Wireless glossary

By Staff writers on 19 November 2007

3G, GPRS, TransFlash, RS-MMC. Don't know what they mean? Check out our glossary of wireless terms.

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1G First-generation wireless; analog mobile phones.
2.5G Second-generation (2G) wireless, plus faster data services.
3G Third-generation wireless: digital plus high-speed data and global roaming; known as IMT 2000 by the ITU and implemented in Europe as UMTS and in North America as CDMA2000; goals are high-quality multimedia and advanced global roaming (in-house, mobile, satellite).
802.11 IEEE standards for wireless LANs with specs for 1mbps, 2mbps, 11mbps, and 24mbps.
A
access point Base station that plugs into Ethernet hub or server; like a mobile phone system cell, users can roam between access points.
AMPS Advanced Mobile Phone Service; the standard for analog mobile telephones; uses a frequency-modulated transmission and frequency spacing to separate user transmission; operates in the 800MHz band.
AMPS modem A wireless modem designed for analog mobile phones.
AP Access point; a base station in a wireless LAN. Access points are typically standalone devices that plug into an Ethernet hub or server. Like a mobile phone system, users can roam around with their mobile devices and be handed off from one access point to the other.
API Application Programming Interface.
ARDIS Advanced National Radio Data Service; established, nationwide packet data system from American Mobile; provides 19.2kbps.
B
Bluetooth Wireless personal area network (PAN) standard geared for home and office; uses 2.4GHz band at 720kbps within 30-foot range.
broadband wireless Wireless transmission at high speed. Wireless transmission is slower than wireline speeds; thus, whereas land-based broadband generally starts at T1 rates, wireless might be considered broadband starting at 250kbps.
BSS Base station subsystem.
bytecode Content encoding where the content is typically a set of low-level opcodes and operands for a targeted hardware (or virtual) machine.
C
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access; Qualcomm's spread-spectrum air-interface method. It codes each conversation and expands it 128 times, which makes it easy to decipher at the receiving end.
CDMA2000 3G CDMA evolution from CDMA One supported by CDMA One operators; now known as the 1X Multi-Carrier mode (1X MC) in an overall standard for 3G CDMA.
CDMA One 2G CDMA (IS 95).
CDPD Cellular Digital Packet Data. A digital wireless transmission system that is deployed as an enhancement to the existing analog mobile network. Based on IBM's CelluPlan II, it provides a packet overlay onto the AMPS network and moves data at 19.2kbps over ever changing unused intervals in the voice channels. If all the channels are used, the data is stored and forwarded when a channel becomes available.

CDPD was developed as a wireless extension to an IP network and uses the four-octet (0.0.0.0) address for connections. CDPD networks cover most of the major urban areas in the United States and have been deployed by AT&T, Ameritech, GTE, BellAtlantic Mobile, and other carriers. By the late 1990s, incompatibility issues had been worked out, and roaming agreements and interoperability between carriers is generally nationwide. CDPD modems are available on PC Cards for laptop and handheld computers.
compact HTML (cHTML) Subset of HTML 2.0, HTML 3.2, and HTML 4.0 specifications designed for limited hardware information appliances.
CTIA Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association
CVSD Continuous Variable Slope Delta Modulation
D
dispatch radio Two-way radio used for taxis, trucks, and fleets; always on.
DHCP Domain Host Control Protocol; DHCP is a protocol for dynamically assigning IP addresses to networked computers. With DHCP, a computer can automatically be given a unique IP address each time it connects to a network, making IP address management easier for network administrators. When a computer logs on to the network, the DHCP server selects an IP address from a master list and assigns it to the system.
dual-mode handset Mobile phone that switches from analog to digital or from land-based to satellite or from cordless to mobile.
E
EDGE Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution; increased data throughput in GSM and TDMA systems to 384kbps.
Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) An open standard that allows pictures, sounds, animations, and formatted text to be swapped between compliant mobile phones.
F
FCC Federal Communications Commission
FireWire Originally developed by Apple, this is an increasingly popular and very fast external bus for transferring data between devices; also known as IEEE 1394 for the name of the standard it engendered.
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Topics: network, wireless, wi-fi, terms, terminology, glossary

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