Though my basic degree is in Optics and I worked in the industry in Optical Network, I choose my research area as Wireless Network. The low data rate and poor voice quality of the mobile phone have pushed me to do research in Wireless Communications. I firmly believe that wireless is the last mile solution with an optical backbone in future communication systems. "The Future of Wireless is just not a Wireless, it is a part of life"
Though it existed in ancient times as smoke signals, flashing mirrors, flags, fires, etc., actual radio communication started after the invention of electromagnetic waves by Faraday in 1880s. Later, Maxwell derived four famous equations, named Maxwell Equation in 1884. The unit of oscillation of e. m. wave is Hz after Hertz detected its oscillation and its various properties in around 1887.The use of EM waves as a medium of communication was first demonstrated by Prof. Jagadish Chandra Bose. In 1894, Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to remotely ring a bell and explode some gunpowder. In 1896, the Daily Chronicle of the U.K. reported,“The inventor (J. C. Bose) has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile, and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel.”[EmersonIEEE]In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated wireless telegraph at the English telegraph office. On December 12, 1901, Marconi successfully transmits a radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean from Cornwall to Newfoundland at a distance of 3500 kilometers using the letter "s" in Morse code. But it will take another 13 years to send the voice-over radio transmission. In 1914, the first voice communication was established over a radio transmission. It was possible by using a thermionic valve which is used for sound transmission invented by John Fleming in 1904. In early 1920, the first private radio telephone was implemented in police cars of New York. In the process of development, in 1946, the first public mobile telephone service was introduced in the US with the interconnection of mobile users to a public switched telephone network (PSTN). On 17th June 1946, a driver in St. Louis, Mo., pulled out a handset from under his car's dashboard, placed a phone call, and made history. It was the first mobile telephone call. By 1948, wireless telephone service was available in almost 100 cities and highway corridors.In 1948, Claude Shannon published the famous Shannon-Hartley equation, which states that the capacity for error-free communications is limited and proportional to the bandwidth that the signal occupies and to the ratio of the received signal power to the received noise power. In 1949, Shannon and Robert Pierce develop basic ideas of CDMA based on the spread-spectrum technique.AT & T proposed the concept of a cellular mobile system to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1968. In June 1969, the Nordic telecommunications conference established the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) Group which was given the task to develop a new mobile telephone system that would be applied in all the Nordic countries. On April 3, 1973 Motorola vice presidents Marty Cooper and John Mitchell made the first public demonstration of a call from a handheld wireless phone.But, In 1979, the world's first cellular system was implemented by Nippon Telephone & Telegraph (NTT), Japan as JTACS. Whereas, USA developed its 1G system as AMPS, after the allocation of the frequency band by FCC in 1983. At the same time, European countries developed their own 1G cellular, such as ETACS in UK, NMT in Germany, Radiocomm in France etc.Limited capacity pushed cellular communication into the second generation. GSM is the first 2G system developed by the GSM group in Europe. It is commercially available for public use since 1992 in Europe. Later, GSM is implemented all over the world. But to increase the data rate of the GSM systems, some special techniques are applied to basic GSM technology without changing its basic operation and developed new technology as 2.5G systems. These are GPRS, EDGE, etc.To further improve the data rate and to support various services with increasing quality, the 3G system comes into the picture. These 3G systems are CDMA based. Two main 3G technologies emerged, as WCDMA and Cdma2000. Japan first implement WCDMA technology in 2001.For seamless connectivity and the integration between 2G & 3G systems, 4G technology has been developed. The main techniques of 4G are Link Adaptation, Smart Antennas & beamforming, OFDM, MC-CDMA, UWB, etc. "The Backbone of Future Communications is All Optical"
The communication possible by guided light was invented much before the discovery of electromagnetic waves by Faraday in the 1980s. The first attempts at guiding light on the basis of total internal reflection in a medium to 1841 by Daniel Colladon. In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell transmitted his voice as a telephone signal through about 600 feet of free space (air) using a beam of light as the carrier by his famous photophone and demonstrated the basic principle of optical communications. In 1930, German medical student, Heinrich Lamm was the first person to assemble a bundle of optical fibers to carry an image. In 1956, Narinder S. Kapany invented the glass-coated glass rod which helped to eliminate the biggest problem that hindered Bells photophone by providing a means of protecting the beam of light from environmental obstacles. Kapany is also known for coining the very familiar phrase, fiber optics.The research on optical communications is increasing exponentially, after the invention of LASER in 1958, by Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes. In 1960, Ali Javan (Bell Labs) invented the first He-Ne laser which emits a steady beam. But the major breakthrough came when Charles Kao proposes the possibility of practical use for fiber optic telecommunication in 1965. Dr. Kao predicted the performance levels that fiber optics could attain, and prescribed the basic design and means to make fiber optics a practical and significant communications/transmission medium. He specified that long-haul communication is possible through optical fiber if the attenuation is below 2 dB/km.The first Optical Fiber was made by a team led by Robert Maurer at Corning Glass Works. But the use of Fiber Optics was generally not available until 1970 when Corning Glass Works was able to produce a practical fiber. In September 1970, they announced single-mode fibers with attenuation at the 633-nanometer helium-neon line below 20 dB/km.