History of 4G and pre-4G technologies

• In 2002, the strategic vision for 4G — which ITU designated as IMT-Advanced — was laid out.
• In 2005, OFDMA transmission technology is chosen as candidate for the HSOPA downlink, later renamed 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) air interface E-UTRA.
• In November 2005, KT demonstrated mobile WiMAX service in Busan, South Korea.
• In June 2006, KT started the world's first commercial mobile WiMAX service in Seoul, South Korea.
• In mid-2006, Sprint Nextel announced that it would invest about US$5 billion in a WiMAX technology buildout over the next few years ($5.4 billion in real terms). Since that time Sprint has faced many setbacks, that have resulted in steep quarterly losses. On May 7, 2008, Sprint, Imagine, Google, Intel, Comcast, Bright House, and Time Warner announced a pooling of an average of 120 MHz of spectrum; Sprint merged its Xohm WiMAX division with Clearwire to form a company which will take the name Clear.
• In February 2007, the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo tested a 4G communication system prototype with 4x4 MIMO called VSF-OFCDM at 100 Mbit/s while moving, and 1 Gbit/s while stationary. NTT DoCoMo completed a trial in which they reached a maximum packet transmission rate of approximately 5 Gbit/s in the downlink with 12x12 MIMO using a 100 MHz frequency bandwidth while moving at 10 km/h, and is planning on releasing the first commercial network in 2010.
• In September 2007, NTT Docomo demonstrated e-UTRA data rates of 200 Mbit/s with power consumption below 100 mW during the test.
• In January 2008, a U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum auction for the 700 MHz former analog TV frequencies began. As a result, the biggest share of the spectrum went to Verizon Wireless and the next biggest to AT&T. Both of these companies have stated their intention of supporting LTE.
• In January 2008, EU commissioner Viviane Reding suggested re-allocation of 500–800 MHz spectrum for wireless communication, including WiMAX.
• February 15, 2008 - Skyworks Solutions released a front-end module for e-UTRAN.
• In April 2008, LG and Nortel demonstrated e-UTRA data rates of 50 Mbit/s while travelling at 110 km/h.
• In 2008, ITU-R established the detailed performance requirements of IMT-Advanced, by issuing a Circular Letter calling for candidate Radio Access Technologies (RATs) for IMT-Advanced.
• April 2008, just after receiving the circular letter, the 3GPP organized a workshop on IMT-Advanced where it was decided that LTE-Advanced, an evolution of current LTE standard, will meet or even exceed IMT-Advanced requirements following the ITU-R agenda.
• On 3 March 2009, Lithuanian's LRTC announcing the first operational "4G" mobile WiMAX network in Baltic states.
• In December 2009, Sprint began advertising "4G" service in selected cities in the United States, despite average download speeds of only 3-6Mbps with peak speeds of 10Mbps (not available in all markets).
• On December 14, 2009, the first commercial LTE deployment was in the Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo by the Swedish-Finnish network operator TeliaSonera and its Norwegian brandname NetCom (Norway). TeliaSonera branded the network "4G". The modem devices on offer were manufactured by Samsung (dongle GT-B3710), and the network infrastructure created by Huawei (in Oslo) and Ericsson (in Stockholm). TeliaSonera plans to roll out nationwide LTE across Sweden, Norway and Finland. TeliaSonera used spectral bandwidth of 10 MHz, and single-in-single-out, which should provide physical layer net bitrates of up to 50 Mbit/s downlink and 25 Mbit/s in the uplink. Introductory tests showed a TCP throughput of 42.8 Mbit/s downlink and 5.3 Mbit/s uplink in Stockholm.
• On 25 February 2010, Estonia's EMT opened LTE "4G" network working in test regime.
• On July 2010, Uzbekistan's MTS deployed LTE in Tashkent.

Deployment plans

In May 2005, Digiweb, an Irish fixed and wireless broadband company, announced that they have received a mobile communications license from the Irish Telecoms regulator, ComReg. This service will be issued the mobile code 088 in Ireland and will be used for the provision of 4G Mobile communications. Digiweb launched a mobile broadband network using FLASH-OFDM technology at 872 MHz.

On September 20, 2007, Verizon Wireless announced that it plans a joint effort with the Vodafone Group to transition its networks to the 4G standard LTE. On December 9, 2008, Verizon Wireless announced that they intend to build and begin to roll out an LTE network by the end of 2009. Since then, Verizon Wireless has said that they will start their rollout by the end of 2010.

On July 7, 2008, South Korea announced plans to spend 60 billion won, or US$58,000,000, on developing 4G and even 5G technologies, with the goal of having the highest mobile phone market share by 2012, and the hope of an international standard.

Telus and Bell Canada, the major Canadian cdmaOne and EV-DO carriers, have announced that they will be cooperating towards building a fourth generation (4G) LTE wireless broadband network in Canada. As a transitional measure, they are implementing 3G UMTS that went live in November 2009.

Sprint offers a 3G/4G connection plan, currently available in select cities in the United States. It delivers rates up to 10 Mbit/s.

In the United Kingdom, O2 is to use Slough as a guinea pig in testing the 4G network and has called upon Huawei to install LTE technology in six masts across the town to allow people to talk to each other via HD video conferencing and play PlayStation games while on the move.

Verizon Wireless has announced that it plans to augment its CDMA2000-based EV-DO 3G network in the United States with LTE. AT&T, along with Verizon Wireless has chosen to migrate toward LTE from 2G/GSM and 3G/HSPA by 2011.

The U.S. FCC is exploring the possibility of deployment and operation of a nationwide 4G public safety network which would allow first responders to seamlessly communicate between agencies and across geographies, regardless of devices. In June 2010 the FCC released a comprehensive white paper which indicates that the 10 MHz of dedicated spectrum currently allocated from the 700 MHz spectrum for public safety will provide adequate capacity and performance necessary for normal communications as well as serious emergency situations.

Beyond 4G research

Main article: 5G

A major issue in 4G systems is to make the high bit rates available in a larger portion of the cell, especially to users in an exposed position in between several basestations. In current research, this issue is addressed by macro-diversity techniques, also known as group cooperative relay, and also by beam-division multiple access.

Pervasive networks are an amorphous and at present entirely hypothetical concept where the user can be simultaneously connected to several wireless access technologies and can seamlessly move between them (See vertical handoff, IEEE 802.21). These access technologies can be Wi-Fi, UMTS, EDGE, or any other future access technology. Included in this concept is also smart-radio (also known as cognitive radio technology) to efficiently manage spectrum u

se and transmission power as well as the use of mesh routing protocols to create a pervasive network.

4G wireless standards

In September 2009 the technology proposals have been submitted to ITU-R as 4G candidates. Basically all proposals are based on two technologies :

• LTE Advanced standardized by the 3GPP
• 802.16m standardized by the IEEE

First set of 3GPP requirements on LTE Advanced has been approved in June 2008. LTE Advanced will be standardized in 2010 as part of the Release 10 of the 3GPP specification. LTE Advanced will be fully built on the existing LTE specification Release 10 and not be defined as a new specification series. A summary of the technologies that have been studied as the basis for LTE Advanced is summarized in a technical report.