Chapter 6
Introduction to Wireless Access Technologies
Our primary emphasis here is on wireless personal communications systems, where there are many mobile devices (also known as mobile stations or mobile phones) that connect to the network through base stations (also known as access points). There may also be many base stations in the system. Such systems would typically support two-way communications (unlike broadcast radio or broadcast television), and the devices would typically be associated with particular individuals (also known as users or subscribers). In an environment where there are multiple mobile devices trying to access the network, a channelization scheme is a scheme to separate the communications of the different devices from one another.
In the next few chapters we focus on wireless access technologies. In particular, in Chapter 7 we examine component technologies that are found in many wireless access technologies. Then we see how these component technologies, and other techniques, are incorporated into various standards, in our survey of selected standards (GSM, IS-95 CDMA, and 802.11 “WiFi”) in Chapter 8. More recent trends in wireless access technologies may be found in Chapter 9.
In this chapter we build on the foundations from Chapter 1, to provide further foundations more specifically relevant to wireless access technologies. We review digital signal processing in Section 6.1, then explore digital communications over wireless links in Section 6.2. The ...
