Overview

Third generation wireless applications are software programs that require wireless communication technology that can take advantage of the mobility and high-bit-rate data transmission offered by 3rd generation wireless systems. Many of the communications applications and services that were available for mobile communications in the 1990 s were limited by low bit-rate (less than 10 kbps) data transmission. With 2nd generation mobile systems, it was not possible to offer streaming video, rapid image file transfer or high bit-rate data file transfer services.

The worldwide wireless communications market has grown from 190 million subscribers in 1996 to over 680 million by the end of the year 2000 ^[[1]]. The wireless market is expected to exceed one billion in 2003, approximately one phone for every seven people on earth! To sustain this high growth market trend and to persuade customers to upgrade to 3rd generation products and services, there must be new attractive and imaginative applications.

Third generation systems provide for two key advancements in mobile communication technology that allow for new advanced applications: packet data transmission and high bit-rate data services. Packet data transmission allows the wireless systems to transfer information only as the customer requires information transfer. This is compared to 2nd generation data transmission services that use a dedicated portion of a radio channel regardless of actual usage on the radio channel (amount of data transmission activity). Although the peak data transfer rate when a customer is browsing the web may be...