Wireless network standards and their convergence

Abstract

The existing wireless systems standards are diverse and include those of 2.5G, 3G, 3.5/4G, Bluetooth, WirelessLAN, and WiMAX. In the wide area network distance range, 2.5G and 3G wireless converges voice and data to a broadband wireless data network to serve multimedia applications. In the local-area-network intermediate distance range, the lower cost WirelessLAN has been growing very fast all over the world. In the personal-area-network short distance range, the even lower cost Bluetooth network is enabling many more wireless applications. In the metropolitan-area-network distance range, WiMAX is growing rapidly. In moving to emerging 4G wireless systems, the existing wireless systems need to interwork together. A high level understanding of all these networks is presented to enable one to understand how these different systems fit together and converge with the wireline systems.