Articles of September 2009

Hundreds of millions of mobile phones sold worldwide prove that mobile services now belong to the mass market, which will be further developed and become more diverse in the coming years. To meet user needs for an increasing range of services, mobile phone standards are evolving from the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), to the general Packet Radio Service (GPRS), and in the near future to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). This new generation of mobile services will encompass not only traditional telephone services, but also a broad range of multimedia applications, such as Internet (E-mail, Web pages), and the broadcasting audio and video content. Managing this migration is a major technical and commercial challenge for the mobile industry. Digital broadcast systems could have an essential role in this process, providing mobile networks with efficient mechanisms to allow numerous users to access large amounts of content. Thus it appears that there could be merging of point-to-point communication services and broadcasting services.

Mobile System: Essentially a mobile system consists of a network part, a transmitter part and a mobile terminal part. It provides bidirectional point-to-point communication services, and/or broadcast services. Broadcast is a generic term which includes multicast. Handheld and in-vehicle terminals are available for