CDG Announces New CDMA Standards

The 3GPP2 working group and CDG have announced two new CDMA standards for future CDMA devices and current networks.

The first standard in CDMA 1x Advanced consists of a backend software and channel card upgrade that is claimed to nearly quadruple voice call capacity from current totals when all of the improvements such as base transceiver station interference cancellation, improved power control, early frame termination and smart blanking are implemented at once, though they can be rolled out in phases to ease network upgrade costs.

CDMA 1x Advanced is expected to be available sometime next year to carriers.

The next standard serves as a complement to CDMA 1x Advanced with the introduction of 1X Voice and EV-DO Data (SVDO). In simple terms, 1X Voice and EV-DO Data (SVDO) allows for true simultaneous voice/data access as found in the competing W-CDMA UMTS standard while preserving the spectral efficiency advantages of CDMA2000.

Previously, CDMA2000 carriers that rolled out delay and data sensitive applications such as Push to Talk or real-time video calling were forced to deploy the Internet Multimedia Subsystem backend overlay to convert circuit switched voice calls into data sessions, thus allowing for simultaneous voice/data access.

With the above development expected in the same timeframe as CDMA 1x Advanced, carriers will no longer need to deploy such expensive overlays while offering comparable services as GSM based carriers with standard equipment.