Wireless Personal Communications Systems

Wireless personal communications, or wireless as it is now being called, has arrived. The hype is starting to fade, and the hard work of deploying new systems and services for personal communications is underway. In the United States, the FCC propelled the wireless era from infancy to mainstream with a $7.7 billion auction of 60 MHz of radio spectrum in the 180011900 MHz band. With the largest single sale of public property in the history of mankind mostly complete, the resources of the entire world are being called upon to develop inexpensive, rapidly deployable wireless systems and sub scriber units for an industry that is adding s\lbscribers at greater than 50% annual rate. This growth is commonplace for wireless service companies throughout the world, and in the U.S., where as many as 7 licensed wireless service providers may be competing for cellularlPCS customers within the next couple of years, differentiators in cost, qual ity, service, and coverage will become critical to customer acceptance and use. Many of these issues are discussed in the papers included in this book.

The area of personal and wireless communications is a burgeoning field. Technology advances and new frequency allocations for personal communication services (PCS) are creating numerous business and technical opportunities. It is becoming clear that an essential requirement for exploiting opportunities is the ability to track the dramatic changes in wireless technology, which is a principal aim of this book. Wireless Personal Communications: Research Developments places particular emphasis on the areas of signal processing, propagation and spread-spectrum, and emerging communication systems. This book contains new results on adaptive antennas for capacity improvements in wireless communication systems, as well as state-of-the-art information on the latest technical developments. Also included are several chapters which discuss the impact of defense conversion on the wireless industry, and related competitive issues. The six parts of the book each focus on a distinct issue in wireless communications. Part I contains several tutorial chapters on key areas in wireless communications. The first chapter is on radio wave propagation for emerging wireless personal communication systems. Chapter two contains a comprehensive study of emerging DSP-based interference rejection techniques for single channel (antenna) systems. Chapter three deals with spread spectrum wireless communications, explaining the concept of spread spectrum, modeling techniques for spread spectrum, and current applications and research issues for spread spectrum systems. Part II focuses on digital signal processing and spread spectrum, two means of creating interference and multipath robust communications. Part III concerns propagation aspects of wireless communications. Part IV discusses the performance of emerging wireless systems. Part V describes the opportunities and pitfalls of defense conversion from the perspective of several U.S. defense firms that have successfully made the transition to commercial wireless. The final section discusses a number of competitive issues regarding personal communication services.

This book presents the technology and underlying principles of wireless communications systems. Written by a leading authority, it provides the perfect introduction for the professional or the student who has a basic understanding of telecommunications. Each system is described using a unified framework so the reader can easily compare and contrast the systems. More specifically, key features such as architecture, radio transmission, logical channels, messages, mobility management, security, power control, and handoff are addressed for each system. In addition, an analysis of such design goals as low price, wide geographical coverage, transmission quality, privacy, and spectrum efficiency helps the reader understand why the various systems have such divergent designs. Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises, and the last chapter is dedicated to twelve tutorials that provide concise explanations of technical subjects essential to wireless communications.

This book presents the technology and underlying principles of wireless communications systems. Written by a leading authority, it provides the perfect introduction for the professional or the student who has a basic understanding of telecommunications. Each system is described using a unified framework so the reader can easily compare and contrast the systems. More specifically, key features such as architecture, radio transmission, logical channels, messages, mobility management, security, power control, and handoff are addressed for each system. In addition, an analysis of such design goals as low price, wide geographical coverage, transmission quality, privacy, and spectrum efficiency helps the reader understand why the various systems have such divergent designs. Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises, and the last chapter is dedicated to twelve tutorials that provide concise explanations of technical subjects essential to wireless communications.

In this book, the state-of-the-art and future vision of wireless communications is presented in the form of a number of new services. Wireless personal communications is clearly a different service than today's cellular radio or cordless telephone, but there is an evolutionary connection between the three services. This book addresses questions about what features of personal communication services (PCS) will be met by existing or enhanced digital cellular radio technology. The regulatory and standards aspects of wireless communications are currently in a crucial stage of their formulation. A section of the book is devoted to the opinions of representatives from regulatory agencies and standards organizations on the future of this critical area. One of the most intriguing questions about the future of wireless communications has to do with the choice of multiple access technique. The trade offs between time division multiple access (TDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA) have been the topic of many a heated discussion amongst members of the wireless community. This book presents a thorough discussion of a number of the topics which are instrumental in making a fair comparison of TDMA and CDMA; these topics include: analytical performance evaluation techniques, capacity studies, equalization requirements, and shared spectrum comparisons. Many of the technologies associated with wireless personal communications are reaching the design stages. This book presents a number of alternatives for designs of both base stations and user terminals. Some of the key questions of equalization, control channel requirements, multi-path diversity and channel allocation strategies have been addressed. Invariably, system designs and performance are tied to the characteristics of the radio channel. This book introduces several novel techniques for predicting propagation and system performance in a variety of indoor and outdoor environments. These techniques include analytical as well as computer simulation algorithms for predicting signal strenghts and other channel parameters based on the local topographical features. This book serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as a text for advanced courses on wireless communications, cellular radio, or digital mobile radio.

Wireless Personal Communications: Channel Modeling and Systems Engineering presents a broad range of topics in wireless communications, including perspectives from both industry and academia. This book serves as a reflection of emerging technologies in wireless communications and features papers from world-renowned authors on the subject. Wireless Personal Communications: Channel Modeling and Systems Engineering is divided into six sections. The first five of these cover the following topics: Propagation and Channel Modeling (4 papers); Antennas (6 papers); Multiuser Detection (3 papers); Radio Systems and Technology (4 papers); and Wireless Data (3 papers). The last section contains invited papers on areas of significant interest. Wireless Personal Communications: Channel Modeling and Systems Engineering serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the subject. It is an essential tool for graduate students, postgraduate researchers, academics, and anyone working in the research aspect of the wireless communications industry.

The proceedings consists of 19 papers presented at the June 1998 symposium and ten posters. The papers are divided into five sections devoted to the following topics: smart antennas and diversity, propagation, interference cancellation, equalization, and modulation, coding, and networking. The contributions reflect current research thrusts and emerging technologies in wireless communication. Among the topics are frequency reuse reduction for IS-136 using a four element adaptive array, predicting propagation loss from leaky coaxial cable terminated with an indoor antenna, a new hybrid CDMA/TDMA multiuser receiver system, an effective LMS equalizer for the GSM chipset, and evaluation of the ad-hoc connectivity with the zone routing protocols. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The wireless industry is growing at a phenomenal rate. Cellular subscribers are increasing at a rate of 45% per year, the market for wireless local loop service is growing at a rate of 42%, and the wireless local area network market is growing at a rate of 61 %. This growth and potential for future growth has motivated companies to commit $20 billion in obtaining 90 MHz of PCS spectrum during the recent FCC auctions in the United States. Obviously spectrum is a costly, but critical, resource. Efficient utilization of this resource is essential for profitable wireless service. To meet this challenge, researchers in wireless communications are tenaciously developing more spectrally efficient modulation techniques, planning tools for efficient communication system layout, and digital signal processing techniques for more robust communications. The papers and lectures presented in this book were originally given at the Sixth Annual Virginia Tech Symposium on Wireless Personal Communications and cover a broad range of topics in wireless communications. The majority of the papers are relevant to creating higher capacity (spectrally efficient) systems with greater coverage. Topics include adaptive antenna array measurements and algorithm comparisons, Cellular Digital Packet Data deployment guidelines, speech coding techniques, wireless system design methodology, and propagation measurements in hostile or previously unexplored channels.