In 1978, the first-generation mobile communications system was introduced to the world. Since then, mobile communications systems had undergone three stages of evolution: the digital voice systems (second generation), the mobile data systems (third generation), and the mobile broadband systems (fourth generation). The emergence of these systems drastically changed how societies operated and how people communicated with one another over the past 30 years. As mobile communications systems underwent various stages of development, fundamental transmission technologies employed in mobile communications also changed to meet service demands. Such technologies first evolved from time division multiple access (TDMA; second generation) to code division multiple access (CDMA; third generation)and later to orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA; fourth generation). In addition, various types of radio access technologies such as wireless resource management techniques, frequency reuse techniques, and network deployment methods were developed.

The rising popularity of mobile broadband created a rise in consumer demands for smart mobile devices and stimulated the growth of various application software. However, in recent years, the increase in the use of mobile broadband and mobile phone user penetration have created the problem of network overload in mobile communications, in which the growth in network capacity failed to meet the increase in mobile data traffic. The launch of fourth-generation(4G) mobile communications instigated user demand for mobile broadband as well as facilitated the widespread of applications that require high transmission speed. Therefore, mobile data traffic is expected to grow rapidly in the foreseeable future. The mobile communications industry predicts that after 2020,the 4G communications technology will be unable to satisfy the traffic demand; therefore, preliminary studies to develop a fifth-generation mobile communications system are being conducted. As network transmission speed continues to improve, applications processed by smart mobile devices also become increasingly complex. For example, these applications have evolved from text and images to real-time videos and 3D games, making high performance mobile computing application processors an increasingly important unit in smart mobile devices. Key technologies such as heterogeneous multi-core central processing units(CPU), graphics processor units (GPU), and multimedia as well as highly integrated systems on chip (SoC) with comprehensive mobile communication functions have made mobile phones thin and feature powerful functions. High mobile computing efficiency and powerful mobile communication functions became the core values of smart mobile devices, determining their competitiveness in the smart mobile device market. To meet the aforementioned technological challenges, MediaTek Inc. (hereafter referred to as MediaTek) and the National Taiwan University (NTU) founded the MediaTek-NTU Research Center(hereafter referred to as “the Center”) inside the NTU campus.

The Center is responsible for various projects; the objective of the current project (hereafter referred to as “the Project.”) is to research and develop advanced technologies according to the development and trends of the various industries. The current focus of the Center is to research and develop handheld smart devices, in which the expertise of industry professionals as well as that of NTU students and professors is combined to develop advanced communication technologies (e.g., new versions of 4G standards or 5G communication) that create favorable user experience. This allows MediaTek and NTU to remain a global leader in the field of handheld mobile device-oriented technologies.