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Defining 4G Technology For The User's Perspective
Defining 4G Technology For The User's Perspective
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he second generation (2G) of wireless mobile communication systems was a huge success story because of
its revolutionary technology and the services that it
brought to its users. Besides high-quality speech service, global mobility was a strong and convincing reason for
users to buy 2G terminals. The third generation (3G) has
been launched in several parts of the world, but the success
story of 2G is hard to repeat. One reason for this assertion is
that the evolution from 2G towards 3G has brought only few
novel additional services (Fig. 1), which leave the business
model largely unchanged and may not be enough to encourage the customers to change their equipment. The lack of
innovative and appealing services was considered too late by
the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP), the 3G standardization
body, which attempted to incorporate in the latest standards
some advanced services, such as the multimedia broadcast and
multicast service (MBMS) center in combination with the IP
multimedia system (IMS). However, these smaller improvements were made without the possibility to adjust the access
technology properly.
Following the paradigm of generational changes, it was
originally expected that the fourth generation (4G) would follow sequentially after 3G and emerge between 2010 and 2015
as an ultra-high-speed broadband wireless network [1]. In
Asia, for example, the Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo
defines 4G by introducing the concept of mobile multimedia:
anytime, anywhere, anyone; global mobility support; integrated wireless solution; and customized personal service
(MAGIC) [2], which mainly concentrates on public systems
and envisions 4G as the extension of 3G cellular service. This
view is referred to as the linear 4G vision and, in essence,
focuses on a future 4G network that will generally have a cel-
lular structure and will provide very high data rates (exceeding
100 Mb/s). In general, the latter is also the main tendency in
China and South Korea [3]. Nevertheless, even if 4G is named
as the successor of the previous generations, the future is not
limited to cellular systems and 4G should not be seen exclusively as a linear extension of 3G. In Europe, for example, the
European Commission envisions that 4G will ensure seamless
service provisioning across a multitude of wireless systems and
provide an optimum delivery via the most appropriate (i.e.,
efficient) network available [4]. This view is referred to as the
concurrent 4G vision. However, it does not give us the underlying methodology that could justify such a broad definition.
There is clearly a need for a methodological change in the
design of 4G. Indeed, in order to boost innovation and define
and solve relevant technical problems, the system-level perspective has to be envisioned and understood with a broader
view, taking the user as its departing point. This user-centric
approach can result in a beneficial method for identifying
innovation topics at all the different protocol layers (Fig. 1)
and avoiding a potential mismatch in terms of service provisioning and user expectations. In this article we propose a new
user-centric methodology that considers users as the cornerstone in the design of 4G and identifies their functional needs
and expectations, reflecting and illustrating them in everyday
life situations.1 In this way, we devise fundamental user scenarios that implicitly reveal the key features of 4G, which are then
1
We recognize that lifestyles are influenced by social and geopolitical conditions. Therefore, while the premises of the proposed framework remains
unchanged, its specific instantiations will have to be adjusted to reflect the
abovementioned conditions in different parts of the globe.
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User decision
7
ISO\OSI layer
Speech
global mobility
security
IMS
4G
technology
4
3
2
1
GSM
network
2G
User sensitivity
Speech
global mobility
security
UTRAN
3G
4G
Generation
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consequently, their usage may change the emerging products. So, understanding users in general means understanding how they change as the society around them
changes and, specifically, how they change through the
interaction with the products that are introduced. In particular, if technological developers start from understanding human needs, they are more likely to accelerate the
evolutionary development of useful technology. The payoff from technological innovations is that they support
some human needs while minimizing the downside risks.
Therefore, responsible analysis of technology opportunities will consider positive and negative outcomes, thus
amplifying the potential benefits for society [5]. Clearly,
there is a need for a new approach, there is a need for
contextual understanding, and there is a major methodological challenge in the design of the next generation of
wireless mobile communication technologies.
The methodology we propose in this article is a topdown approach that focuses on a user-centric vision of the
wireless world and consists of the following four steps:
Consideration of the user as a socio-cultural person with
subjective preferences and motivations, cultural background, customs, and habits. This leads to the identification
of the users functional needs and expectations in terms of
services and products. However, to interrelate socio-cultural
values and habits with functional needs is a sociological
problem that is not described in this article [6].
Reflection about the functional needs and expectations
derived from step 1 in everyday life situations, where new
services are significant assets for the user. In this way, fundamental but exemplary user scenarios are derived from
sketches of peoples everyday life.
Extrapolation and interrelation of the key features of 4G
from the user scenarios assessed in step 2. They represent
the basic pillars for a very relevant and pragmatic definition
of the forthcoming technology.
Identification of the real technical step-up of 4G with
respect to 3G by mapping the key features described in step
3 into advances in terms of system design, services, and
devices. These technological developments are necessary to
support the requirements of the different user scenarios
defined in step 2.
User Scenarios
The question that naturally arises when we start thinking about
user scenarios is the following: What do people really need that
they do not already have? Based on this premise, user scenarios
have been elaborated and listed in the following four sketches.
Smart Shopping
Users would like to receive pop-up advertisements informing
them of an offer not only when passing by or through a shop-
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User sensitivity
User
friendliness
User
User
personalization
Evolutionary
design
Terminal
heterogeneity
Service
personalization
Personalization
transfer
Network
heterogeneity
Personalization Transfer
In a music festival or during a concert, users would like to
take pictures, recording special moments with their friends or
the entire event using the recording capabilities of their
recently purchased handheld devices. On the way back, the
pleasure of watching the pictures or videos is not limited by
their devices, since they can transfer the content to a publicly
available larger display on the bus, at the train station, at
the airport, etc. and fully enjoy it with their friends and the
other people who were at the concert.
Key Features of 4G
User Friendliness and User Personalization In order to
encourage people to move towards a new technology, which is
a process that usually takes a long time and a great deal of
effort from the operators side, a combination of user friendliness and user personalization appears to be the winning concept. User friendliness exemplifies and minimizes the
interaction between applications and users thanks to a welldesigned transparency that allows the users and the terminals
to naturally interact (e.g., the integration of new speech interfaces is a great step for achieving this goal). For instance, in
scenario A, users can get traveling information in the most
user-friendly way: text, audio, or video format. User personalization refers to the way users can configure the operational
mode of their device and preselect the content of the services
chosen according to their preferences. Since every new technology is designed keeping in mind the principal aim to penetrate the mass market and to have a strongly impact on
peoples lifestyles, the new concepts introduced by 4G are
based on the assumption that each user wants to be considered as a distinct, valued customer who demands special treatment for his or her exclusive needs. Therefore, in order to
embrace a large spectrum of customers, user personalization
must be provided with high granularity, so that the huge
amount of information is filtered according to the users
choices. This is illustrated in scenario B, where users can
receive targeted pop-up advertisements. The combination
between user personalization and user friendliness provides
users with easy management of the overall features of their
devices and maximum exploitation of all the possible applications, thus conferring the right value to their expense.
Terminal Heterogeneity and Network Heterogeneity In order
to be a step ahead of 3G, 4G must not only provide higher
data rates but also a clear and tangible advantage in peoples
everyday life. Therefore, we believe that the success of 4G will
consist of a combination of terminal heterogeneity and network
heterogeneity. Terminal heterogeneity refers to the different
types of terminals in terms of display size, energy consumption, portability/weight, complexity, and so forth (Fig. 3). Network heterogeneity is related to the increasing heterogeneity
of wireless networks due to the proliferation in the number of
access technologies available (e.g., UMTS, WiMAX, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth). These heterogeneous wireless access networks
(Fig. 4) typically differ in terms of coverage, data rate, latency,
and loss rate. Therefore, each of them is practically designed
to support a different set of specific services and devices. As
explained below, 4G will encompass various types of terminals, which may have to provide common services indepen-
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GPS
DAB/DVB
Internet
Wi-Fi
WiMAX
UMTS
GSM
Multihop
Bluetooth
Multihop
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Distribution
(e.g., DAB, DVB)
Full coverage
Global access
Full mobility
Not necessary
Individual links
Cellular
(e.g., GSM)
Full coverage
Hot spots
Global roaming
Full mobility
Individual links
WAN
Metropolitan network
(e.g., 802.16, HiperMAN)
MAN
LAN
PAN
Hot spot
(e.g., 802.11, HiperLAN/2)
Personal network
(e.g., Bluetooth, HiperPAN)
Networks shell
2G
Metropolitan coverage
Global roaming
Semi-mobility
Individual links
3G
Local coverage
Hot spots
Global roaming
Local mobility
Individual links
Short range
Communication
Global roaming
Individual links
Global access
No mobility
Individual links
Fixed (wired)
(e.g., xDSL, CATV)
Min mobility
min cell size
Distribution layer
Max mobility
max cell size
4G
Vertical
handover
xxxx
(3)
S3G ~ f (place),
(4)
(5)
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in the market (e.g., personal digital assistants (PDAs), watchphones, and pen-phones will continue to be restricted to an
elite group of tech-savvy people), the mobile phone will still
have no competitor in the near future, due to its size and
weight, which guarantee high portability. Moreover, due to
the casual and informal feeling it gives, people will pay more
attention to the pop-up advertisements/news/events they
receive on it than on any other device.
Looking at the latest releases of mobile phones, the actual
tendency is to use a General Packet Radio System (GPRS)
platform and provide users with the most complete range of
applications possible, trying to continually include new additional features (e.g., digital camera recorder, etc.). On the
other hand, the emerging UIMTS phones essentially provide
the possibility to support the mobile video communication.
However, the real enhancement that 3G brings to our everyday life is not really clear. This new application cannot necessarily be considered as the killer application, as the quality
of the video is low and it is practically limited to a semi-static
situation that implies a complete concentration of users during the conversation (e.g., it is obviously not practical to watch
a mobile phone while walking in the street), restricting the
field of action and raising secondary problems, such as safety
issues (e.g., for the driver and pedestrians while driving, etc.).
Since 4G is based on the integration of heterogeneous systems, the future trend of wireless devices will move toward:
Multimode/reconfigurable devices. The user terminal is
able to access the core network by choosing one of the several
access networks available and to initiate the handoff between
them without the need for network modification or interworking devices. This leads to the integration of different access
technologies in the same device (multimodality) or to the use
of the software-defined radio (SDR) (reconfigurability) [9].
For example, whereas the integration of Bluetooth in the user
terminal will enable a personalization-transfer service, a builtin GPS receiver will allow users to utilize their personal
devices as navigators just by plugging them in their cars and
thus even lighten the number of needed devices. However, the
reconfigurability of the user terminal could be a key aspect
that would make the future 4G technology as highly adaptable
as possible to the various worldwide markets.
Exploitation of interworking devices. In order to reduce the
hardware embedded in the user terminal and the software
complexity, the use of interworking devices is exploited. For
example, this is the case of an integrated access point (AP)
performing the interworking between a wireless metropolitan
area network (WMAN) technology and a WLAN technology,
such as WiMAX and Wi-Fi, respectively [10]: the WMAN is
considered as the backbone and the WLAN as the distribution network; therefore, instead of integrating both technologies, the user terminal will only incorporate the Wi-Fi card.
The price to be paid for this relief is hence an increased system (infrastructure) complexity.
Potential 4G Application
This section demonstrates the validity and importance of the
selected approach by describing an example of a new 4G
application inherent to the user in scenario C: the mobile
tourist guide.
Before going on vacation, usually people buy a guide or
check on the Internet for information regarding their destination. Most of the time, this operation costs time and money
with the result of possibly outdated and/or imprecise information. Therefore, in order to overcome these limitations and
obtain the detailed information really needed for their travel,
users can simply access the mobile tourist-guide application,
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Conclusion
In this article, we have proposed a new framework that allows
designers to identify conceptual and technical pillars of 4G, so
that they can elaborate their own architecture (see [11] for an
example of architecture derived from the proposed framework). Specifically, we have presented a new top-down methodology composed of four different steps, ranging from the
sociological perspective to the technical one. Starting from
user scenarios, we have extrapolated a new framework the
user-centric System that illustrates the key features of 4G:
user friendliness, user personalization, terminal heterogeneity, and
network heterogeneity. In particular, its structure shows the
complex interdependencies among them and outlines the real
technical step-up to be undertaken in 4G. As a consequence,
our definition is as follows: 4G will be a convergence platform
providing clear advantages in terms of coverage, bandwidth, and
power consumption. Moreover, it will offer a variety of new heterogeneous services, from pop-up advertisements to locationbased and IP data-casting ones. All these characteristics will be
supported by multimode/reconfigurable devices and the implementation of interworking ones. Finally, we have also shown an
example of a potential 4G application resulting from our
methodology: the mobile tourist guide, which provides guided
tours of museums and pop-up advertisements, audio, and
video streaming with regard to sightseeing and historical sites.
Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by Samsung Electronics, Co.,
LTD, Korea.
References
[1] E. Bohlin et al., The Future of Mobile Communications in the EU: Assessing
the Potential of 4G, ESTO Pub., Feb. 2004.
[2] K. Murota, Mobile Communications Trends in Japan and DoCoMos Activities Towards 21st Century, Proc. AMOS, June 1999.
[3] F. Bauer et al., Synthesis Report on Worldwide Research on 4G Systems,
Del. D7.1 1ST MATRICE, Sept. 2003, available at http://istmatrice.org
[4] J.M. Pereira, Fourth Generation: Now, It Is Personal, Proc. IEEE PIMRC, vol.
2, Sept. 2000, pp. 100916.
[5] B. Shneiderman, Leonardos Laptop Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies, MIT Press, Oct. 2002.
[6] A. Gimmler, 4G Social Aspects of the Next Generation of Communications Technologies An Analytical-Explorative Report, Del. D1.4 JADE,
July 2004, available at http://kom.aau.dk/project/jade
[7] L. Zhen et al., Consideration and Research Issues for the Future Generation
of Mobile Communication, Proc. IEEE CCECE, vol. 3, May 2002, pp.
127681.
[8] B. Fernandes, Combining the Best of DVB-T and UNITS: Potentials and
Opportunities for Interactive Mobile Multimedia, Pres. MMC Wksp., Nov.
2000.
[9] S. Y. Hui and K. H. Yeung, Challenges in the Migration to 4G Mobile Systems, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 41, no. 12, 2003, pp. 5459.
[10] S. Frattasi, E. Cianca, and R. Prasad, An Integrated AP for Seamless Interworking of Existing WMAN and WLAN Standards, Kluwer/Springer WPC,
Special Issue on Increasing Efficiency in Broadband Fixed Wireless Access
Systems: From Physical to Network Layer Solutions, Jan. 2006.
[11] S. Frattasi, F. H. P. Fitzek, and R. Prasad, A Look Into the 4G Crystal
Ball, Proc. INTELLCOMM, Oct. 2005, pp. 28190.
Biographies
SIMONE FRATTASI [S] (sf@kom.aau.dk) is an assistant professor at the Center for
TeleInfrastruktur, Aalborg University, Denmark. He received his M.Sc. and B.Sc.
degrees in telecommunications engineering from the University of Tor Vergata,
Rome, Italy, in 2002 and 2001, respectively. His research interests include radio
resource management, error control and location estimation for cooperative 4G
wireless networks, interworking mechanisms and technologies, ARQ schemes,
TCP/IP over wireless, and terrestrial-satellite integration scenarios and techniques.
HANANE FATHI [S] (hf@kom.aau.dk) received her M.Sc. in electrical engineering
from Aalborg University and her telecommunication engineering Diploma at Ecole
Centrale dElectronique, Paris, France, both in 2002. She is now a Ph.D. candidate
at the Center for TeleInfrastruktur, Aalborg University. Her research interests include
VoIP in wireless heterogeneous systems, mobility management, signaling, Markov
modeling of ARQ schemes, and authentication schemes in wireless systems.
FRANK H. P. FITZEK [M] (ff@kom.aau.dk) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Technology, Aalborg University, where he heads the
Future Vision group. He received his Dipl.-Ing. Degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Technology, Rheinish-Westflische Technische Hochschule
(RWTH), Aachen, Germany, in 1997 and his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in electrical engineering from Technical University Berlin, Germany, in 2002 for QoS support in
wireless CDMA networks. As a visiting student at Arizona State University, he
conducted research in the field of video services over wireless networks. He cofounded the startup company acticom GmbH in Berlin in 1999. In 2002 he was
an adjunct professor at the University of Ferrara, Italy, giving lectures on wireless
communications and conducting research on multihop networks. In 2005 he won
the YRP award for work on MIMO MDC. His current research interests are in the
areas of 4G wireless communication networks and cooperative networking.
MARCO KATZ (marcos.katz@samsung.com) received a B.S. degree in electrical
engineering from Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, Argentina, in 1987, and
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Oulu,
Finland, in 1995 and 2002, respectively. He worked as a research engineer at
Nokia Telecommunications from 1987 to 1995, designing analog circuits for
high-speed PDH/SDH line interfaces. From 1995 to 2001 he was a senior
research engineer at Nokia Networks, Finland, where he developed multiple
antenna techniques for several TDMA and CDMA research projects. In
20012002 he was a research scientist at the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, where he concentrated on synchronization problems of
CDMA networks. Since 2003 he has been a principal engineer at Samsung Electronics, Advanced Research Laboratory, Telecommunications R&D Center,
Suwon, Korea. His current research interests include synchronization, multiantenna, and cooperative techniques, as well as optical wireless communications
for future 4G wireless communication systems.
RAMJEE PRASAD [F] (Prasad@kom.aau.dk) received a B.Sc. degree in engineering
from Bihar Institute of Technology, Sindri, India, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees
from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India, in 1968, 1970, and 1979,
respectively. Since June 1999 he has been with Aalborg University, where currently he is director of the Center for TeleInfrastruktur, and holds the chair of
wireless information and multimedia communications. He is coordinator of the
European Commission Sixth Framework Integrated Project MAGNET. He was
involved in the European ACTS project FRAMES as a DUT project leader. He is a
project leader of several international industry-funded projects. He has published
more than 500 technical papers; contributed to several books; and authored, coauthored, and edited 11 books. He has served as a member of advisory and
program committees for several IEEE international conferences. In addition, he is
the Coordinating Editor and Editor-In-Chief of the Kluwer International Journal
on Wireless Personal Communications and a member of the editorial boards of
other international journals, including IEEE Communications Magazine and IEE
Electronics Communication Engineering Journal. He is also the founding chairman of the European Center of Excellence in Telecommunications, known as
HERMES. He is a fellow of IETE, and a member of The Netherlands Electronics
and Radio Society and IDA, the Engineering Society of Denmark. He is an advisor to several multinational companies.
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