Abstract: Modern communications technology revolutionized the way, mobility and efficiency of electronic communications. Starting from with Alexander Graham Bells’ telephone experiments to widely practiced W-CDMA network and the nearly achieved 4G mode of communications, all had and will have great contributions in today’s voice/data network arena. Wireless technology has achieved evolutionary success aiming at unified target: efficiency, performance and feasibility in high mobile environment. The mobile experience is expanding everywhere fulfilling the basic electronic communication needs. The first generation (1G) was analog. 1G established seamless mobile connectivity used for basic mobile voice until being replaced by the second generation (2G) digital telecommunications technologies which increased voice capacity delivering mobile to the masses with network infrastructure supporting text messaging. The success of digital voice and simple data prompted to the development of cellular wireless communication system with improved data connectivity and more accessible features leads to followed by the third generation (3G). Third generation system having mobile optimization for data enabling mobile broadband services with better and higher speed of data transfer and connectivity. The fourth generation (4G) having more capacity for faster and better wireless mobile broadband experiences with accessing capability to wide range of communication services, including advanced mobile services, and enhancement in the quality of services with increase in the bandwidth. In this paper we address the evolution of wireless modern mobile communication systems, from first generation (1G) to the widely practiced third generation (3G), recently introduced fourth generation (4G) and some glimpse of foreseeable future of fifth generation (5G).

Keywords: 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G. 5G, EDGE, GPRS, GSM, LTE, LTE-A, UMTS, W-CDMA.