The Wide World of Wireless
From AMPS to IMT-2000, the international wireless scene has a huge cast of systems and standards. Here’s your program guide to the big show.
Any discussion of wireless communications inevitably brings up an alphabet soup of acronyms. Along with Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS), Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), you have CdmaOne, IS-95, and of course International Mobile Telecommunications Year 2000 Initiative (IMT-2000). It’s enough to make the Sprint dime lady scream.
The easiest way to understand what all these acronyms mean is to go back to the beginning of the wireless communications industry and see how the technology evolved. You can easily learn the meanings of these terms while exploring the history of the industry.
IN THE BEGINNING
In the 1970s, Bell Telephone Laboratories developed the first wireless transmission system to provide service to mobile subscribers. The resulting commercial system consisted of three major components— cellular phones, base stations, and a Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO).
Although significant technological developments have occurred since the 1970s, the basic components of a cellular system haven’t changed. In addition, the basic concept behind cellular communications has also remained the same. This concept divides a serving area into geographic zones referred to as “cells.”