OK, if you don't call W-CDMA or TD-SCDMA CDMA. I think of anything CDMA as CDMA. I'm relatively indifferent to the variety as they are all QCOM intellectual property.
The air interface is either CDMA, or OFDM, or TDMA, [aka GSM in one variety] or analogue, or pulsed monocycle.
In about 1998 I started panicking about OFDM when discovering that new thing [to me] being tinkered with at Auckland University. Andrew Viterbi was non-committal when asked about QUALCOMM's position in OFDM at the AGM, [after the meeting]. Then he shot through and joined Flarion, which to me was code red full scale alert panic abandon ship.
After some review and investigation and Sier pondering, with Clark Hare and others weighing in with some expertise, we ended up about where we are now, with OFDM not being a spectacular threat, but a serious one in the long run.
Flarion was making me nervous, continuing to successfully develop OFDM technology. Then QUALCOMM popped the question with nearly $1bn as dowry [every year's a leap year when corporate marriages are concerned]. Hey presto, OFDM ceased to be a major threat, wimax notwithstanding. Somehow I can't take wimax seriously as a threat. We never hear much about royalties to be paid in wimax, or who owns what.
I also wondered whether such a thing as minuscule pulses could be used as a digital signal rather than varying full waves in frequency or amplitude or with little bits sent in time slots. My brother reckoned it was a dopey idea and couldn't work [but he thought that about CDMA too]. Nevertheless I remained on alert and sure enough, in a year or three just that technology came over the horizon in the form of Time Domain.
It's called UWB [ultrawideband] [unless I've confused that with something else] and is intended as a short range signal for various functions rather than a long range system.
That remains a threat to QUALCOMM because I don't see why after some time has passed that all spectrum couldn't be handled like that, and at long range if it's the best way to move bits in huge numbers with high efficiency and low cost.
I don't understand it enough to have any idea whether such a method is a good one to replace wide area wireless networks.
What do you think? And anyone who has any idea.
Mqurice |
