Technological changes in the innovation system towards 4G mobile service

Abstract

Evolution of mobile communications has started from the development of first generation (1G) towards the upcoming fourth generation (4G) technology. In the technological shifts from one generation to another, changes have taken place and have generated implications to the actors in the innovation system. This paper presents analyses of technological changes of 1G/2G to third generation (3G) with an aim to build technology roadmap towards 4G. The research highlights the upcoming 4G profile based on quantitative analyses of bibliometric data and the trend model of 3G technologies. The findings show that the technological changes of mobile evolution have been characterised by the dominant persistence of principal technological agenda, i.e. wireless communications, mobile computing and data communications. In the evolutionary path towards 4G, there is an escalation of research related to quality of service and technologies to support advanced service infrastructure which indicates a shift from technical- to service-driven perspective. Finally, our work supports an association with experts' earlier prediction that 4G would be structured by heterogeneous networks, which requires interworking mechanism among different technological platform.