Lets get the G's right !!!

Telephone (from the Greek words tele (τηλέ) = far and phone (φωνή) = voice) ". When Alexander Grahm Bell in 1867 sent a trans Atlantic telegraph message, no one would have known that wireless telephony would travel such a long journey.

First, It was radio. Did you know that radio was used to pass on orders and communications between armies and navies on both sides in World War I?. Germany used radio communications for diplomatic messages once it discovered that its submarine cables had been tapped by the British. The United States passed on President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to Germany via radio during the war.

Radio is essentially an one way communication device (called simplex communication). After radio came the wireless walky talky. Walky talky is a half duplex communication device. In half duplex mode, since only one radio frequency is used, only one person can talk at a time. It was terrible way of communication with each conversation needed to end with an "over". So, It didn't last for too long. Nevertheless, it provided an effective mean to communicate messages across the places where it was difficult to reach by wire or by shouting. So, in a sense, Walky Talkies were the starting (I would call it 0G) of the true wireless communication. World didn't see the first version of commercial wireless telephone system until AMPS (Advance Mobile Phone System) was launched in the year 1983 (The year I was born :) ) by Bell labs in America. AMPS was first generation (1G) wireless telephone technology. It was toward the voice (analog signal) only . So no digital data were being transmitted at this point. Next, we will look at the Digital wireless telephony that is 2G, 3G , in my next blog

Hate the wire

Wireless has touched almost every one's life today. Be it your cell phone, laptop, wrist watch, they all have at least one inbuilt wireless module. Common vocabulary associated with wireless are wifi, bluetooth, 2G and 3G. While 3G is picking up lately, WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) hot spots are easily available at the airports, cafe, hotels and offices. I visited a cross cafe yesterday and was thrilled to find that I can surf Internet over wifi on my phone, while I smoke hukka. People are making their life easy with wireless. They can sync there PDA over the air with their laptops, transfer music, movies and ring tones between phones using bluetooth. In fact, I have seen people renouncing their good working phones and laptops just because it didn't have a bluetooth !! Today applications like You Tube, Orkut and Metacafe are heavily accessed on the mobile phones and hand held devices using the commercial cellular network. Isn't it great to have your favourite wikipedia on phone and you can access it where ever and when ever you want. It all has been possible because of wireless. Future belongs to wireless and it is necessary that we know it well. Wireless, essentially is a way to transmit information from one place to the other without using wires. Wires are clumsy, difficult to manage and sometimes hard to find! Mediums over which one can transfer information wirelessly are :
1) RF (Radio Frequency) It the most common medium you might be using everyday (cell phone, laptops)
2) IR (Infra Red) Your remote works on this (ever thought ? )
3) Laser Scantly used

Wireless also comes in many flavours with speed and distance distinguishing each other. In my next blog, I will be addressing this. I am also going to post some interesting link on this blog, which might be useful for you. So, start hating wires from today !!