Technology

This chapter is entirely given over to a discussion of technological matters. As such, it inevitably involves a discussion of matters that generally are of little interest to the general public who tend to take the view that if a device works then it is unnecessary to understand its inner workings—the drawback, in the modern age, being that nothing can be repaired other than by a specialist technician. However, in order to understand what is published about high-speed data transmission it is essential to have a degree of technical competence and the purpose of this chapter is to, as it were, bring the reader up to speed. Of necessity, an historical approach is adopted given that one cannot reach 4G without having previously passed through 1G, 2G and 3G, but the core of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of Long Term Evolution (LTE) since that is the technology currently being encountered across much of the world. In practice, this is not what is meant by 4G according to standards bodies, so the chapter includes a careful explanation of how LTE differs from ‘true’ 4G or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). Once this has been covered, the chapter is given over to a relatively brief discussion of a number of related issues including small cells, satellite provision, network sharing, VoLTE and Rich Communication Services and cognitive radio. The chapter is thoroughly referenced for those seeking to explore these matters in greater depth.