ECE 445S Real-Time Digital Signal Processing Laboratory - Lecture 7 - Announcements

Prof. Brian L. Evans


Announcements: Cellular Communication Standards and Deployments

In the first half of the course, we applied signal processing concepts to audio, image processing, and communication systems. In the second half of the course, which started this week, we'll do a deeper dive into signal processing for communication systems. We will develop theory, algorithms, designs and implementations for acoustic and RF communication systems. In lab 5, you'll design and implement an acoustic modem-- you'll be able to hear the message to be transmitted, the transmitted signal, the received signal, and the received message.

Throughout the rest of the semester, we'll talk about Wi-Fi and cellular as example RF systems. Both have evolved quite a bit over the last 2-3 decades. Both process messages at baseband in the digital discrete-time domain. Digital cellular launched in 1987 with the first second-generation (2G) standard Global System for Mobile (GSM) for voice calls and Wi-Fi launched in 1997 as the IEEE 802.11 standard for data transfers.

Since 2006, capabilities of cellular and Wi-Fi systems have dramatically increased to meet the exponential growth in the demand for global mobile data traffic. Global mobile data traffic, which accounts for about half of the Web traffic today, increased 4000x from 2006 to 2016, or 2.3x per year (/News story) and 7x from 2017 to 2022 (projected), or 1.46x per year (Forecast).

Today's cellular communications are based on the long-term evolution (LTE) cellular communication standards from the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). 3GPP started in 1992 to refine the voice-centric GSM standard to increase its data transfer capabilities. In the early 2000s, there were six competing 3G standards. The idea for LTE was initially proposed by NTT Docomo (Japan) in 2004, and the first LTE standard was released in 2008. Here are several milestones for LTE cellular communication standards related to our course.


Last updated 06/07/22. Send comments to (Mailbox)bevans@ece.utexas.edu