MOBILE COMMUNICATION

Today, the mobile communication is becoming more and more

popular. You can see lots of people using mobile phones

everywhere, in offices, at home and on the way to work. At the year

of 2002, the amount of mobile communication user is even more

than fixed phone. But have you noticed that there are various kinds

of technical being used.

The GSM, which stands for Global System for Mobile

communications, is the most common used technology. There are

more than 1 billion users from over 200 countries in the America,

Europe and Asia etc. However, even in these countries, the

frequency range can be very different. In the America and parts of

Asia, GSM networks operate in GSM-850 and GSM-1900 bands.

Furthermore, most area including P.R.C and UK operator use GSM-

800 and GSM-1800 bands. GSM-450 is used by rare countries such

as Finland. Although all GSM operators use the same technology,

the network is not compatible among some bands.

Besides GSM, there are plenty of technology have been used. For

instance, the US and Canada used to use a system known as digital

AMPS. Now some other advanced technologies such as GSM have

replaced most of the existing networks. Another one is called CDMA,

or Code Division Multiple Access. It is first used by the US army.

After that, Quslcomm made this technology available for ordinary

users. A famous CDMA standard is known as CDMA ONE which is

used by the operators from P.R.C and Korea etc. In most area of

Asia, another mobile network is market as Personal Access System.

It is not commonly used since the weakness on communication. One

of the most special standards comes from Japan and is called

Personal Digital Cellular. Compared to GSM, this standard has weak

connection and lower voice quality.

Everything is developing, the same as mobile communication. All

the technologies mentioned above are known as 2G. Today, people

are not satisfied with these technologies on account of technical

progress. The brilliant scientists have been developing an advanced

technology called 3G.

GPRS and EDGE, refer as advanced GSM, is developed at the top of

GSM with higher rates and they are mentioned as “2.5G” and

“2.75G” respectively. It is used by the movable handsets such as

GPA and Mobile phones to connect the Internet. The more advanced

system UMTS, namely Universal Mobile Telecommunications System,

is a 3G standard and is mentioned as 3GSM and is being developing

to 4G technologies. UMTS uses other technology as underlying air

interface, and the most wildly used one is called W-CDMA.

Now let’s have a look at W-CDMA. W-CDMA comes from the old

standard CDMA, and is used as the underlying air interface of UMTS.

The operator of Japan runs a network called FOMA which is evolved

by W-CDMA with lightly difference.

CDMA-2000, as GPRS, is evolved by older standard with higher rates

and is compatible with older system. But CDMA is not compatible

with W-CDMA. Another type of 3G is called TD-CDMA, which is being

mainly developed by P.R.C and has about 80,000 users now.

Our daily life has changed day by day, so does the mobile

communication system. The mobile communications give us so

much convenient. Believe it or not, the technical progress happens

rapidly. As the 3G technology is being used, our life is bound to

become more and more convenient.

Let’s wait 3G era coming!