Peter Muszynski , Petri Jolma and Roman Pichna 1 . 1 A Brief Look at Cellular History

The history of mobile communications started with the work of the first pioneers in the area. The experiments of Hertz in the late 18th century inspired Marconi to search markets for the new commodity (to be). The communication needs in the First and Second World Wars were also supporting and accelerating the start of cellular radio, especially in terms of utilisation of ever higher frequencies. The first commercial systems were simplex, and the operator was required to place the call. In the case of mobileoriginated calls the customer had to search for an idle channel manually [1]. Bell Laboratories first introduced the cellular concept as known today. In December 1971 they demonstrated how the cellular system could be designed [2]. The first cellular system in the world became operational in Tokyo, Japan, in 1979. The network was operated by NTT, known also as a strong driver for cellular systems based on Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA). The system utilised 600 duplex channels in the 800MHz band with a channel separation of 25 kHz. Another analogue system in Japan was the Japanese Total Access Communication System (JTACS). During the 1980s it was realised that, from the user’s point of view, a single air interface was required to provide roaming capabilities. A development study was initiated in 1989 by the Japanese government, and a new digital system, Pacific Digital Cellular (PDC), was introduced in 1991. In 1981, 2 years later than in Japan, the cellular era also reached Europe. Nordic Mobile Telephone started operations in the 450MHz band (the NMT450 system) in Scandinavia. The Total Access Communication System (TACS) was launched in the United Kingdom in 1982 and Extended TACS was deployed in 1985. Subsequently in Germany the C450 cellular system was introduced in September 1985. Thus, at the end of the 1980s Europe was equipped with several different cellular systems that were unable to inter-operate. By then it was clear that first-generation cellular systems were becoming obsolete, since integrated circuit technology had made digital communications not only practical but also more economical than analogue technology. In the early 1990s second-generation (2G) (digital) cellular systems began to be deployed