Wireless Cellular Technologies

This chapter describes the services, applicability scenarios, network architectures, deployment considerations, and main capabilities and features that can be delivered by a cellular system. It focuses on 4G and 5G technologies, addressing the baseline concepts and commonalities among them as well as the main differences and enhancements brought by the latest 5G technologies. The services and features delivered by the latest cellular technologies are commonly grouped as: enhanced mobile broadband services, massive machine‐type communication services, and ultra‐reliable low latency communication services. 3GPP is the organization that brings together the global wireless industry for the development of cellular technology standards. The 5G system architecture allows network functions to store their contexts and data in separate data storage functions. The chapter provides the main capabilities and features of the 4G/Long‐Term Evolution and 5G/New radio interfaces and networks. The support of network slicing features in 5G systems allows operators to customize their network for different applications and customers.