Overview

With IS-95 established and very successful, it became necessary to upgrade the system with a high-speed data capability to enable it to carry much faster data and thereby enhance the revenue growth. The approach adopted by those developing the CDMA technology from cdmaOne/IS-95 was to have a system in which there was a well-defined migration path forward but with full backward compatibility. As a result of this the IS-2000 standard was developed to enable the higher 3G data rates to be provided.

Within IS-2000, a number of further developments were included. It was envisaged that with many more areas moving towards 3G standards and the old AMPS systems being made obsolete, it would be possible to have systems operating on a wider bandwidth. As a result of this, the new standards allowed for systems that would use the single channel bandwidth (1X) and also ones that would use three times the bandwidth (3X).

The first stage of the 3G development in the form of CDMA2000 1X can double the voice capacity of cdmaOne networks and deliver peak packet data speeds of 307 kbps in mobile environments. CDMA2000 1X has been designated a 3G standard, and is widely deployed with operators in all continents of the world. Like cdmaOne, 1X is widely deployed in North America and the Asia Pacific regions as well as many other countries around the globe.

CDMA2000 1X is the basic 3G standard but, in what is termed CDMA2000 1xEv, there are further developments. The first...