3G Technology

What is 3G Technology?

 3G is the next generation of technology which has revolutionized the telecommunication industry. Apart from increasing the speed of communication, the objective of this technology is to provide various value added services like  video calling, live streaming, mobile internet access, IPTV, etc on the mobile phones. These services are possible because the 3G spectrum provides the necessary bandwidth.

Technically speaking 3G is a network protocol which refers to the generations of mobile phones and telecommunication equipments which are compatible with the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000) standards stated by International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The basic requirement for compiling to IMT-2000 standards is that the technology should provide peak data rates of atleast 200 kbit/s. It’s worth mentioning that speed isn’t the only criteria for deciding whether the network protocol is 3G or not. 3G isn’t just any high speed network but a protocol which has its own standards defined under IMT-2000 by ITU.

3G Technology is designed for multimedia communication. It provides services like higher data transfer rates. One of its key visions is to provide seamless global roaming, enabling users to move across borders while using the same number and handset. According to ITU it is expected that IMT-2000 will provide higher transmission rates: a minimum speed of 2Mbit/s for stationary or walking users, and 348kbit/s in a moving vehicle.

Birth of IMT-2000

The concept of IMT came into existence in the mid-1980s at ITU.  It took more than ten years for the approval of standards for the next generation systems. These standards are branded as IMT-2000. Under the technical specifications the spectrum between 400 MHz and 3 GHz was dictated technically suitable for the third generation. IMT-2000 is the result of collaboration of many entities, inside the ITU (ITU-R and ITU-T), and outside the ITU (3GPP, 3GPP2, UWCC and so on). This approval has made possible the full interoperability and interworking of mobile systems.

It facilitates five radio interfaces based on three technologies namely FDMA, TDMA and CDMA. The accommodated radio interfaces are : IMT-DS, IMT-MC, IMT-SC, IMT-TC, IMT-FT

Contributor Technologies of 3G

The 3G technology is comprised of basically three technologies, but it is not the reason for its nomenclature as 3G. The technologies are:

·         CDMA2000                -       Code Division Multiple Access.

TD-SCDMA                -       Time-division Synchronous Code-division Multiple Access.

·         W-CDMA (UMTS)       -      Wideband Code Division Multiple Access.