G - a 3rd generation network, the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications
System), is a completely different technology from GSM and its enhancements. It
usually works on 2100 MHz and the big difference from 2G is in how different users
share access to the radio channel - in case of 3G it's WCDMA: Wideband Code Division
Multiple Access - a single 5 MHz channel is shared for all connected mobile phones
and each phone has a special code assigned for decoding its data. The barebone
UMTS (without HSDPA/HSUPA) will typically give you several hundreds of kbps.
H - not in your question, but nevertheless also often pops on the phone screen. It is to
3G what EDGE was to GPRS - significantly higher speeds, but without much network
architecture changes. HSDPA (or HSUPA) means High Speed Downlink (or Uplink)
Packet Access, and it's an extension to the 3G standard that increases the data
throughput speeds - expect several Mbps.
4G - 4th generation network called LTE (Long Term Evolution), works in a very different
manner than 2nd and 3rd generations. Shared access is done by OFDMA - the
available channel is divided into subchannels (also called subcarriers) and each of them
is treated separately; groups of those subcarriers are assigned to different mobile
phones. Also LTE is designed as a data-only network so all of the traffic is IP-based and
there are no more circuit-switched connections. In fact unless the operator has VoLTE
service (Voice over LTE), your 4G connection will only handle sending data, and to
make/receive a voice call your phone will have to fall back to a 2G or 3G network. Of
course the data speeds will be quite higher, you can expect tens of Mbps.

Ok let me tell you the basic concept. Many things are taken into consideration while
defining wireless generation, the techniques they use, service they provide, capacity,
power, accessibility etc. Mobile generation is the result of improvement in all these
factor. So what made the difference and how they were evolved??
Firstly, when wireless generation started, it was analog communication. That generation
is 1G. They used various analog modulation for data transfer. Now when the
communication migrated from analog to digital, the foundation of latest communication
were led. Hence came 2G. I will touch only the concept to help you understand basics,
so that you can easily understand the foundation.
2G: (Voice+SMS/MMS)

It marked the start of digital voice communication era. Main motive of this generation
was to provide secure and reliable communication channel. It implemented the concept
of CDMA and GSM. Provided small data service like sms and mms. Note that 2G
internet services came after the 3G estabishment.
3G:(Voice + Data)
Then came the time of some decent speed internet connection and awesome voice
channel. They exploited area of Wideband-CDMA(W-CDMA), provided better bandwidth
and better connectivity even during motion(like in vehicle, train). There was some
technical shift towards HSPA for better data communication and to maintain 4G
compatibility.
4G: (Only DATA and Voice over data)
Era of broadband wireless. This in the making and have been successfully deployed in
only some part of the world. Best aspect of 4G is the use of data services for everything.
Internet is the back bone and even voice call is done over internet. There is no separate
voice channel. This allows usage of wider bandwidth in the communication channel for
data.

Standard 2G has no internet connectivity. The are two main types of 2G - Code
division multiple access (CDMA) and Time division multiple access (TDMA). The
standard adopted in Europe is GSM, which is a TDMA-based standard. The
United States still uses CDMA but many of the other countries which started
using CDMA have since switched to GSM, for example India.
2.5G refers to 2G networks which also support General Packet Radio Service
(GPRS). This gives you internet connectivity, but only with a fairly modest
throughput.
2.75G is Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). This squeezes every
last bit of internet bandwidth out of GSM by using clever compression and
transmission techniques. EDGE can be up to three times quicker than regular
GPRS.
3G refers to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System in Europe and
CDMA2000 in the United States. The radio frequencies used by 3G are different
to the ones used by 2G networks so the cost to the operators of upgrading from
2G to 3G is high, both in terms of installing new infrastructure and purchasing
licenses for the required frequencies. 3G networks were designed with data
transmission in mind so the internet connectivity is usually much faster than on a
2G network.

3.5G or 3.75G can be used to refer to High-Speed Downlink Packet Access

(HSDPA and HSPA+), which is an enhancement to 3G analogous to EDGE for
2G. The potential data rates are theoretically above 100 Mbps, but rarely
approach this in practice.

Source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-1G-2G-3G-4G-and5G

TACS
Total Access Communication System (TACS) is an analogue mobile communications
system used in the U.K. and a number of other countries. TACS is a derivative of the
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) developed by AT&T for the U.S.A. Its prime
differences are the radio frequencies, the radio channel bandwidth and the data
signalling rates. TACS was introduced in the U.K. in 1985. It's introduction was very
succesfull. Over 25 other countries used TACS.
TACS is an analogue FM system operating in the 890-915 MHz / 935-960 MHz band;
the band in which GSM was introduced later. The radio channel bandwidth was 25 kHz,
offering 1000 duplex channels in the 900 MHz band. Because TACS used a reduced
radio channel bandwidth compared to AMPS, which has a bandwidth of 30 kHz, the
data signalling rate had to be reduced.
A modified version of TACS has been in use in Japan. The Japanese version was
called JTACS. The main difference are another radio frequency band in which it
operated.
Source: http://www.telecomabc.com/t/tacs.html

Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS)

Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) is a standard system for analog signal cellular
telephone service in the United States and is also used in other countries. It is based on
the initial electromagnetic radiation spectrum allocation for cellular service by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1970. Introduced by AT&T in 1983,
AMPS became one of the most widely deployed cellular system in the United States.
AMPS allocates frequency ranges within the 800 and 900 Megahertz (MHz) spectrum to
cellular telephone. Each service provider can use half of the 824-849 MHz range for
receiving signals from cellular phones and half the 869-894 MHz range for transmitting

to cellular phones. The bands are divided into 30 kHz sub-bands, called channels. The
receiving channels are called reverse channels and the sending channels are called
forward channels. The division of the spectrum into sub-band channels is achieved by
using frequency division multiple access (FDMA).
The signals received from a transmitter cover an area called a cell. As a user moves out
of the cell's area into an adjacent cell, the user begins to pick up the new cell's signals
without any noticeable transition. The signals in the adjacent cell are sent and received
on different channels than the previous cell's signals to so that the signals don't interfere
with each other.
The analog service of AMPS has been updated with digital cellular service by adding to
FDMA a further subdivision of each channel using time division multiple access
(TDMA). This service is known as digital AMPS (D-AMPS). Although AMPS and DAMPS originated for the North American cellular telephone market, they are now used
worldwide with over 74 million subscribers, according to Ericsson, one of the major
cellular phone manufacturers.
Source: http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Advanced-MobilePhone-Service

High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD)

High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD) is circuit-switched wireless data
transmission for mobile users at data rates up to 38.4 Kbps, four times faster than the
standard data rates of the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication standard in
1999. HSCSD is comparable to the speed of many computer modems that
communicate with today's fixed telephone networks.
Source: http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/High-Speed-Circuit-SwitchedData

HSPA (high speed packet access)

HSPA (high speed packet access) is a third-generation (3G) mobile broadband
communications technology.
The term HSPA actually refers to two specific protocols used in tandem, high speed
downlink packet access (HSDPA) and high speed uplink packet access (HSUPA).
HSPA networks offer a maximum of 14.4 megabytes per second (MBps) of throughput
per cell.

An improved version of high speed packet access technology, known as Evolved

HSPA, offers 42 Mbps of throughput per cell. By using dual cell deployment and
multiple input, multiple output architecture, HSPA+ networks can achieve maximum
throughput of 168 Mbps overall.
The International Telecommunication Union recognized HSPA+ as a fourth-generation
(4G) technology in December 2010. HSPA+, however, offers significantly slower speeds
than the predominant 4G standard, long term evolution (LTE).
Source: http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/HSPA-high-speedpacket-access

You would have noticed different symbols appearing on your smartphone or

tablets status bar at different times such as G, E, 3G, H and H+. Ever wondered
what do they actually mean? Many readers have been asking us their exact meanings
and why those symbols keep on switching. I have created a small table which explains
the meaning of all these symbols.

Note 1: 8 Bits = 1 Byte. Hence, you need to divide the above speeds (displayed in
bits/s) by 8 to get the speeds in KB/s, MB/s or GB/s.
Note 2: HSPA is further divided into HSDPA (download) and HSUPA (upload ) to
denote download and upload speeds respectively.
Note 3: Also, all these download and upload speeds are just theoretical maximum limits
and not indicative of the actual real-world speeds. Real-world speeds vary depending
upon a lot of factors such as the QoS, signal strength and network congestion.
Source: http://telecomtalk.info/difference-between-g-e-3g-h-4g-symbols-we-findout/121666/