Foreword

Abstract

The most critical difference of the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication technology compared to previous generations is its ability to support a wide variety of services. In other words, the 5G technology is all about flexibility and diverse applications. First generation (1G) was mainly concerned with the voice and capacity through the reuse of frequency bands (channels) utilizing analog modulation. The second-generation (2G) mobile communication was the first step to move to digital signaling and targeted to improve the quality of voice along with providing short messaging services. However, satisfying high data rate has never been a concern for both 1G and 2G networks. Nevertheless, the importance of providing a high data rate and spectral efficiency became clear with third-generation networks and with the rise of high-rate data applications such as web-browsing and multimedia communications. In parallel with the era of smart devices and high definition streaming services, the true broadband and the support for high-speed video applications were enabled with fourth-generation (4G) wireless networking.