TABLE OF CONTENTS Channels are portions of a physical communications channel that is used to for a particular communications purpose. There are two groups of channels used in the CDMA system; control channels and traffic channels. Control channels are used to setup, manage, and terminate communication sessions. Traffic channels are primarily used to transfer user data but can also transfer some control information. Some of the channels on the CDMA system use separate coding so they can be simultaneously transmitted and decoded by the receiver and other channels are logical channels that share a coded channel.
Forward channels are the radio channels (radio links) that are used by a base station to transmit to a mobile device (also called a downlink). There are four types of coded channels that are transmitted on the forward channel; the pilot channel, the synchronization channel, one ore several paging channels, and the traffic channel.
The forward pilot channel is one of the 64 coded channels that are used to provide a reference signal to help the mobile device decode the received data. The forward pilot channel is also monitored by all mobile devices (a beacon channel) to determine the relative signal strength of nearby base stations. This information can be used to determine which base stations that the mobile device it should be communicating with.
The synchronization channel (SC) is one of the 64 coded channels that provides time synchronization information to the mobile device to help it time align...
