Monday, February 24, 2003		Feature

Cellphone terms

SOME of the commonly used terms for mobile phones are explained in the following manner by the Free Online Dictionary of Computing, an excellent resource built by 1,500 volunteers under the guidance of Denis Howe. It can be accessed at: http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc

GSM GSM, originally "Groupe de travail Spéciale pour les services Mobiles". A standard for digital cellular communications (in the process of being) adopted by over 60 countries. The GSM standard is currently used in the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands.

CDMA Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). A form of multiplexing or combining several signals for transmission on some shared medium (e.g. a telephone wire or a radio frequency. The signals are combined at the transmitter by a multiplexor (a "mux") and split up at the receiver by a demultiplexor.

Bluetooth A specification for short-range radio links between mobile computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, and other portable devices.

WAP Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). An open international standard for applications that use wireless communication, e.g. Internet access from a mobile phone.

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS): A GSM data transmission technique that does not set up a continuous channel from a portable terminal for the transmission and reception of data, but transmits and receives data in packets. It makes efficient use of available radio spectrum, and users pay only for the volume of data sent and received.

Source code Also called "source", or rarely "source language". The form in which the programmer writes a computer program. Source code is written in some formal programming language that can be compiled automatically into object code or machine code or executed by an interpreter.