By Asela Bandara

Introduction

Mobile communication technology has come in to an advance status in exchanging contents of text, audio and video, efficiently and effectively with the improvements of cellular network’s bandwidth and connections. 3G or 3rd Generation is a family of standards for mobile telecommunications defined by the International Telecommunication Union, which includes GSM EDGE, UMTS, and CDMA2000 as well as DECT and WiMAX. It has uplifted the mobile developments to be evolved in parallel with the Web 2.0, exposing the features such as interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Thus the services such as voice telephone, video calls, mobile Tv, streaming audio and video has become emerging technological concerns in this generation.

3G Killer App

3G or the third-generation wireless refers to near future developments in personal&business wireless technology, especially relating to mobile communications. The Third Generation will usher in many benefits as roaming capability, broad bandwidth and high speed communication (upwards of 2Mbps).

Each mobile technology has a killer application. 2G (GSM) have SMS. 2.5G (CDMA and GPRS) have e-mail access. The 3G promises video streaming. It has proved the streaming features through most of the real-time multimedia applications in all over the world.

E.g: One of the most successful 3G implementations to date is Freedom Of Multimedia Access (FOMA), which is (NTT) DoCoMo's brand name for its 3G service. Since its launch in Tokyo and parts of Yokohama and Kawasaki, FOMA has steadily expanded across Japan and is used by more than 39 million subscribers. With a maximum downlink speed of 384kbps--about 40 times faster than conventional wireless data communications--FOMA provides fast, smooth video, as well as unprecedented voice clarity.

Mobile TV

Mobile TV is television which is watched on a small handheld device. The service delivered to subscribers via mobile telecommunications networks, such as the mobile phone carriers, or received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations operating either in regular mode or a special mobile TV transmission format. It can also be in the form of IPTV streaming video from a wireless network, and in many contexts even recorded TV programs such as podcasts which are downloaded and stored on the mobile device for later viewing.

 3G Networks: Bringing Video Conferencing Cell Phones to the People

The major challenge to transmitting digital video is that it requires sending a great deal of data, much more data than audio requires. So, a cell phone with video conferencing needs to be able to send and receive a large amount of information. Even with more powerful 3G networks, it would be impractical and time-consuming to send every bit of digital video information over a cell phone link.  So, instead, the cell phones employ video compression (Block-based, Object-based). This process involves reducing the digital information that needs to be sent in essence, whittling the digital file down to a manageable size.

 Streaming Technology in 3G Mobile Communication Systems

Wireless video streaming is an area of extensive research due to the error-prone nature of the radio channel with variations in throughput and delay. In mobile networks, handovers and etc may lead to further service degradation. There many research approaches has been taken in resolving these emerging issues by the international mobile development community. The dynamic, static and hybrid protocols which have been implemented in media-streaming are focuses on different streaming areas.

3G systems will provide high-quality streamed Internet content to the rapidly growing mobile market. These systems will offer value-added applications as well, supported by an underlying network that combines streaming services with a range of unique mobile-specific services. A mobile streaming media content delivery network (MSM-CDN) overlay system provides a scalable method for delivering media streams to a large number of clients. Most of the currently ongoing applications show a huge potential in getting integrated with the media streaming capabilities both in the web as well as in the mobile devices.

Previous Article