1G
History
1G or (1-G) refers to the first generation of wireless
telephone technology (mobile telecommunications). These are
the analog telecommunication standards that were introduced in 1979
and the early to mid-1980s and continued until being replaced
by 2G digital telecommunications. The main difference between the
two mobile telephone systems (1G and 2G), is that the radio signals
used by 1G network are analog, while 2G networks are digital.
• During WWII, the appearance of
early radio phones was limited to
military use, and not available for
civilian or commercial use. These
were AM radio phones, that
functioned as Walkie-Talkies.
History
• The car phones that were first
commercialized in 1946 in USA by Bell
System, and continued to be improved
and popularized in the 1960’s made used
of Improved Mobile Telephone Service
(IMTS) which was still connected on the
landline network, also known as Public
Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN)
although mobility was supported to some
extent. This was an example of a radio
telephone network, which was
considered as pre-1G, or 0G technology.
History
• In 1971, the Autoradiopuhelin (ARP)
network operated as the first public
mobile phone network in Finland. It
operated in the 150 MHz band, and
calls were manually switched. The
network was meant to serve car
phones as well. This too was
considered as 0G technology.
First 1G Mobile
Network
• The first commercial 1G mobile network in the
world was launched by Nippon Telephone and
Telegraph Company (NTT) in Tokyo, Japan on 1
December 1979. The first mobile phones were
still car phones, but the network was:
• a cellular network with 88 cell sites with base
stations, or radio towers covering all districts of
Tokyo (unlike in IMTS where the network was
still PSTN);
• handover of the call between different cell sites
was supported (unlike in IMTS where the call
can only be connected to one radio mast);
• automated switching without the need for
human switchboard operator (unlike in ARP
where the calls are manually switched).
• By 1981, the Nordic countries of Norway and
Sweden built their first 1G mobile network
based on the Nordic Mobile
Telephone (NMT) standard, subsequently
Denmark and Finland in 1982. The standard
spread in quick succession to Saudi Arabia,
Russia, and many other Baltic and Asian
countries,.
• On 13 October 1983, the USA eventually had
its commercial cellular network launched by
Ameritech in Chicago, based on the AMPS
standards. The first hand-held mobile phone
invented by Martin Cooper and
manufactured by Motorola was introduced
at the same time.
• In 1984, Malaysia adopted the NMT
450 standard and launched its first
cellular network by then Jabatan
Telekom (now Telekom Malaysia,
privatized in 1987), with mobile
phones introduced as ATUR 450.
• The early car phones in the Japan NTT network
later evolved into “shoulder phones” in 1985 that
can be carried on the shoulder like a sling bag.
• The European Total Access Cellular System (TACS, later renamed to
ETACS) standard was introduced in 1985 and first implemented in the
UK. After the first commercial cellular network by NTT, JTACS was later
introduced in Japan in 1988.
• China, currently boasting the largest mobile subscriber market,
launched its first mobile network in 1987 by the Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications of China, using the TACS standard. A nationwide
network was completed in the following year.
TACS
• Total Access Communication System (TACS) and ETACS are mostly-
obsolete variants of Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) which
was announced as the choice for the first two UK national cellular
systems in February 1983, less than a year after the UK government
announced the T&Cs for the two competing mobile phone networks
in June 1982.
• Vodafone (known then as Racal-Vodafone) opted for a £30 million
turnkey contract from Ericsson (ERA) to design, build and set up its
initial network of 100 base station sites.
• Cellnet (then known Telecom Securicor Cellular Radio Ltd) used
development labs in the facilities at General Electric (later made part
of Motorola) based at Lynchburg, Virginia, United States. The reason Cellnet
used the General Electric labs was because the AMPS system was already in
development there, and the company had set up a production facility in
readiness for AMPS production in 1985 which the Cellnet TACS was to share.
In March 1984 development of prototypes began at General Electric.
Production began in 1985 and General Electric produced 20,000 systems
that year for Cellnet's distribution in the UK. Production of what was to
become the Motorola model were then made at Stotfold, Bedfordshire,
England. This production facility continued making TACS until the advent
of GSM.
• Vodafone used CMS8810 equipment designed by Ericsson some of
which was made under licence by Racal Carlton Nottingham
TACS
• TACS cellular phones were used in Europe (including
the UK, Italy, Austria and Ireland) and other countries. TACS was also
used in Japan under the name Japanese Total Access
Communication (JTAC). It was also used in Hong Kong. ETACS was an
extended version of TACS with more channels.
• TACS and ETACS are now obsolete in Europe, having been replaced by
the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) system. In the
United Kingdom, the last ETACS service operated by Vodafone was
discontinued on 31 May 2001, after 16 years of service. The competing
service in the UK operated by Cellnet (latterly BT Cellnet) was closed on
Sunday 1 October 2000.
History of TACS
• Eircell (now Vodafone Ireland) closed its TACS network on 26 January
2001. This followed a long period during which customers were
encouraged to switch to GSM services. When the network was closed,
there were very few, if any, active TACS customers left. Customers
who switched network were able to keep their phone number, but
the (088) prefix was changed to either 087 (Eircell, now Vodafone
Ireland) GSM or 086 (Esat Digifone, which became O2 Ireland before
merging with Three) GSM. At the time, full mobile number portability
was not available to TACS customers and the (088) prefix was closed.
An automatic voice message was left in place for 12 months advising
callers of the customer's new prefix.
• ETACS is however still in use in a handful of countries elsewhere in the
world. Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) is another 1G analog cellular
standard that was widely used in Europe, mainly in the Nordic
countries, which has now been fully replaced by GSM except for
limited use in rural areas due to its superior range.
Frequency bands used by ETACS in
the UK
TACS BAND Summary
• ESNs were issued in batches of 65535 by BABT for phone
manufactures to program into each cellular phone to make each one
unique to the TACS network with which it attempted to register.
• The following countries had more than two batches of ESNs allocated
to them: UK, Italy, Austria, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Australia.
AMPS
• Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile
phone system standard developed by Bell Labs, and officially
introduced in the Americas on October 13, 1983, Israel in
1986, Australia in 1987, Singapore in 1988, and Pakistan in 1990. It
was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America (and
other locales) through the 1980s and into the 2000s. As of February
18, 2008, carriers in the United States were no longer required to
support AMPS and companies such as AT&T and Verizon
Communications have discontinued this service permanently. AMPS
was discontinued in Australia in September 2000, in Pakistan by
October 2004, in Israel by January 2010, and Brazil by 2010.
History of AMPS
• The first cellular network efforts began at Bell Labs and with research
conducted at Motorola. In 1960, John F. Mitchell, an electrical engineer who
had graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology, became Motorola's
chief engineer for its mobile-communication products. Mitchell oversaw the
development and marketing of the first pager to use transistors.
• Motorola had long produced mobile telephones for automobiles, but these
large and heavy models consumed too much power to allow their use without
the automobile's engine running. Mitchell's team, which included the
gifted Dr. Martin Cooper, developed portable cellular telephony, and Mitchell
was among the Motorola employees granted a patent for this work in 1973.
The first call on the prototype connected, reportedly, to a wrong number.
History of AMPS
• While Motorola was developing a cellular phone, from 1968-1983 Bell
Labs worked out a system called Advanced Mobile Phone System
(AMPS), which became the first cellular network standard in the United
States. The first system was successfully deployed in Chicago, Illinois, in
1979. Motorola and others designed and built the cellular phones for
this and other cellular systems.
• Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at
Motorola, led a team that produced the DynaTAC 8000x, the first
commercially available cellular phone small enough to be easily carried,
and made the first phone call from it. He later introduced the so-
called Bag Phone.
History of AMPS
• In 1992, the first smartphone, called IBM Simon, used AMPS. Frank
Canova led its design at IBM and it was demonstrated that year at
the COMDEX computer-industry trade-show. A refined version of the
product was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the
name Simon Personal Communicator. The Simon was the first device
that can be properly referred to as a "smartphone", even though that
term was not yet coined.
Technology of AMPS
• AMPS is a first-generation cellular technology that uses separate
frequencies, or "channels", for each conversation (see frequency-
division multiple access (FDMA)). It therefore required
considerable bandwidth for a large number of users. In general terms,
AMPS was very similar to the older "0G" Improved Mobile Telephone
Service, but used considerably more computing power in order to
select frequencies, hand off conversations to PSTN lines, and handle
billing and call setup.
Technology of AMPS
• What really separated AMPS from older systems is the "back end" call
setup functionality. In AMPS, the cell centers could flexibly assign
channels to handsets based on signal strength, allowing the same
frequency to be re-used in various locations without interference. This
allowed a larger number of phones to be supported over a
geographical area. AMPS pioneers coined the term "cellular" because
of its use of small hexagonal "cells" within a system.
Frequency bands of AMPS
AMPS cellular service operated in the 850 MHz Cellular band. For each
market area, the United States Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) allowed two licensees (networks) known as "A" and
"B" carriers. Each carrier within a market used a specified "block" of
frequencies consisting of 21 control channels and 395 voice channels.
Originally, the B (wireline) side license was usually owned by the local
phone company, and the A (non-wireline) license was given to wireless
telephone providers.
Frequency band of AMPS
• At the inception of cellular in 1983, the FCC had granted each carrier
within a market 333 channel pairs (666 channels total). By the late
1980s, the cellular industry's subscriber base had grown into the
millions across America and it became necessary to add channels for
additional capacity. In 1989, the FCC granted carriers an expansion
from the previous 666 channels to the final 832 (416 pairs per
carrier). The additional frequencies were from the band held in
reserve for future (inevitable) expansion. These frequencies were
immediately adjacent to the existing cellular band. These bands had
previously been allocated to UHF TV channels 70–83.
Frequency band of AMPS
• Each duplex channel was composed of 2 frequencies. 416 of these
were in the 824–849 MHz range for transmissions from mobile
stations to the base stations, paired with 416 frequencies in the 869–
894 MHz range for transmissions from base stations to the mobile
stations. Each cell site used a different subset of these channels than
its neighbors to avoid interference. This significantly reduced the
number of channels available at each site in real-world systems. Each
AMPS channel had a one way bandwidth of 30 kHz, for a total of
60 kHz for each duplex channel.
UK ETACS and US AMPS compared
NMT (Nordisk MobilTelefoni or Nordiska MobilTelefoni-
gruppen, Nordic Mobile Telephony in English)
• The NMT network was opened in Sweden and Norway in 1981, and in
Denmark and Finland in 1982. Iceland joined in 1986. However,
Ericsson introduced the first commercial service in Saudi Arabia on 1
September 1981 to 1,200 users, as a pilot test project, one month
before they did the same in Sweden. By 1985 the network had grown
to 110,000 subscribers in Scandinavia and Finland, 63,300 in Norway
alone, which made it the world's largest mobile network at the time.
NMT
• The NMT network has mainly been used in the Nordic countries, Baltic countries, Switzerland,
Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia,
Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia, Russia, Ukraine and in Asia. The introduction of digital mobile
networks such as GSM has reduced the popularity of NMT and the Nordic countries have
suspended their NMT networks. In Estonia the NMT network was shut down in December
2000. In Finland TeliaSonera's NMT network was suspended on 31 December 2002. Norway's
last NMT network was suspended on 31 December 2004. Sweden's TeliaSonera NMT network
was suspended on 31 December 2007. The NMT network (450 MHz) however has one big
advantage over GSM which is the range; this advantage is valuable in big but sparsely
populated countries such as Iceland. In Iceland, the GSM network reaches 98% of the
country's population but only a small proportion of its land area. The NMT system however
reaches most of the country and a lot of the surrounding waters, thus the network was
popular with fishermen and those traveling in the vast empty mainland. In Iceland the NMT
service was stopped on 1 September 2010, when Síminn closed down its NMT network.
NMT
• In Denmark, Norway and Sweden the NMT-450 frequencies have been
auctioned off to Swedish Nordisk Mobiltelefon which later
became [Link] and renamed to Net 1 that built a digital network using
CDMA 450. During 2015, the network has been migrated to 4G.
Permission for TeliaSonera to continue operation of the NMT-450
frequencies ended on 31 December 2007.
• In Russia Uralwestcom shut down their NMT network on 1 September
2006 and Sibirtelecom on 10 January 2008. Skylink, subsidiary company of
TELE2 Russia operates NMT-450 network as of 2016 in Arkhangelsk
Oblast and Perm [Link] networks are used in sparsely populated areas
with long distance. License for the provision of services is valid until 2021.
Technology
• The cell sizes in an NMT network range from 2 km to 30 km. With
smaller ranges the network can service more simultaneous callers; for
example in a city the range can be kept short for better service. NMT
used full duplex transmission, allowing for simultaneous receiving and
transmission of voice. Car phone versions of NMT used transmission
power of up to 15 watt (NMT-450) and 6 watt (NMT-900), handsets up
to 1 watt. NMT had automatic switching (dialing) and handover of the
call built into the standard from the beginning, which was not the
case with most preceding car phone services, such as the Finnish ARP.
Additionally, the NMT standard specified billing as well as national
and international roaming.
Signaling
• NMT voice channel is transmitted with FM-modulation and NMT
signaling transfer speeds vary between 600 and 1,200 bits per second,
using FFSK (Fast Frequency Shift Keying) modulation. Signaling
between the base station and the mobile station was implemented
using the same RF channel that was used for audio, and using the
1,200 bit/s FFSK modem. This caused the periodic short noise bursts,
e.g. during handover, that were uniquely characteristic to NMT sound.
Security
• A disadvantage of the original NMT specification is that voice traffic was not encrypted,
therefore it was possible to listen to calls using e.g. a scanner. As a result, some scanners
have had the NMT bands blocked so they could not be accessed. Later versions of the
NMT specifications defined optional analog scrambling which was based on two-band
audio frequency inversion. If both the base station and the mobile station supported
scrambling, they could agree upon using it when initiating a phone call. Also, if two users
had mobile (phone) stations supporting scrambling, they could turn it on during
conversation even if the base stations didn't support it. In this case, audio would be
scrambled all the way between the 2 mobile stations. While the scrambling method was
not at all as strong as encryption of current digital phones, such as GSM or CDMA, it did
prevent casual listening with scanners. Scrambling is defined in NMT Doc 450-1: System
Description (1999-03-23) and NMT Doc 450-3 and 900-3: Technical Specification for the
Mobile Station (1995-10-04)'s Annex 26 v.1.1: Mobile Station with Speech Scrambling –
Split Inversion Method (Optional) (1998-01-27).
Data transfer
• NMT also supported a simple but robust integrated data transfer
mode called DMS (Data and Messaging Service) or NMT-Text, which
used the network's signaling channel for data transfer. Using DMS,
text messaging was also possible between two NMT handsets before
SMS service started in GSM, but this feature was never commercially
available except in Russian, Polish and Bulgarian NMT networks.
Another data transfer method was called NMT Mobidigi with transfer
speeds of 380 bits per second. It required external equipment.
Q&A
• What is the first commercial 1G mobile network?
A. Nihon Telephone and Telegraph
B. Nippon Telephone and Telegraph
C. Nipon Telephone and Telegraph
D. Niphon Telephone and Telegraph
• 1G used what type of radio signals?
A. Analog
B. Digital
C. Either analog or digital
D. Both analog and digital
Q&A
• AMPS stands for:
A. Advanced Mobile Phone Service
B. Advanced Mobile Phone System
C. American Mobile Phone Service
D. American Mobile Phone System
• ETACS stands for:
A. England Total Access Cellular System
B. European Total Access Cellular System
C. Extended Total Access Cellular System
D. Extension Total Access Cellular System
Q&A
• What is the channel spacing for AMPS?
A. 20 Khz
B. 25 Khz
C. 30 Khz
D. 35 Khz
• What is the transmission freq. for base station for TACS?
A. 890-915 Mhz
B. 890-935 Mhz
C. 935-950 Mhz
D. 935-960 Mhz
Q&A
• What is the data transmission rate for AMPS?
A. 8 Kbps
B. 10 Kbps
C. 1.2 Kbps
D. 5.28 kbps
• What is the data transmission rate for NMT?
A. 8 Kbps
B. 10 Kbps
C. 1.2 Kbps
D. 5.28 kbps
Most of the phones in the 1G era were:
• heavy, most initial models weighing around 3-4 kg;
• for corporate and executive use, not for personal use;
• expensive, the Motorola DynaTac priced at US$3,995 for example;
• hence a symbol of affluence and social status.
The limitations of 1G mobile technology were:
• Poor sound quality;
• Limited coverage;
• Full analog mode of communication, hence inefficient use of the spectrum;
• Low capacity, FDMA technique does not maximize system capacity;
• Different 1G systems are incompatible with one another, due to different
frequency ranges of the systems;
• No roaming supported between different operators;
• Weak security on air interface, no support for encryption;
• No Mobile Assisted Handover and hence more burden on the Mobile
Switching Center (MSC).
Video
• [Link]