Introduction

An area that we’ve spent little time on in this book up to now is the wireless network. This book is, after all, intended to be a guide for mobile business and strategy, but it should not exclude an understanding of the technology that makes it all happen. It’s important to understand the technical and physical infrastructure of mobile systems to better understand how the business applications are implemented. Therefore, this chapter describes the evolution of wireless technology throughout the generations. Wireless networks have gone through many evolutionary changes, from the early analog bag cellular phones to today’s fully digital 3G (third generation) smartphones. You’ll find that wireless technology is usually broken down into generations. The generations we’ll review in this chapter are:

  • First generation (1G): Analog
  • Second generation (2G): CDMA, TDMA, and GSM
  • “Two and a half” generation (2.5G): GPRS and EDGE
  • Third generation (3G): CDMA2000, wCDMA, and UMTS
  • Fourth generation (4G): Voice-to-text and OFDM

This chapter is still written for the business savvy but with a technology twist to help our readers understand why they might want to use certain technologies for business applications. So, we won’t go into the nuts and bolts of the wireless network. But, if you are interested in learning more about the deeper architectural concepts of wireless networking, check out our book The CGE&Y Guide to Wireless Enterprise Application Architecture, available through John Wiley & Sons. As for this chapter, we’ll continue with a discussion on an area that has made enormous advancements in the last couple of years, wireless LANs. You probably understand that it’s almost impossible to forget the topic of wireless security and what any
business strategist should be aware of in deciding on a wireless network. We’ve left the topic of securing a wireless infrastructure for the end of this chapter. Right now, let’s discuss how the different generations of wireless networks have defined mobility and how applications in this exciting space have evolved through the years.

Taken From : Enterprise Guide to Gaining Business Value from Mobile Technologies

Filed under: Generate Money

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