Wireless portable communications trends and challenges

The electronic wireless communications age has its earliest origins with Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi about 100 years ago. Early R&D on portable communications systems was carried out over forty years ago at AT&T Bell Labs, who led much of the earliest development in communications in the United States. Motorola pursued mobile wireless communications research beginning in the 1960s resulting in the first mobile cellular telephone service in the early 1980s. Decades of continuous cost/performance improvements from the semiconductor and IC packaging industry have had a dramatic impact on reducing the costs, and hence affordability, of all forms of commercial electronics and communications systems. Furthermore, the recent decade has seen an increased desire for personal and business communications mobility, security and access to information at any time, anywhere. Many of these factors have launched numerous commercial wireless communications systems, such as paging and cellular phone systems from a relatively high-end niche market into the multi-billion dollar consumer electronics businesses of today.