Prospects for a common air interface for cellular and cordless systems

Market forces will eventually force cellular and cordless systems to converge into one integrated network having the virtues of both cellular and cordless systems. The eventual universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) would be a federation of systems with a common but flexible air interface. The authors compare the air interface functions of cellular and cordless systems. The GSM and DECT air interface implementations are taken as examples of cellular and cordless air interfaces respectively. They identify those functions which can have common solutions and those which require dual solutions for the two modes. This work was undertaken as part of the RACE mobile project. They also mention some of the techniques being investigated