Splintered 3G Data Specs>
9/24/99 - Silicon vendors face splintered 3G data specs
Sep. 24, 1999 (Electronic Engineering Times - CMP via COMTEX) -- NEW ORLEANS - Programmable processors launched at last
week's Personal Communications Showcase '99 are responding to what appears to be an increasingly fragmented path to digital
cellular data. Flexible silicon was the order of the day here as the two major digital cellular camps showed separate paths to a
2.5-generation data standard and service providers cited spectrum roadblocks on what's becoming a rocky road to third-generation
cellular systems.
The new and upcoming chips reflect the different integration points prevalent in the nascent world of wire-less data. PrairieComm Inc.
and Qualcomm Inc.'s CDMA Technologies Group showed off processors, while Philips Semiconductors promised a portfolio of
products, based in part on technology acquired from VLSI Technology Inc.
The one factor unifying the digital cellular camps is broad support for the Wireless Application Protocol 1.1, a software interface
standard for Web access. Beyond WAP, hardware designers and carriers alike must prepare for a shift to packet-switched data. The
most likely technologies from the TDMA side arise from Global Systems for Mobile communications (GSM): General Packet Radio
Service (GPRS) as a near-term wideband service, along with Edge, or Evolutionary Data rates for GSM Environment.
Scott Fox, chief executive of Wireless Facilities Inc., predicted that TDMA developers will rally round an Edge-like packet service
extending to 384 kbits/second. Sources indicated that AT&T Wireless (the former McCaw Cellular) will abandon the Cellular Digital
Packet Data standard in favor of a TDMA-compatible Edge service.
The code-division multiple-access (CDMA) camp faces a similarly convoluted path, one that observers last week suggested may start
with the first generation of proposed 3G interfaces from the cdma2000 effort, the so-called 1XRTT. "You'll find widespread agreement in
the CDMA community to jump directly to 1X," said F. Craig Farrill, chief technology officer of Vodafone AirTouch Inc.
"We treat WAP compatibility as a necessity. Beyond that, there is no convergence in data services," said Arnon Kohavi, vice president
for business development at baseband chip specialist DSP Communications Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.). "We expect GPRS and Edge in
one environment, and the cdma2000 evolution from the other camp."
In the short run, the popularity of any of the so-called 2.5G data standards could slow the move by carriers and handset makers to true
3G systems, said Earl Clark, director of business development at Nokia.
PrairieComm (Arlington Heights, Ill.) showed off prototypes of a single-chip processor, the PCI3700 Gait, designed for time-division
multiple-access (TDMA) and GSM networks, with Bluetooth wireless-net capability thrown in. The PrairieComm design leverages the
young company's expertise in integrating ARM and Oak cores in a single design. But PrairieComm elected not to include its own
CDMA core.
The issue is not processing power, said president John Diehl. Rather, the CDMA Developers Group still has not indicated a path to
interoperability with other air interfaces, as the North American GSM Alliance and the TDMA-oriented Universal Wireless Consortium
did at last February's Wireless '99 show.
Among CDMA vendors, Qualcomm's CDMA Technologies Group (San Diego) launched the first of its planned iMSM baseband chips
dedicated to Internet access, in single- and dual-processor versions depending on the integer processing necessary for various
handheld operating environments.
Data handling
Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs, along with Johan Lodenius, vice president of marketing in the technologies group, outlined
steps for processor families to handle the 64-kbit/s data capabilities of IS-95B, a Qualcomm-backed second generation of the IS-95
standard, as well as the higher data rates of two generations of 3G capabilities planned, 1XRTT and 3XRTT.
Qualcomm's data-oriented iMSM 4000 and 4100 are designed to work with either Symbian or Microsoft environments. The 3G 1XRTT
chip on the drawing boards at Qualcomm will be dubbed the M/CSM5000 family, supporting data rates of up to 153 kbits/s. On
Thursday, Lucent Technologies Inc. announced it will be the first user of the basestation version of the chip, CSM5000, with a goal of
very rapid rollout of 1XRTT basestations for all of Lucent's carrier customer base.
Qualcomm's strategy for dominating baseband chip supply is much more central to the company's success than in previous years.
That's because the CDMA pioneer has sold its infrastructure business to LM Ericsson, and announced two weeks ago that its phone
handset business was also up for sale.
At that time, reports emerged that Qualcomm was playing hardball with Philips Semiconductors, denying the company the CDMA
license previously held by VLSI Technology, which Philips acquired. Lodenius insisted, however, that a license will be renegotiated with
Philips, and that Qualcomm has no intention of keeping large players out of the CDMA market.
For its part, the digital cellular group formerly with VLSI came to PCS '99 in high spirits, since it is the first to be fully integrated with
Philips. At the show, Philips announced creation of a telecom terminals business unit under former VLSI vice president Thierry Laurent.
It will incorporate groups for cellular Europe, cellular USA, corded and cordless technologies, and display drivers-in essence, all the
components critical to digital cellular phones and PDAs.
Ronald Wong, market segment manager for communication products in the new unit, said that Philips now can combine the TDMA and
CDMA cores from VLSI with its own IF and RF mixed-signal devices to provide end-to-end design of handset boards.
Philips will be announcing a strategy at next month's Telecom '99 show in Geneva to add more integer-processing cores to its portfolio
to handle the array of data transport alternatives being offered for the GSM marketplace.
Diversity is necessary in these markets because of the tortuous path to 3G in all the air interface segments. Support for WAP, which
requires minimal change in software stacks for baseband processors, was everywhere at PCS '99.
Nokia Telecommunications Inc. (Irving, Texas) launched two phones- the 6100 for TDMA and the 7100 for GSM-incorporating WAP
support, as well as dedicated WAP gateways and data-optimization servers for the cellular infrastructure.
Nokia will go a step further than other WAP vendors by licensing its microbrowser, based on technology from Spyglass Inc., as well as
its WAP protocol stack, thereby enabling a market of third-party WAP servers to emerge, said Haroon Alvi, director of business
development. The first such partnership was announced at PCS '99, when Hewlett-Packard Co. agreed to offer HP-UX WAP servers
interoperating with Nokia equipment.
As the GSM camp turns its eye to GPRS and Edge, the CDMA vendors are looking toward cdma2000. Though Qualcomm pushed hard
for a second generation of IS-95 to extend circuit-switched data support to 64 kbits/s, most North American carriers in the CDMA
Developers Group simply weren't interested. By contrast, developers in Japan and Korea are anxious to roll out IS-95B services as
quickly as possible. Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDMA Developers Group, said this may be due in part to the fact that
many Asian nations do not have a high number of consumers who are regular Internet users, and thus find cellular services like GSM's
Short Message Service and IS-95B to be more significant than U.S. customers.
"Most carriers agree that open interfaces are better than proprietary solutions," said La Forge.
Meanwhile, Vodafone's Farrill said interest in cdma2000's 1XRTT interface involves "much more than the significant increase in speed
you get. You also make the fundamental change from circuit to packet.
"Sometimes markets need these discontinuities," he said. "If the step is a relatively small one, the carriers find it harder to rationalize,
whereas a big leap forward can push them into new markets."
A further wrinkle could be the wireless application of voice-over-Internet Protocol, which already is proving popular in wireline
environments (see Sept. 20, page 1) and could become important in digital cellular handsets. Nokia's Clark said that company is
closely monitoring the work of the 3GIP Working Group to determine if VoIP should be added to future 2.5G and 3G networks.
"Voice-over-IP is even a longer uncertainty," said Kohavi of DSP Communications. "Over time, we are certain packet will be the way to
go for both data and voice. But it will be at least two years before VoIP is a proven technology in a wireline environment, and quite a bit
after that before it becomes commonplace in wireless."
Turmoil in services
In a speech before the IEEE's Wireless Communications & Networking Conference, held adjacent to PCS '99, Ted Hoffman, vice
president of technical development at Bell Atlantic Mobile, said that carriers must be able to win more spectrum from the FCC to make
data services a reality. Carriers don't want to promote the midrange data services heavily because they take bandwidth from existing
users. To adequately handle 1X or 3X CDMA, Hoffman said, carriers must be allowed to own chunks of spectrum in excess of 45-MHz
windows.
The turmoil in offered data services plays into the hands of those with highly programmable architectures-as true from a systems
perspective as it is from the chip side. AirNet Communications Corp. (Melbourne, Fla.), for example, announced an extension of its
GSM basestation family called AdaptaCell, a base transceiver station architecture that can handle GSM voice, GPRS, Edge and future
wideband-CDMA services in any combination the carrier desires.
By using broadband multicarrier power amps on the front end, said AirNet president Lee Hamilton, a basestation could process data in
10-MHz chunks and not worry about protocols, thus eliminating dedicated frequency splitters and combiners. And the banks of digital
signal processors in AdaptaCell could be retargeted at will for GPRS and Edge-only true 3G will need any new hardware, he said.
"Edge uses a nonconstant envelope modulation, so you cannot afford to make a mistake in planning with a normal basestation,"
Hamilton said. "Unless your architecture is completely programmable, the carriers will have to decide on the precise amount of voice,
GPRS and Edge services they want before they buy the basestation."
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By: Loring Wirbel
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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