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Wireless revolution

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Handheld Maritime VHF

A handheld on-board communication station of the maritime mobile service.

AVM BlueFRITZ! USB v1

Bluetooth dongle. RF CMOS mixed-signal integrated circuits are widely used in nearly all modern Bluetooth devices.[1]

The wireless revolution began in the 1990s,[2][3][4] with the advent of digital wireless networks leading to a social revolution, and a paradigm shift from wired to wireless technology,[5] including the proliferation of commercial digital wireless technologies such as cell phones, mobile telephony, pagers, wireless computer networks,[2] cellular networks, the wireless Internet, and laptop and handheld computers with wireless connections.[6] The wireless revolution has been driven by advances in radio frequency (RF) and microwave engineering,[2] and the transition from analog to digital RF technology,[5][6] which enabled a substantial increase in voice traffic along with the delivery of digital data such as text messaging, images and streaming media.[5] The wireless revolution is part of the Digital Revolution.

The core component of this revolution is the MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor).[5][7] Power MOSFETs such as LDMOS (lateral-diffused MOS) are used in RF power amplifiers to boost RF signals to a level that enables long-distance wireless network access for consumers,[5] while RF CMOS (radio frequency CMOS) circuits are used in radio transceivers to transmit and receive wireless signals at low cost and with low power consumption.[8][9][7] The MOSFET is the basic building block of modern wireless networks, including mobile networks such as 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G.[10][5] Most of the essential elements in modern wireless networks are built from MOSFETs, including the base station modules, routers,[10] RF circuits, radio transceivers,[8] transmitters,[2] and RF power amplifiers.[5] MOSFET scaling is also the primary factor behind rapidly increasing wireless network bandwidth, which has been doubling every 18 months,[5] as noted by Edholm's law.[11]

History[]

See also: MOS revolution, Power MOSFET, RF CMOS, Telecommunication, and History of telecommunication
Atalla1963
Dawon Kahng
Mohamed M. Atalla (above) and Dawon Kahng (below) invented the MOSFET (1959), which enabled the wireless revolution.
D2PAK

Power MOSFETs, which are used in RF power amplifiers to boost radio frequency (RF) signals in long-distance wireless networks.

Abidi-262sm (cropped)

Asad Ali Abidi invented RF CMOS technology in the late 1980s. RF CMOS is fundamental to the wireless revolution.

Marvell 88W8010 (100% Quality PNG)

WiFi 802.11g transceiver. RF CMOS is widely used in WiFi devices.[12]

Analog technology[]

Millimetre wave communication was first investigated by Bengali physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose during 1894–1896, when he reached an extremely high frequency of up to 60 GHz in his radio experiments.[13] He also introduced the use of semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves,[14] when he patented the radio crystal detector in 1901.[15][16]

In 1924, Japanese engineer Kenjiro Takayanagi began a research program on electronic television. In 1925, he demonstrated a CRT television with thermal electron emission.[17] In 1926, he demonstrated a CRT television with 40-line resolution,[18] the first working example of a fully electronic television receiver.[17] In 1927, he increased the television resolution to 100 lines, which was unrivaled until 1931.[19] In 1928, he was the first to transmit human faces in half-tones on television, influencing the later work of Vladimir K. Zworykin.[20]

The earliest transistors in the late 1940s were followed by transistor radios popularized by Sony with their TR-55 in 1955 and TR-63 in 1957. However, wireless transmission was largest restricted to analog electronics, namely radio and television for the next several decades.

Wireless revolution[]

The wireless revolution began in the 1990s,[2][3][4] with the advent of digital wireless networks.[5] The transition from analog to digital wireless systems was introduced in the 1990s, improving the capacity of cellular systems through digitization of voice and efficient digital modulation schemes. These systems also provided additional features such as security, short messaging, and circuit-switched data.[21] The wireless revolution was enabled by several key technologies:

MOSFET transistor: The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959.[22] Its very large-scale integration (VLSI) capability led to wide adoption for digital integrated circuit chips by the early 1970s,[23] but it was initially not the most effective transistor for analog RF technology where the older bipolar junction transistor (BJT) remained dominant up until the 1980s.[5] A gradual shift began with the emergence of power MOSFETs, which are discrete MOS power devices designed for power electronic applications,[22] including the vertical power MOSFET by Hitachi in 1969,[24][25] the VDMOS (vertical-diffused MOS) by John Moll's research team at HP Labs in 1977,[25] and the LDMOS by Hitachi in 1977.[26] MOSFETs began to be used for RF applications in the 1970s.[2] By the early 1990s, the MOSFET had replaced the BJT as the core component of RF technology, leading to a revolution in wireless technology.[5] Power MOSFET devices, particularly the LDMOS, also became the standard RF power amplifier technology, which led to the development and proliferation of digital wireless networks.[5][10]

RF CMOS chip: These are RF circuit chips that use mixed-signal (digital and analog) MOS integrated circuit technology and are fabricated using the CMOS process. RF CMOS technology was invented by Pakistani engineer Asad Ali Abidi at UCLA in the late 1980s.[8] There was a rapid growth of the wireless telecommunications industry towards the end of the 20th century, primarily due to the introduction of digital signal processing in wireless communications, driven by the development of low-cost, very large-scale integration (VLSI) RF CMOS technology.[7] RF CMOS integrated circuits enabled sophisticated, low-cost and portable end-user terminals, and gave rise to small, low-cost, low-power and portable units for a wide range of wireless communication systems. This enabled "anytime, anywhere" communication and helped bring about the wireless revolution, leading to the rapid growth of the wireless industry.[9] RF CMOS is used in the radio transceivers of all modern wireless networking devices and mobile phones,[8] and is widely used to transmit and receive wireless signals in a variety of applications, such as satellite technology (e.g. GPS), bluetooth, Wi-Fi, near-field communication (NFC), mobile networks (e.g. 3G and 4G), terrestrial broadcast, and automotive radar applications, among other uses.[27]

Nasir Ahmed

Nasir Ahmed invented the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in 1972. DCT compression enabled practical streaming media for mobile devices.

DCT compression: Data compression is fundamental to the wireless revolution.[28] The most important compression algorithm is the discrete cosine transform (DCT), invented by Nasir Ahmed in 1972. The DCT is a widely used transformation technique in signal processing and data compression that "played a major role in allowing digital files to be transmitted across computer networks."[29] Ahmed originally intended DCT for image compression, before it wad adapted into motion-compensated DCT (MC DCT) video coding[30] and then modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) audio coding by the 1980s,[31] DCT compression reduced digital file sizes dramatically, making it practical to stream images, video and audio to mobile devices over wireless networks.[28]

In recent years, an important contribution to the growth of wireless communication networks has been interference alignment, which was discovered by Syed Ali Jafar at the University of California, Irvine.[32] According to Paul Horn, this has "revolutionized our understanding of the capacity limits of wireless networks" and "demonstrated the astounding result that each user in a wireless network can access half of the spectrum without interference from other users, regardless of how many users are sharing the spectrum".[32] A specialized application was previously studied by Yitzhak Birk and Tomer Kol for an index coding problem in 1998. For interference management in wireless communication, interference alignment was originally introduced by Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali, Abolfazl S. Motahari, and Amir Keyvan Khandani, at the University of Waterloo, for communication over wireless X channels.[33] Interference alignment was eventually established as a general principle by Jafar and Viveck R. Cadambe in 2008, when they introduced "a mechanism to align an arbitrarily large number of interferers, leading to the surprising conclusion that wireless networks are not essentially interference limited." This led to the adoption of interference alignment in the design of wireless networks.[34]

References[]

  1. ↑ O'Neill, A. (2008). "Asad Abidi Recognized for Work in RF-CMOS". IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Newsletter. 13 (1): 57–58. doi:10.1109/N-SSC.2008.4785694. ISSN 1098-4232.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Golio, Mike; Golio, Janet (2018). RF and Microwave Passive and Active Technologies. CRC Press. pp. ix, I-1, 18–2. ISBN 9781420006728.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Rappaport, T. S. (November 1991). "The wireless revolution". IEEE Communications Magazine. 29 (11): 52–71. doi:10.1109/35.109666.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The wireless revolution". The Economist. January 21, 1999. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 Baliga, B. Jayant (2005). Silicon RF Power MOSFETS. World Scientific. ISBN 9789812561213.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Harvey, Fiona (May 8, 2003). "The Wireless Revolution". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Srivastava, Viranjay M.; Singh, Ghanshyam (2013). MOSFET Technologies for Double-Pole Four-Throw Radio-Frequency Switch. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 1. ISBN 9783319011653.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 O'Neill, A. (2008). "Asad Abidi Recognized for Work in RF-CMOS". IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Newsletter. 13 (1): 57–58. doi:10.1109/N-SSC.2008.4785694. ISSN 1098-4232.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Daneshrad, Babal; Eltawil, Ahmed M. (2002). "Integrated Circuit Technologies for Wireless Communications". Wireless Multimedia Network Technologies. The International Series in Engineering and Computer Science. Springer US. 524: 227–244. doi:10.1007/0-306-47330-5_13. ISBN 0-7923-8633-7.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Asif, Saad (2018). 5G Mobile Communications: Concepts and Technologies. CRC Press. pp. 128–134. ISBN 9780429881343.
  11. ↑ Cherry, Steven (2004). "Edholm's law of bandwidth". IEEE Spectrum. 41 (7): 58–60. doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2004.1309810.
  12. ↑ High-Linearity CMOS RF Front-End Circuits. Springer. 8 February 2006. ISBN 978-0-387-23802-9.
  13. ↑ "Milestones: First Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by J.C. Bose, 1894-96". List of IEEE milestones. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
  14. ↑ Emerson, D. T. (1997). "The work of Jagadis Chandra Bose: 100 years of MM-wave research". IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Research. 45 (12): 2267–2273. Bibcode:1997imsd.conf..553E. doi:10.1109/MWSYM.1997.602853. ISBN 9780986488511. reprinted in Igor Grigorov, Ed., Antentop, Vol. 2, No.3, pp. 87–96.
  15. ↑ "Timeline". The Silicon Engine. Computer History Museum. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  16. ↑ "1901: Semiconductor Rectifiers Patented as "Cat's Whisker" Detectors". The Silicon Engine. Computer History Museum. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Milestones:Development of Electronic Television, 1924-1941". Retrieved December 11, 2015.
  18. ↑ Kenjiro Takayanagi: The Father of Japanese Television, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), 2002, retrieved 2009-05-23.
  19. ↑ High Above: The untold story of Astra, Europe's leading satellite company, page 220, Springer Science+Business Media
  20. ↑ Albert Abramson, Zworykin, Pioneer of Television, University of Illinois Press, 1995, p. 231. ISBN 0-252-02104-5.
  21. ↑ Gharavi, H.; Alamouti, S. M. (2001). "Video Transmission for Third Generation Wireless Communication Systems". Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 106 (2): 455–469. doi:10.6028/jres.106.020. ISSN 1044-677X. PMC 4862809. PMID 27500033.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "Rethink Power Density with GaN". Electronic Design. 21 April 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  23. ↑ Hittinger, William C. (1973). "Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Technology". Scientific American. 229 (2): 48–59. Bibcode:1973SciAm.229b..48H. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0873-48. ISSN 0036-8733. JSTOR 24923169.
  24. ↑ Oxner, E. S. (1988). Fet Technology and Application. CRC Press. p. 18. ISBN 9780824780500.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 "Advances in Discrete Semiconductors March On". Power Electronics Technology. Informa: 52–6. September 2005. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 March 2006. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  26. ↑ Duncan, Ben (1996). High Performance Audio Power Amplifiers. Elsevier. pp. 177–8, 406. ISBN 9780080508047.
  27. ↑ Veendrick, Harry J. M. (2017). Nanometer CMOS ICs: From Basics to ASICs. Springer. p. 243. ISBN 9783319475974.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 "Turbocharged: Under the Hood of the Wireless Revolution". IEEE Signal Processing Society. 2017-04-24. Retrieved 2024-08-31.
  29. ↑ Jones, Willie D. (19 August 2024). "Nasir Ahmed: An Unsung Hero of Digital Media". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 2024-08-25.
  30. ↑ Roese, John A.; Robinson, Guner S. (30 October 1975). "Combined Spatial And Temporal Coding Of Digital Image Sequences". Efficient Transmission of Pictorial Information. International Society for Optics and Photonics. 0066: 172–181. Bibcode:1975SPIE...66..172R. doi:10.1117/12.965361. S2CID 62725808.
  31. ↑ Princen, John P.; Johnson, A.W.; Bradley, Alan B. (1987). "Subband/Transform coding using filter bank designs based on time domain aliasing cancellation". ICASSP '87. IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. 12: 2161–2164. doi:10.1109/ICASSP.1987.1169405. S2CID 58446992.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 "2015 National Laureates". Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. June 30, 2015. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  33. ↑ Maddah-Ali, Mohammad Ali; Motahari, S. Abolfazl; Khandani, Amir Keyvan (July 2008). "Communication over MIMO X channels: Interference alignment, decomposition, and performance analysis" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 54 (8): 3457–3470. doi:10.1109/TIT.2008.926460. S2CID 18387349.
  34. ↑ Jafar, Syed A. (2010). "Interference Alignment — A New Look at Signal Dimensions in a Communication Network". Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory. 7 (1): 1–134. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.707.6314. doi:10.1561/0100000047.

Further reading[]

  • Geier, Jim (2001). Wireless LANs. Sams. ISBN 0-672-32058-4.
  • Goldsmith, Andrea (2005). Wireless Communications. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83716-2.
  • Larsson, Erik; Stoica, Petre (2003). Space-Time Block Coding For Wireless Communications. Cambridge University Press.
  • Molisch, Andreas (2005). Wireless Communications. Wiley-IEEE Press. ISBN 0-470-84888-X.
  • Pahlavan, Kaveh; Levesque, Allen H (1995). Wireless Information Networks. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-10607-0.
  • Pahlavan, Kaveh; Krishnamurthy, Prashant (2002). Principles of Wireless Networks – a Unified Approach. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-093003-2.
  • Rappaport, Theodore (2002). Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-042232-0.
  • Rhoton, John (2001). The Wireless Internet Explained. Digital Press. ISBN 1-55558-257-5.
  • Tse, David; Viswanath, Pramod (2005). Fundamentals of Wireless Communication. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-84527-0.
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