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DALLAS - Third-generation (3G) handheld wireless terminals that meet the mobile-communications standards being developed by the International Telecommunications Union's International Mobile Telecommunications 2000 initiative will be design challenges for both hardware and operating-system vendors.
Such systems will be expected not only to allow global roaming among a variety of air-interface standards in the 2-GHz frequency band-as well as satellite, terrestrial, fixed and mobile cellular and cordless networks-but also to deliver a host of bandwidth-demanding and compute-intensive services. Those will probably include full-motion video, Web browsing and videoconferencing, as well as the more commonly known secondgeneration fax, e-mail-access, paging and voice services.
Other challenges Moreover, many IC vendors are saying that end users will expect the services to be simultaneously available. And service will have to be delivered at data rates ranging from 144 kbits/second for mobile automotive users to 384 kbits/s for outdoor...