Qualcomm

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The telecom industry is not unlike every other technology industry. Large corporations own patents. From these patents they attempt establish standards. Competitors have opposing technologies. Constituents and implementers of the technology pick a side. Big players attempt to use their hegemony to create a monopoly within the industry. VHS vs. Beta, Blue Ray vs. HDDVD, Osh Kosh vs. Levis, and CDMA vs. GSM.

CDMA - code division multiple access. CDMA allows many transmitters on the same frequency.
GSM - Global System for Multiple Communications. GSM uses different 4 different frequencies.

GSM vs. CDMA - I postulate that cdma is faster because they can utilize bandwidth with more efficiency because they can allow more transmissions on the same frequency. Where as, GSM has to place different transmissions in different frequency to establish its autonomy.

An analogy to the problem of multiple access is a room (channel) in which people wish to communicate with each other. To avoid confusion, people could take turns speaking (time division), speak at different pitches (frequency division), or speak in different directions (spatial division). In CDMA, they would speak different languages. People speaking the same language can understand each other, but not other people. Similarly, in radio CDMA, each group of users is given a shared code. Many codes occupy the same channel, but only users associated with a particular code can understand each other.

Labels: Technology