With the constant increase in the usage of mobile devices, what is it that helps keep mobile broadband working as smoothly as it does? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
Photo courtesy of rust.bucket (Flickr).
The Question
SuperUser reader Hooli wants to know what stops mobile broadband from experiencing “interference” problems:
What is it that stops mobile broadband from experiencing “interference” problems?
The Answer
SuperUser contributor jcbermu has the answer for us:
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.
With CDMA, several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communication channel. The users share a band of frequencies employing spread-spectrum technology and a special coding scheme where each transmitter is assigned a code.
Suppose you have a room in which people wish to talk to each other simultaneously. To avoid confusion, people could:
Take turns speaking (TDMA or Time Division Multiple Access) Speak at different pitches (Frequency Division) Use different languages (CDMA)
CDMA is like people speaking the same language; they can understand each other but reject the other languages. Similarly, in CDMA each group of users is given a shared code. Many codes occupy the same channel, but only users associated with a particular code can communicate.
