As we are thinking about implementing the 3G technology in India soon, the world already looks forword to 4G and 5G. Korea and some parts of Europe have already implemented 4G systems, although their commercial use is yet to take full effect. We are currently trying to implement 3G while slowly taking it through the number if complictions that arise from dealing with a market driven economy where there are too many players and less regulations.
While this is all good, it’s worth knowing what exactly 3G is, what 1G were, and what to expect 4G . But before we do that, it’s helpful to expact from 4G . But before we do that , its helpful to first learn to bit of the technologies that makes up these:
CDMA – is Code Division Multiple Access
TDMA – is Time Division Multiple Access
You see, there’s not much differece. But there is some techical differemce between them. Now, What is GSM? GSM stands for “Global Systems for mobile Communication.” Have you heared of TCP/IP Internet Protocals? Protocals are a set of rules and regulations or standards that govern how something is set up. It’s like the rules written in front pages of our unversity exams. You have to follow them to have your paper checked.
Well it’s stricter in the real world, especially where telecommunications are concerened. There are many sets of such rules, or protocals and one needs to verystrictly abide by them(better start learning now ) if they want to be able to make a system capable of performing telecommunication.
One such set of protocols and standards is the GSM standard. GSM is based on TDMA style of communication in it’s 2G form. And 2.5G is what we have now. TDMA is the simplest form of telephonice communication we have. It needs a direct link between the sender and reciver. And this need s to create a profile for each on the server that nobody else will be able to use. This makes TDMA really inconvenient for stuff like using internet, downloading, video calling etc.
That’s where CDMA comes in. In TDMA, each bandwidth, which actually is a set of friquencies that are in use, is cut up into pieces and each pieces of friquency is set up into time slots. Each time slot will belong to a user. This means that every second, there are some times when data is sent from your phone to the tower and the server knows exactly which times those are according to the information it sent your SIM card.
Next time, I will try to cover CDMA story. Which has also there own interesting technical as well practical implementation.
