3rd generation to 4th generation? 3G and now going to 4G? Comments welcome.
FROM Raging Bull:
By: BlueSkyWaves
Reply To: 23316 by norfolk
Monday, 27 Dec 1999 at 5:10 PM EST
Post # of 23331
Fortunately, the road from 2G to 3G to 4G passes through the messy world of
TDMA/GSM (20 or so players), QCOM CDMA and WCDMA (100 or so players).
Turning the 3G Patent Platform into something like the MPEG Patent Pool looks
promising but is far from being an assured success. Therein lies one of the long-term
opportunities for IDC.
March 15, 1999
Ruling the radio waves
zdnet.co.uk
Although the battle over standards for mobile cellular phones is still being waged,
Peter Fletcher sees a plan to steal a march on the fourth generation emerging
Just as I was beginning to get used to the idea that mobile multimedia
third-generation cellular -- or 3G as the in-crowd call it -- might finally happen after all
these years, I found myself last week deep in a transatlantic conversation about the
fourth generation.
I was talking to Gary Lomp, chief technical officer of InterDigital Communications
Corporation. The company specialises in inventing and designing wireless interface
systems for both fixed radio access networks and mobile communications systems. It
hails from a town with the unlikely name King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
It's one of those hot-shops that are springing up all over to sell intellectual property.
They invent something, and patent it. Then along comes a huge company with 10
times the number of engineers and oodles of laboratory space, that can't quite get it
right all by itself, so it gives the hot-shop dozen a fistful of dollars for a licence.
InterDigital has struck licence deals with Siemens, Samsung, Alcatel and now Nokia.
So, why 4G? Well, after long and acrimonious argument the standards setters
decided that the 3G UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) standards should be
divided between two technologies. Wide Band Code Division Multiple Access
(WCDMA) uses two channels of equal bandwidth but at widely separated frequencies
for each direction of a conversation.
The other combines time division and code division (TD-CDMA), and multiplexes
uplink and downlink time on a single radio channel. This is potentially more flexible
since only the amount of bandwidth required need be allocated to either direction --
for instance fast for downloading complex Web pages and slow sending mouse
clicks back, or equally fast in both directions for a video phone link.
TD-CDMA looks like being a bit more difficult, so it seldom gets a mention in all the
furore and hype that's growing around 3G. That's where Lomp is determined to make
his mark.
He won't discuss the details of the relationships his company has struck with
Siemens, Alcatel and Nokia, but it's probably no coincidence that these companies
were among the most vehement fighters for a total TD-CDMA solution. But
InterDigital's 4G is much more than an air interface. Lomp's plan is to develop a set of
software and hardware that will allow full exploitation of the flexibility offered by
TD-CDMA.
He believes that in the future the success of high-bandwidth mobile networks will
depend on value-added applications. So InterDigital is busy working out an
architecture that Lomp likens to the Bios in a PC -- it gives mobile terminals a
standard interface for value-added-service designers and lets them adapt
dynamically to whatever radio -- or indeed fixed -- network environment they find
themselves in.
In the meantime, the 3G players are still busy squabbling over patents and standards
and over who owns what and how many Megachips per second it should operate at.
The fight even has two federal governments involved -- with angry exchanges of
high-level letters between the US and the European Union, each threatening to shop
the other to the World Trade Organisation. The nickname Banana Phone could take
on a sinister meaning if it continues.
But while governments and industry giants are fighting at their end of the playground,
Lomp and his team are beavering away behind the bike sheds creating what he is
convinced they'll all need to buy from him in five years' time. |
