Glossary of Terms

In this section of the CEVA mediaroom you'll find a glossary of frequently used terms that relate to CEVA's products and services.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a computing and telecommunications industry specification that describes how mobile phones, computers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) can easily interconnect with each other and with home and business phones and computers using a short-range wireless connection. Using this technology, users of cellular phones, pagers, and personal digital assistants such as the PalmPilot will be able to buy a three-in-one phone that can double as a portable phone at home or in the office, get quickly synchronized with information in a desktop or notebook computer, initiate the sending or receiving of a fax, initiate a print-out, and, in general, have all mobile and fixed computer devices totally coordinated. The technology requires that a low-cost transceiver chip be included in each device.

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)
A technology for digital transmission of radio signals between, for example, a mobile telephone and a radio base station. In CDMA, a frequency is divided into a number of codes.

CDMA2000
CDMA2000 is a radio transmission technology for the evolution of narrowband cdmaOne/IS-95 to 3rd-generation adding up multiple carriers.

Digital
In digital systems the signals of interest are represented as sequences of numbers, which are processed using mathematical techniques. Digital networks are rapidly replacing analog ones as they offer improved sound quality, and secure transmission and can handle data as well as voice.

DSP (Digital Signal Processors)
DSPs are the heart of the digital revolution. DSPs are unique microprocessors that are programmable and massive real-time processing capabilities. DSP technology is fundamental to the technology industries two fastest growing markets - wireless and multimedia.

EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GMS Evolution)
EDGE is an evolution of GSM and US-TDMA systems. This enhanced modulation will significantly increase network capacity and data rates, enabling value-added Mobile Multimedia services. It provides data rates up to 473kbit/s.

Fibre / Fibre channel
A serial data transfer architecture developed by a consortium of computer and mass storage device manufacturers and now being standardized by ANSI. The most prominent Fibre Channel standard is Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL). FC-AL was designed for new mass storage devices and other peripheral devices that require very high bandwidth. Using optical fiber to connect devices, FC-AL supports full-duplex data transfer rates of 100MBps. FC-AL is compatible with, and is expected to eventually replace, SCSI for high-performance storage systems.

GPRS (General Packet Radio System)
GPRS will provide packet switched data primarily for GSM based 2G networks. GPRS network elements consists of two main elements: SGSN (Service GPRS Support Node) and GGSN (Gateway GPRS Support Node).

GPS (Global Positioning System)
A worldwide radio-navigation system that was developed by the US. Department of Defense. In addition to military it is widely used in marine and terrestrial navigation (for example car navigation systems).

GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications)
Originally developed as a pan-European standard for digital mobile telephony, GSM has become the world's most widely used mobile system.

H.264
H.264, also known as MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), is a video compression standard that offers significantly greater compression than its predecessors. The standard is expected to offer up to twice the compression of the current MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile), in addition to improvements in perceptual quality. The H.264 standard can provide DVD-quality video at under 1 Mbps, and is considered promising for full-motion video over wireless, satellite, and ADSL Internet connections.

IPR (Intellectual Property Rights
Also known as patents, these are the rights of an inventor or assignee to develop and commercialize an invention and license it, usually for a fee, to other manufacturers.

HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access)
HSDPA is a new mobile telephony protocol and is sometimes referred to as a 3.5G (or "3½G") technology. In this respect it extends WCDMA in the same way that EV-DO extends CDMA2000. HSDPA provides a smooth evolutionary path for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks allowing for higher data capacity (up to 14.4 Mbit/s in the downlink). It is an evolution of the W-CDMA standard, designed to increase the available data rate by a factor of 5 or more. HSDPA defines a new W-CDMA channel, the high-speed downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH) that operates in a different way from existing W-CDMA channels, but is only used for downlink communication to the mobile.

Third Generation 3G:
3G is the next cellular radio technology designed to support wideband data communications. 3G applies high-speed data transfer and state-of-the-art radio terminal technology (third generations systems enable multimedia and are currently in the process of being standardized under 3GPP).

MP3
A standard technology and format for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file (about one-twelfth the size of the original file) while preserving the original level of sound quality when it is played. MP3 is the most poplular Internet-Audio format and is revolutionizing the music distribution industry by allowing users to download music over the Internet.

Packet switching service
A communication system whereby data is divided into packets of set size. Its special feature is that communication between terminals with differing formats is possible since transmission/reception is performed after data has first been stored at the exchange. In contrast to circuit-switching where a circuit is occupied until all data transfer has been completed, packet-switching improves efficiency through common use of circuits.

SATA (Serial ATA or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment)
SATA is a new standard for connecting hard drives into computer systems. As its name implies, SATA is based on serial signaling technology, unlike current IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drives that use parallel signaling.
 

SATA has several practical advantages over the parallel signaling (also called Parallel ATA or PATA) that has been used in hard drives since the 1980s. SATA cables are more flexible, thinner, and less massive than the ribbon cables required for conventional PATA hard drives. SATA cables can be considerably longer than PATA ribbon cables, allowing the designer more latitude in the physical layout of a system. Because there are fewer conductors (only 7 in SATA as compared with 40 in PATA), crosstalk and electromagnetic interference (EMI) are less likely to be troublesome. The signal voltage is much lower as well (250 mV for SATA as compared with 5 V for PATA).

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a new generation serial communication protocol for devices designed to allow for much higher speed data transfers and is compatible with SATA. SAS uses serial communication instead of the parallel method found in traditional SCSI devices but still uses SCSI commands for interacting with SAS devices.

SAS supports up to 16,384 addressable devices in an SAS domain and point to point data transfer speeds up to 3 gbit/s, but is expected to reach 10 gbit/s. The SAS connector is much smaller than traditional parallel SCSI connectors allowing for small 2.5 inch drives.

SmartPhone
A telephone that provides additional information accessing features. Any mobile telephone that combines voice services with e-mail, fax, pager or Internet access is called a smart phone.

TD-SCDMA
TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) is a 3G mobile telecommunications standard, being pursued in the People's Republic of China by the Chinese Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT), Datang and Siemens AG, in an attempt to develop home-grown technology and not be "dependent on Western technology". It is based on spread spectrum CDMA technology.

WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access)
A technology for wideband digital radio communications of Internet, multimedia, video and other capacity-demanding applications. WCDMA, developed by Ericsson and others, has been selected for the third generation of mobile telephone systems in Europe, Japan and the United States.