Packet data over cellular networks: the CDPD approach

Cellular digital packet data is a mobile packet data technology that operates on the spectrum assigned to a telephone cellular network, such as the Advanced Mobile Phone Service. This article undertakes a thorough survey of the CDPD radio interface and explores the main functional layers of this interface. Specifically, it extensively studies the physical layer, the data link layer, and the subnetwork-dependent convergence protocol, and explains their semantics and functional characteristics. Furthermore, it emphasizes several significant aspects such as the medium access procedure, the forward and reverse channel configurations, the data multiplexing scheme, and the channel hopping procedure.