Overview

Since the inception of mobile communications in the early 1980s, we have witnessed an ever-growing increase in the development of mobile communication technology. Analog wireless communication systems were replaced by digital ones, voice services are being complemented with data services, supported data transfer speeds have increased by more than a thousand-fold, network coverage has been stretched to cover virtually entire countries and continents, and many other remarkable achievements have taken place in a relatively short period. Many visions, even the most optimistic ones, failed to foresee that in just a quarter century the number of mobile subscribers will approach one-third of the world's population and surpass wireline subscribers. Unveiling the future of wireless systems was then perhaps a more difficult task than it would be today, since now we can expect that part of the future wireless networks will be the result of an evolution of the current networks. Establishing a sound vision of future mobile communications systems is one of the main purposes of this book. Large portions of this book will be devoted to the present and discuss future 4G networks from different perspectives [1 110].

Presently,...