Applications for Mobile Multimedia

Transmission for Mobile Multimedia

The long standing code-division versus frequency-division controversy splits the board of a large wireless equipment company. The two vice-presidents are in opposing camps. Each one claims that his/her strategy is the best. Your task, as advisory engineering firm, is to give well founded support for one of the views or to present your own strategy.

For one part there is full agreement: there is enormous pressure to deliver equipment that can support standards with higher bit rates. The increase in wireless data communication –much faster than the increase in wireless telephony– plus the new mobile multimedia applications that are becoming popular, promise good earnings for the manufacturers of the right transmitters and receivers.

However, vice president Mr. Levevre "knows" that CDMA is the right solution, whereas vice president Ms. Jones is convinced that the future is with OFDM. But the company does not have the manpower follow both strategies in parallel. So, the board of the company has to choose and you are their advisor.

Defending his strategy for developing new transceivers based on CDMA, Mr. Levevre recalls a paper by dr. Viterbi [IEEE Comm.Mag. January 1996??] where it is "proven" that CDMA is "optimal". Moreover, CDMA is widely used in the USA, and for the third generation UMTS, Europe has chosen for Wideband CDMA.

Defending her strategy to go for OFDM, Ms. Jones points out that only with the parallel transmission of bits (as is effectuated by OFDM) sufficiently high bit rates can be achieved. Moreover, OFDM is already chosen for the new wireless LAN standards IEEE 802.11a and Hiperlan/2.

What is your advice? Choose for a strategy that (you believe) gives the company the best chances for the future. Try to be as specific as possible. List the most promising transmission and modulation methods that are being developed. What are their properties? (e.g. bit rates and used part of the spectrum). Your report should also include a requirements specification of the capabilities and performance (i.e. numbers on power consumption, bit rates and error probabilities) of the modulation method of your choice.

Your quality as Mobile Multimedia Consultant (i.e. your grade) will be judged from:

Presence during introductions and participation in discussions.

And, if you have chosen for this assignment, from the effort + quality by which the points below are executed by your engineering firm (i.e. by you and your group):

Two sheets with bullet points, supporting the relative advantages of the Levevre or Jones strategy, respectively. These sheets will form the starting point of the discussion. It will help you in working out your report.
The report (already mentioned above) detailing the advice of your engineering firm.
A 20 minute presentation of your report.
A management summary of, say, two or three screens, written in HTML, that convinces the board that your choice is the best way to proceed.