Technological challenges on the way of future mobile radio communications

The paper addresses the main technological challenges to be faced while defining the air interface of future personal communication systems. The success of GSM and its derivatives, like DCS 1800 (which operates in the 1800 MHz band), leads to the widely-shared view that the evolution from these second generation systems will be made up by a continuous enhancement process rather than by means of an entirely innovative standard. The key points in this evolutionary process, as far as radio aspects are concerned, are relative to the potential of current systems to offer an increasingly higher bit-rate for new services and multimedia applications, and an overall traffic capacity which is able to open up a truly mass market