I want to try

[kristof.vanriet]

In this forum are a lot of people who know how network technologie works or has to work :)... I was wondering if we could make a list (something like a FAQ or Lixicon) of things used in the mobile world, because even for experts it's getting difficult...

I've tried to do it in another forum but i don't know if all data is 100% correct or my words are used correct or if I could it explane it in another way or add data... Most data comes from site like Forum nokia, Nokia lixicon, C-net, Gsmworld, and some others...

Are there people who want to help with made a list...

Underneed I post the first 3 parts I already made, and together we can make a good, reliable FAQ about mobile technologie...

[kristof.vanriet]

At first some Voice/data sending protocols:

VOICE

GSM and cdmaOne A are both 2G or second generation cellular system for carring voice and data, bot work on the same basics. If you wanna know more about this visit http://www.gsmworld.com in the history part.

TDMA or Time Division Multiple Access: a technology for delivering digital wireless service using time-division multiplexing. TDMA works by dividing a radio frequency into unique time slots and then allocating slots to different users (2 each). In this way, a single frequency can support multiple, simultaneous data channels. Mostly used in the Americas.

PDC is the same as TDMA but used as GSM cellular system.

W-CDMA and cdma2000 are both 3G or third generation of mobile communication. the improvements between the 2G and 3G are better voice quality and a bigger bandwith, IP traffic, greater capacity and improved spectrum and better roaming

UMTS or Universal Telecommuncation System is commonly used alongside the term 3G in Europe. This can be confusing however, as UMTS refers to a specific implementation of WCDMA within the 2.1GHz band which is the frequency that is made available for 3G in Europe and other parts of the world. It is an implementation of 3G

the follow up of technologies are going to be
- cdmaOne -> cdma2000 1x -> cdma2000 1x EV-DO or EV-DV
- TDMA to cdma2000 1x or to GSM (most will use GSM)
- GSM -> GPRS -> EDGE -> W-CDMA

So you are going to have 2 systems CDMA2000 and WCDMA

DATA for GSM

WAP or Wireless Application Protocol: a protocol to discribe how data is send and transmitted to a mobile phone.

GPRS or General Packed Radio Service: is a packet based technology for data transfer over an IP-based network and used as an enhancement for GSM networks, The speed of a GPRS capable device depends on how many timeslots (1 to 8, shared by active users) within a TDMA frame are used. Up and downlink are treated separately and various radio channel coding schemes allow bitrates from 9 to over 171.2 kbit/s (if device were to use all 8 channels without error correction) per user

HSCSD or High Speed Curcuit Switched Data: is an enhancement of current GSM networks allowing users to send and receive data with higher speeds. This is achieved by increasing the speed of one channel as well as giving the option of using several channels at the same time, which results in speeds close to 60 Kbps. This makes HSCSD particularly interesting to people who want to access the Internet at higher speeds than current GSM phones.

EDGE or Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution (EGPRS): EDGE is being developed to be the basis for a 3G wireless standard which can be used by TDMA and GSM operators. It works with a new modulation technique which allows for better usage of existing frequencies. This means that EDGE can be deployed on existing GSM networks. EDGE enables data transfer speeds of up to 384 kilobits per second. This translates to 48 Kbps per timeslot enabling three times the data speeds of GPRS.

WCDMA or Wideband Code Division Multiple Access is a 3G technology used in UMTS. Data transfer speeds go up to 2 Mbps, and due to the efficient use of the radio spectrum, a wealth of different services can be accessed simultaneously including circuit and packet services with varying bandwidths. WCDMA data transfer speeds will go up to 10.8 Mbps.

HSDPA or 3.5G, not much is know about it, but this will be the GPRS of a 3G network, in run up to the 4G network, but this is future talk, not before 2010...



DATA for CDMA2000

cdma2000 is an IMT-2000 standard and included in the evolution part from cdmaOne.

cdma2000 1x will double the voice capacity and allow up to packet-based data transfer speeds of up to 307 Kbps.

cdma2000 1xEV, the next step, will allow for up to 2.4 Mbps data transfer rates (1xEV-DO, data only) and 4.8 Mbps in phase 2 (1xEV-DV, data and voice).

WML or Wireless Markup Language: a markup language based on XML. it a browser context how text and images will be showed on a small screen device.
XHTML is a more advanced Markup Language.

Push to Talk
A one-way communication function in a mobile phone which lets one user at a time talk to another user or a selected user group. Push to talk is activated by pressing the push to talk key or equivalent on the phone. In a user group, the turns to speak are requested by pressing the push to talk key and granted on a first come, first served basis.

Push to Talk over cellular
A service that provides direct one-to-one and one-to-many voice communication in the cellular network. Calls can be started both to individuals and to talk groups with just the push of a key. Call connection is almost instantaneous and the receiver does not have to answer the call. A specifically PoC-enabled terminal is needed for the service.

[kristof.vanriet]

Messaging and fun

Messaging

SMS or short messaging service, is sending a text message from a mobile to another (or PC). The text can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created as part of the GSM Phase 1 standard. The first short message is believed to have been sent in December 1992 from a Personal Computer (PC) to a mobile phone on the Vodafone GSM network in the UK. For sending and recieving the operator need a SMS center.

EMS or Enhanced messaging service is a succesor of SMS, started by Ericsson, Alcatel, Siemens en Motorola and some others. EMS is capable of sending text, sound and Images, but EMS is nothing more than an some sms attached to eachother with a User Data Header (UDH). in the UDH stands some information about the message and how it will be displayed or played, on a phone that don't support EMS, a SMS will be showed with only the text. For sending and recieving the operator needs a SMS center.

MMS or Multimedia messaging service delivers a total communication experience, allowing personalised multimedia content such as images, audio, text, video (more for 3G) and combinations of these. On an compatible phone, the MMS message will appear with a new message alert. The picture message will open on the screen, the text will appear below the image and the sound will begin to play automatically.
If the message is sent to a non-compatible MMS phone the user will receive a SMS message along the lines of: "You have been sent a picture message!" or send it through a e-mail adress.
MMS is based on common Internet technologies currently supported on a variety of content types which would include plain text, HTML, audio in a variety of formats including an efficient new standard AMR and soon MP3, pictures as GIF, JPEG, PNG and in the future video using MPEG4.
There is not a network limit but initial devices are specifying minimum support for 30k to 100k- it's really a manufacturer limit concerning the amount of memory, for sending and recieving the operator needs a MMS center because of the amouth of data is send.

E-mail is more an internet technologie, but some mobile phones can handle them due some Java or sms. the greatest benefit is that a e-mail isn't limited to 160/1000 character.

Video and Images

the most supported image encoding systems are Jpeg, GIF87a, and GIF89a, including animated GIF89a, as well as wireless Bitmap (WBMP) and optional Portable Network Graphics (PNG). Images are adapted to screen (colors and size) so they are showed in best format... The quality of a picture taken with a phonecamera are not the best, most camera's are VGA with res 480*640.

For video encoding you have the International Telecommunications Union standard H.263
codec, which was designed for video coding at low bit rates, beginning with 20 to 30 kilobits per
second (Kbps) (thousand bits per second) and moving up to 64 Kb, Real (a company know from Realplayer and realone) is working to enhance video streaming by adding MPG4 and Realvideo/audio and WMV, windows media video/audio.
Videocalls will be working with the H.263 codec for a uniform standard, but this is still in devellopment.
the formats are SQCIF, QCIF, CIF, 4CIF, 16CIF and there going to add some in future...


and you also have a voice codec; Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) is the mandatory voice codec for third-generation (3G) cellular
systems. When combined with H.263 video, AMR can also be used to create bandwidth-effective “3GP” multimedia clips.

Ringing tones

Monophonic ringingtones. when you recieve a call of sms/mms a ringingtone goes off, to alert you someone is trying to reach you, the first generation ringing tones were based upon a buzzer that can play one instrument.

Polyphonic ringingtones or Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) enables the creation of polyphonic musical compositions with a wide variety of different sounds. This means that multiple tones can be played at the same time using predefined instrument sounds such as piano, guitar, violin, drums, etc. MIDI tones can be used as ring tones, message alert tones, and in games as background music and sound effects. Total size of memory for downloaded MIDI content 40 – 110 kB.

SP-MIDI or Scalable Polyphony MIDI is a novel enhancement to the MIDI format that makes it particularly suitable for mobile devices. Maximum Instantaneous Polyphony (MIP) message is added to define the musical arrangement of the SP-MIDI content according to the desired polyphony levels. SP-MIDI also can be understood as a layered representation of the MIDI music, where MIDI channels are ordered according to channel priority and the polyphony level is defined as a cumulative playback requirement starting from the highest priority channels

True tones ringingtones. True Tones technology makes it possible to use actual recorded sounds as ringing tones and expands the possibilities to a whole new level. The technology has been optimized for a high-quality natural sound while still keeping the file sizes reasonable. True Tones is not meant to be an alternative for MIDI ringing tones but rather complementing the offering.

In the near future we will see new music/ringingtones possibility's like playing FM radio, 8 to 16 bit music, Mp3 music, etc...

Games

Java and Brew are the most used game platform for mobile users,

Java J2ME stands for Java 2 Micro Edition, and is a Java runtime environment for devices with sparse resources. This could be anything from mobile phones to PDAs, CD players and dedicated gaming devices. There are two J2ME configurations, namely the Connected Device Configuration (CDC) (32-bit CPU and more than 2 MB of memory) and the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), used for devices with smaller CPUs and memory. An entire setup includes the Java Virtual Machine, J2ME Libraries and the J2ME Profile.

BREW is a development platform for Java, Flash and XML to run on very small computers such as PDAs and wireless devices.

Also Symbian and Microsoft mobile has got there own software (games) specified to a device, what will be the standard? we will see later on...

[kristof.vanriet]

Part III

Connection technologies

Radio frequency Bands;

The RF Spectum extends from 3KHz to 300GHz. The most important are those (for this subject)
these bands are unlicend:

The 2.4 - 2.5 GHz for IEEE 802.11b, Bluetooth and Home Cordless phones and microwave ovens
And the 5Ghz for IEEE 802.11.

Bluetooth
A wireless interconnect technology standard, designed to replace the many cables we need to connect devices. This technology will let you walk into a room and communicate with your PC or other Bluetooth-compliant devices. The Bluetooth specification was created in February 1998 by a consortium comprising inventive minds from Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba
The odd name is derived from an aggressive Viking king so fond of blueberries that they stained his teeth.
Bluetooth is a good, low-power data/voice transmission standard that will be a real boon for certain applications. Imagine a cell phone or pager that automatically transfers to vibrate mode when you enter a restaurant or theater. Or a laptop and GPS (global positioning system) that automatically feed a display in your car for directions. One of Bluetooth's design strengths is its low cost. The Bluetooth SIG says integrating this technology should add only $5 to the cost of a unit.
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 Ghz band and got 3 power classes:
Class 1: 100 milliwatt, 20 dBm, 1Mbs, 100 Meters
Class 2: 2.5 milliwatt, 4 dBm, 1Mbs, 10 Meters
Class 3: 1 milliwatt, 0 dBm, 1Mbs, 10 Meters
The speed of 1Mbs and the distances are under optimal conditions, normaly a speed of 700-800 Kbs is more likely
Bluetooth traffic has 2 types; Voice and data. Voice traffic has a much lower tolerance for interference than does data traffic.

The security of the bluetooth network is less than wonderful. You have 3 types;
Level 1: No security.
Level 2: Service-level-enforced security. Security is established after channel negotiation.
Level 3: Link-level-enforced security
The second level is the most used.
and for those who wanna know;
there are 5 stages of activity of a bluetooth network: standby, inquire, page, connect and park/hold.
Standby is a radio waiting to join a piconet (PAN).
Inquire is a radio seeking other radios to connect.
Page is a master radio asking to connect to a specific radio.
Connect is a radio active on a piconet as a master, slave or simultaneous.
Park/hold is a low-power connected state.

IEEE 802.11a, b, g,... or WIFI
Wifi is much more faster than Bluetooth with speeds up to 11-54 Mbs and a operation range of 400 meters.
There are some basic differences between. Bluetooth is designed for connecting 2 or more devices for sharing data and voice and Wifi is more designed to connect a whole network.

the standards from a to g are updates on speed and security;
802.11a
An IEEE specification for wireless networking that operates in the 5 GHz frequency range (5.725 GHz to 5.850 GHz) with a maximum 54 Mbps data transfer rate. The 5 GHz frequency band is not as crowded as the 2.4 GHz frequency, because the 802.11a specification offers more radio channels than the 802.11b. These additional channels can help avoid radio and microwave interference.
802.11b
International standard for wireless networking that operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range (2.4 GHz to 2.4835 GHz) and provides a throughput of up to 11 Mbps. This is a very commonly used frequency. Microwave ovens, cordless phones, medical and scientific equipment, as well as Bluetooth devices, all work within the 2.4 GHz frequency band.
802.11g
Similar to 802.11b, but this standard provides a throughput of up to 54 Mbps. It also operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band but uses a different radio technology in order to boost overall bandwidth.

WIMAX or Super WIFI
Wimax is a technologie that allows to provide internetconnection of a hole city. It has a speed of 70Mbs and it can carry signals over distances of 50Km. This a direct threat to the 3G network althow it can't carry voice, it can be used for VOIP (voice over IP). This technologie is just in developing fase and will be available at the beginning of 2005.

IR of Infrared
Infrared uses the invisable red light to communicate with devices. it need a staight line up between transmitter and reciever within 1 meter. The speed can go up to 4Mbs (high speed infrared connection) but normaly with mobile phones the speed is not more then 115Kbs.


Did you know?
that grounded metal sheets absorb the RF signals (cookie sheet, large metal bowl, metal wall studs, metal sheeting, ceiling tiles, etc.)
Also Microwave ovens can interfere with the bluetooth or Wifi RF.