GROUP DISCUSSION

CDMA VERSUS GSM

The ultimate outcome of the battle for dominance between these two
competing cellular data transmission technologies may lie more in their history
than their respective merits. To understand the current prevalence of GSM,
one needs a foundation in the forces that converged to push one technology
ahead of the other.

One of the most contentious battles being waged in the wireless infrastructure
industry is the debate over the efficient use and allocation of finite airwaves.
For several years, the world's two main methods -- Code-Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) -- have
divided the wireless world into opposing camps. Ultimately, the emergence of
a victorious technology may owe more to historical forces than the latest
wireless innovation, or the merits of one standard over the other.

CDMA's World War II Foundations-

CDMA, put into an historical context, is a recently patented technology that
only became commercially available in the mid-1990s, but had its roots in pre-
World War II America.

In 1940, Hollywood actress turned inventor, Hedy Lamarr, and co-inventor

George Antheil, with World War II looming, co-patented a way for torpedoes to
be controlled by sending signals over multiple radio frequencies using random
patterns. Despite arduous efforts by the inventors to advance the technology
from experiment to implementation, the U.S. Navy discarded their work as
architecturally unfeasible. The idea, which was known as frequency-hopping,
and later as frequency-hopping spread-spectrum technology (FHSS),
remained dormant until 1957 when engineers at the Sylvania Electronic
Systems Division, in Buffalo, New York took up the idea, and after the Lamarr-
Antheil patent expired, used it to secure communications for the U.S. during
the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. After becoming an integral part of government
security technology, the U.S. military, in the mid-80s, declassified what has
now become CDMA technology, a technique based on spread-spectrum
technology.

What interested the military soon caught the eye of a nascent wireless
industry. CDMA, incorporating spread-spectrum, works by digitizing multiple
conversations, attaching a code known only to the sender and receiver, and
then dicing the signals into bits and reassembling them. The military loved
CDMA because coded signals with trillions of possible combinations resulted
in extremely secure transmissions.

Qualcomm, which patented CDMA, and other telecommunications companies,

were attracted to the technology because it enabled many simultaneous
conversations, rather than the limited stop-and-go transmissions of analog
and the previous digital option.

CDMA was not field tested for commercial use until 1991, and was launched
commercially in Hong Kong in 1995. CDMA technology is currently used by
major cellular carriers in the United States and is the backbone of Sprint's
Personal Communications System (PCS). Along with Sprint, major users of
CDMA technology are Verizon and GTE.
Advantages of CDMA include:

• Increased cellular communications security.

• Simultaneous conversations.
• Increased efficiency, meaning that the carrier can serve more
subscribers.
• Smaller phones.
• Low power requirements and little cell-to-cell coordination needed
by operators.
• Extended reach - beneficial to rural users situated far from cells.
Disadvantages of CDMA include:
• Due to its proprietary nature, all of CDMA's flaws are not known to
the engineering community.
• CDMA is relatively new, and the network is not as mature as
GSM.
• CDMA cannot offer international roaming, a large GSM
advantage.

Technical Details of CDMA-

CDMA which incorporates spread-spectrum technology works by digitizing

multiple conversations. It attaches a code known only to the sender and
receiver, and then dicing the signals into bits and reassembling them. The
military loved CDMA because coded signals with trillions of possible
combinations resulted in extremely secure transmissions.
TDMA and GSM systems commonly start with a slice of spectrum referred to
as one "carrier". Each carrier is then divided into time slots. Only one
subscriber at a time is assigned to each time slot, or channel. No other
conversations can access this channel until the subscriber's call is finished, or
until that original call is handed off to a different channel by the system. For
example, GSM systems create 8 time-division channels in 200 kHz (kilohertz)
wide carriers.
With CDMA, all users share the same 1,250 kHz wide carrier, but unique
digital codes are used to differentiate subscribers. The codes are shared by
both the mobile station and the base station and are called "pseudo-random
code sequences". Base stations in the system distinguish themselves from
each other by transmitting different portions of the code at a given time. In
other words, the base stations transmit time-offset versions of the same
pseudo-random code.
In order to ensure that the time offsets used remain unique from each other,
CDMA stations must remain synchronized to a common time reference. The
global positioning system (GPS) provides this precise common time
reference. GPS is a satellite-based radio navigation system capable of
providing a practical and affordable means of determining continuous position,
velocity, and time to an unlimited number of users.

SPREAD SPECTRUM-

One of the unique aspects of CDMA is that while there are certainly limits to
the number of phone calls that can be handled by a carrier, this is not a fixed
figure. The number of simultaneous connections any base station is able to
handle is the result of a trade-off with the range of the base station and the
quality of each connection. A standard CDMA connection has a digital transfer
rate of 9.6Kbps (kilobits per second), the same as GSM. The voice data part
of the connection is transmitted at a rate of 8Kbps. All connections are shared
around the spread spectrum with a maximum transfer rate of 1.23Mbps
(Megabits per second), theoretically allowing a maximum of 131 connections,
compared to 48 GSM connections in a similar bandwidth.
CDMA supports variable bandwidth connections, with enhanced standards at
13Kbps and 64Kbps for superior quality speech and faster data connections.
This 'bandwidth-on-demand' limits the number of simultaneous connections to
a particular base station.

Security -
Traditional uses of spread spectrum are in military operations. Because of the
wide bandwidth of a spread spectrum signal, it is very difficult to jam, difficult
to interfere with, and difficult to identify. This is in contrast to technologies
using a narrower bandwidth of frequencies. Since a wideband spread spectrum
signal is very hard to detect, it appears as nothing more than a slight rise in the
"noise floor" or interference level. With other technologies, the power of the
signal is concentrated in a narrower band, which makes it easier to detect. The
narrow band is also more prone to interference than the spread-spectrum of
CDMA.
Increased privacy is inherent in CDMA technology. CDMA phone calls will be
secure from the casual eavesdropper since, unlike an analog conversation, a
simple radio receiver will not be able to pick individual digital conversations out
of the overall RF radiation in a frequency band. TDMA (time division multiple
access) and GSM systems have to add an extra stage of encryption to the signal
to ensure privacy, whereas encryption is inherent to the CDMA system.

The Euro-Asian Alternative: GSM-

Analysts consider Qualcomm's major competitive disadvantage to be its lack
of access to the European market now controlled by Global System for Mobile
communications (GSM). The wireless world is now divided into GSM (much of
Western Europe) and CDMA (North America and parts of Asia).

Bad timing may have prevented the evolution of one, single global wireless
standard. Just two years before CDMA's 1995 introduction in Hong Kong,
European carriers and manufacturers chose to support the first available
digital technology - Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). GSM uses TDMA
as its core technology. Therefore, since the majority of wireless users are in
Europe and Asia, GSM has taken the worldwide lead as the technology of
choice.

Mobile Handset manufacturers ultimately split into two camps, as Motorola,

Lucent, and Nextel chose CDMA, and Nokia and Ericsson eventually pushed
these companies out and became the dominant GSM players.
Technical Details of GSM-
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which manages the
international allocation of radio spectrum (among other functions) allocated the
bands 890-915 MHz for the uplink (mobile station to base station) and 935-960
MHz for the downlink (base station to mobile station) for mobile networks in
Europe. Since this range was already being used in the early 1980s by the
analog systems of the day, the CEPT had the foresight to reserve the top 10
MHz of each band for the GSM network that was still being developed.
Eventually, GSM will be allocated the entire 2x25 MHz bandwidth. Since radio
spectrum is a limited resource shared by all users, a method must be devised to
divide up the bandwidth among as many users as possible.
The method chosen by GSM is a combination of Time¬ and Frequency ¬Division
Multiple Access (TDMA/FDMA). The FDMA part involves the division by
frequency of the total 25 MHz bandwidth into 124 carrier frequencies of 200 kHz
bandwidth. One or more carrier frequencies are then assigned to each base
station. Each of these carrier frequencies is then divided in time, using a TDMA
scheme, into eight time slots. One time slot is used for transmission by the
mobile and one for reception. They are separated in time so that the mobile unit
does not receive and transmit at the same time, a fact that simplifies the
electronics.

GSM Network-
A GSM network is composed of several functional entities whose functions and
interfaces are defined.
The GSM network can be divided into three broad parts.
• The Mobile Station is carried by the subscriber
• The Base Station Subsystem controls the radio link with the Mobile Station.
• The Network Subsystem, the main part which performs the switching of calls
between the mobile and other fixed or mobile network users as well as
management of mobile services, such as authentication.
The Mobile Station and the Base Station Subsystem communicate across the
Um interface, also known as the air interface or radio link. The Base Station
Subsystem communicates with the Mobile service Switching Center across
another interface.

Advantages of GSM-
• GSM is already used worldwide with over 450 million subscribers.
• International roaming permits subscribers to use one phone throughout
Western Europe. CDMA will work in Asia, but not France, Germany, the U.K. and
other popular European destinations.
• GSM is mature, having started in the mid-80s. This maturity means a more
stable network with robust features. CDMA is still building its network.
• GSM's maturity means engineers cut their teeth on the technology, creating
an unconscious preference.
• The availability of Subscriber Identity Modules, which are SMART CARDS that
provide secure data encryption give GSM m-commerce advantages.
Major disadvantage of GSM is lack of access to American market.
Uses
One of the early applications for code division multiplexing is in GPS. This predates and is
distinct from cdmaOne.
The Qualcomm standard IS-95, marketed as cdmaOne.
The Qualcomm standard IS-2000, known as CDMA2000. This standard is used by
several mobile phone companies, including theGlobalstar satellite phone network.
CDMA has been used in the OmniTRACS satellite system for transportation logistics.

Near-far problem
The near-far problem or hearability problem is a situation that is common in wireless
communication systems, in particular, CDMA. In some signal jamming techniques, the near-
far problem is exploited to disrupt communications.

Technical explanation
The near-far problem is a condition in which a strong signal captures a receiver making it
impossible for the receiver to detect a weaker signal.[1]

The near-far problem is particularly difficult in CDMA systems where transmitters share
transmission frequencies and transmission time.
In contrast, FDMA and TDMA systems are less vulnerable.

The issue of the dynamic range of one or more stages of a receiver limiting that receiver’s
ability to detect a weak signal in the presence of strong signal has been around for a long
time. The near-far problem usually refers to a specific case of this in which ADC resolution
limits the range of signals a receiver can detect in a direct sequence spread spectrum
(DSSS) system such as CDMA. The receiver’s AGC must reduce its gain to prevent ADC
saturation. This causes the weaker signal to fall into the noise of the ADC. This is different
from a condition of one signal interfering with another because if the ADC had sufficient
resolution it would be possible to recover both signals.

DSSS allows multiple transmitters to use the same bandwidth at the same time. One price
of such a system is the dynamic range of the system is limited by the dynamic range of the
receiver ADC.
Solutions
In CDMA systems and similar cellular phone-like networks, the problem is commonly solved
by dynamic output power adjustment of the transmitters. That is, the closer transmitters use
less power so that the SNR for all transmitters at the receiver is roughly the same. This
sometimes can have a noticeable impact on battery life, which can be dramatically different
depending on distance from the base station. In high-noise situations, however, closer
transmitters may boost their output power, which forces distant transmitters to boost their
output to maintain a good SNR. Other transmitters react to the rising noise floor by
increasing their output. This process continues, and eventually distant transmitters lose their
ability to maintain a usable SNR and drop from the network. This process is called power
control runaway. This principle may be used to explain why an area with low signal is
perfectly usable when the cell isn't heavily loaded, but when load is higher, service quality
degrades significantly, sometimes to the point of unusability.

Other possible solutions to the near-far problem:

1. Increased receiver dynamic range - Use a higher resolution ADC. Increase the
dynamic range of receiver stages that are saturating.
2. Dynamic output power control – Nearby transmitters decrease their output power
so that all signals arrive at the receiver with similar signal strengths.
3. TDMA – Transmitters use some scheme to avoid transmitting at the same time.
4. FDMA – Decrease the number of users per signal bandwidth to fewer stations
are required to share the same bandwidth at the same time.

Conclusion-
Today, the battle between CDMA and GSM is muddled. Where at one point
Europe clearly favored GSM and North America, CDMA, the distinct
advantage of one over the other has blurred as major carriers like AT&T
Wireless begin to support GSM, and recent trials even showed
compatibility between the two technologies.

GSM still holds the upper hand however. There's the numerical advantage
for one thing: 456 million GSM users versus CDMA's 82 million.
Other factors potentially tipping the scales in the GSM
direction include :
AT&T Wireless' move to overlay GSM atop its TDMA network means the
European technology (GSM) gains instant access to North America's
number two network.

Qualcomm's recently announced that Wideband-CDMA (WCDMA) won't be

ready in Europe until 2005. This comes amidst reports that GSM's
successor, General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) remains on target for
deployment in 2001-2002.

For all of the historical and technological reasons outlined above, it appears
that GSM, or some combination of GSM and CDMA, will become the long
sought after grail for a global wireless standard. A universalization of
wireless technologies can only stand to benefit the compatibility and
development costs and demands on all wireless commerce participants