In 1963, R. Brauer raised forty-three important problems on group and representation theories [2]. The fortieth problem is as follows:Brauer Problem 40. Determine the linear groups G of small degrees over a finite field 7. 7 is cyclic. Since SL(2, p") has all d with 2 < d < p -1 as the dimension of an irreducible representation over a suitably large finite field of characteristic p, it is in general rather difficult to determine the group structure of a linear group over a finite field. In the present paper, under the assumption that 7 is Abelian, we will characterize the linear groups of degree less than p -2 in terms of group theoretical properties. Our results extend the main theorem of Ferguson [10].All groups in this paper are assumed to be finite, and the notation and terminology are standard and follow that of [7] and [14].Linear groups of degree at most 4 have been determined [2], [ 15]. Therefore we will assume in the following that p is greater than 5.