Korean electronics giant Samsung is showing off its 4G technology at its annual industry forum. The company claims that it is the world’s first practical demonstration of the possibility of fourth generation mobile telecoms.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) defines 4G technology as one that will allow data transfer rates of 1Gbit/sec at nomadic circumstances and 100Mbps at mobile circumstances.
To demonstrate the technology Samsung has built a specially equipped demonstration bus that will be moving at speeds of 60 kmph to show seamless hand over between cells while maintaining a data speed of 100Mbit/sec.
Samsung says that the 1 Gbit data speed in nomadic conditions is 50 times faster than current Mobile WiMAX technology. It takes about 2.4 seconds to transfer 100 MP3 files or 300MB or 5.6 seconds to transfer one movie (800MB) at speeds of 1Gbit/sec.
Samsung will put its 4G, 1Gbit/sec data speed technology to the test in nomadic conditions by showing 32HD channel broadcast downloads at 20Mbit/sec, Internet access and video telephony all at the same time. Furthermore, a 3.5Gbit/sec data transfer demonstration will be shown using 8X8 MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) technology.
Although the technology is under development, it is unlikely to appear in commercial handsets before the end of the decade The spectrums for 4G technology will be allocated at the World Radiocommunication Conference in October of 2007.
The 4G mobile communications format is expected to become commercially available around 2010.
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