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Wireless Data

September 2009

The telecommunication industry is littered with acronyms and the wireless data arena is no exception. GPRS, WAP, WML, WTP, PPP, SMS, MMS, WAE, WiFi are just a few to make your head spin. This article will look very briefly at Wireless Data Access and subsequent articles may deal more in-depth with some of the aspects of Wireless Data.

Wireless as the name suggests uses the Electromagnetic Spectrum to transfer information without the assistance of physical wires. Radio waves if you like. Devices using wireless can take many forms, like two way radios, Bluetooth connections (like linking your hands-free kit to your mobile phone), mobile phones, satellite communication and microwave communication to mention a few. The focus here is more on the Mobile Phone that has become so indispensable in our everyday lives.

We cannot imagine how we got by talking to each other without having a mobile phone handy. Soon we will be asking the same question about transferring data to and from our mobile handsets. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and advanced Mobile Handsets already have the capability to surf the Web, send emails, transfer files and send and receive Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) data.

To transfer information to and from a server system similar to your PC and the Internet, a data transfer protocol like Internet Protocol (IP) is required to ship packets of data to and from your phone. This main Mobile GSM technology used for this task is called General Packet Radio Service (GPRS).

GPRS typically provides transfer rates currently of 56-114kbit/s, which is comparable to your old dial-up Internet Modem speeds. GPRS, like Internet access, is charged per Megabyte as this is a data packet service as opposed to a circuit switched service required for a voice conversation.

Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) is used in the layers carried by GPRS to transfer application data, similar to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) service used by the Internet. The equivalent of Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) pages on the Internet is called Wireless Mark-up Language (WML) for Mobile Handsets. This is very similar to HTML, however it is designed specifically for Mobile Phones where bandwidth and screen size are limiting factors.

There are other layers in the Wireless Communication stack for example Wireless Transaction Layer Security (WTLS), Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP) and others, but these are really only relevant to Mobile Browser developers.

Hopefully this very short overview gave you a little insight into some of the acronyms being bandied about when it comes to Mobile Data Services.

See the following links:

GPRS
GPRS FAQ
WAP
Wireless communication
Resource Portal

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