An investigation on the effects of emerging 4G transmissions on 3G networks

Within the last 10 years, technological advances have allowed personal wireless communications to become part of our global, information-centric culture. Cellular telephones, personal digital assistants, and wireless computer networks allow for tetherless use anytime and almost anywhere. These wireless communication advances have quickly matured through three technological generations. Currently, wireless communications are considered to be in the third generation (3G) of deployment and are rapidly approaching the fourth (4G). As these wireless technologies advance to meet market demand, careful pre-market technical analysis of these new capabilities must be made to understand potential impact on existing communication systems. This paper provides a novel examination into the effects of 4G ultrawide band (UWB) signaling on a 3G wireless fidelity (WiFi) system. Through empirical and statistical analyses, we show that the throughput performance of the Wi-Fi system can be negatively impacted by up to 20%. We conclude that careful implementation of emerging 4G UWB systems must occur to mitigate the detriments to existing 3G communication systems.