More on Qualcomm and W-CDMA....
New chip plans call truce in 3G wars
by: Khavalier (40 Something/M/King of Prussia)
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Qualcomm to Develop Chips for All W-CDMA Standards
New chip plans call truce in 3G wars
Loring Wirbel, EETimes
Qualcomm Inc. called a truce in the 3G wars over wideband CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), announcing at Telecom '99 that it was
developing chip sets for both multi-carrier and direct-spread versions of next-generation CDMA networks.
Qualcomm (San Diego, Cal. stand 1130.002, USA Pavillion), working with the CDMA Developers Group, had promoted two different versions
of multicarrier systems, dubbed 1X and 3X, as the proposed technologies for cdma2000, a 3G candidate that promised backward compatibility
with North American IS-95 CDMA networks.
L.M. Ericsson (Stockholm, Sweden, stand 4221) and NTT Mobile Networks Inc. [DoCoMo] (Tokyo, stand 5021-001) had proposed an
alternative wideband CDMA based on direct spread spectrum technologies, which found favor in the European Union and the International
Telecommunication Union. When Qualcomm sold its infrastructure business and cross-licensed technology to Ericsson earlier this year, the
company abandoned its hard line with the ITU, hinting that it would develop technology for Ericsson/NTT standards.
Monday's announcement of future development of the MSM5200 chip set reinforces the message that Qualcomm will be a merchant chip player
in the Direct Spread market. Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs stressed that the company will continue to support cdma2000 through its
MSM5100 set, which supports 1X and 3X multi-carrier CDMA. Given Qualcomm's extensive work with Lucent Technologies Inc. on base
station chips for 1X CDMA, sources said it was likely Qualcomm would market devices for DS base stations. If current nomenclature is
followed, that chip set would be called the CSM5200.Jacobs said that only time will tell whether DS or multicarrier would prove more important
in 3G phones, but he said both CDMA versions will show a significant advantage over GSM data methods such as General Packet Radio
Service (GPRS) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). Jacobs said that current GPRS implementations in handsets are bad
enough by wasting power to handle bursty data. But Jacobs said the transition to EDGE "goes exactly the wrong way for efficient data use --
CDMA tries to offer more bandwidth per symbol, while EDGE tries to stuff more amplitude and phase information per symbol, which will not
allow the development of efficient 3G phones." In any event, Jacobs said Qualcomm chip developers will have the time to optimize designs for
both CDMA variants, since the company does not anticipate widespread use of 3G technologies before 2003. |
