Evolution of Next Generation Mobile Broadband

摘要

Mobile broadband is powered by the same technology that makes cell phones work. It's all about radio waves and frequencies. Cell phones and cell-phone radio towers send packets of digital information back and forth to each other via radio waves. In the case of a phone call, the packets of information carry voice data. For mobile broadband, the packets of information would be other types of data like e-mails, Web pages, music files and streaming video. There are two basic technologies used to operate cell-phone networks: Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). The major technical differences between the two systems have to do with the way each technology shares space on the radio spectrum. Without getting into the details, both GSM and CDMA use different algorithms that allow multiple cell phone users to share the same radio frequency without interfering with each other. For mobile broadband various mobile communication standards such as GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, UMTS, HSPA, WiMAX, and LTE can be used. Mobile broadband is also known as 3G, or third-generation cell-phone technology. Both GSM and CDMA have developed their own 3G technology solutions for delivering high-speed Internet access to mobile devices.The CDMA-based mobile broadband technology is called EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data Only). The trick behind EV-DO is that it runs over a part of the cellular network devoted entirely to data. GSM's answer to EV-DO is something called HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access). Unlike EV-DO, an HSPA network can handle both voice and data transfers, so you can talk to mom and surf the Web at the same time. It maximizes data transfer speeds by focusing on downloading and uploading information. Further advancements to HSPA is refered as HSPA+ and LTE.AII of these standards give sequential boost to the peak data rate available to the mobile subscriber.