TABLE OF CONTENTS Wireless telecommunications will enter a new era in the coming years. New systems and new customer needs are already introducing vast challenges, in particular for the implementation of the terminals. The RF section is a major contributor to the size and cost of the terminal. Consequently, the winning terminal implementations will be those with the best RF section.
None of the implementation technologies alone seem to provide the full answer to the RF challenges. Instead, the winning RF will be achieved by careful joint optimisation of the overall technology portfolio with the proper radio architecture.
From the early 1980s when the first generation of analog systems NMT, AMPS, and TACS were first introduced, the cellular phone market has exploded to be one of the major consumer product markets. By the end of 1997 there were close to 207 million cellular subscribers worldwide. There was an increase of 70 million during 1997 alone. According to some predictions the number of cellular subscribers will exceed one billion by 2005 [Nokia Press Release, September 1998]. As a world record for the cellular phone penetration, Finland has just exceeded 50% of the population (August 1998). Currently, digital narrow-band systems led by GSM continue to conquer the world. In the near future, however, the voice-based second-generation cellular systems will be complemented by new systems. The main interest in Europe is toward the WCDMA radio access technology that ETSI selected in January 1998 to...
