RF Semiconductors
Glossary of Terms
A
Term
Definition
| "A" Carrier: | The nonwireline cellular company, that operates in radio frequencies from 824 to 849 MHz. |
| Airtime: | Time spent on a cellular phone, which is usually billed to the subscriber on a per-minute basis. |
| AMPS: | Advanced mobile phone service, the standard for analog cellular telephones. |
| Analog: | The traditional method of transmitting voice signals where the radio wave is based on electrical impulses, which occur when speaking into the phone. Most cellular companies today transmit in analog. |
| Asynchronous Systems: | Asynchronous systems have operations occurring in apparently random fashion, since the controlling factor is the function to be performed. Asynchronous operation allows for greater flexibility and a savings in hardware and system cycle time, though such systems are more difficult to design. Asynchronous systems are the result of a large number of random timed inputs of varying length and frequency. |
| ATM: | Asynchronous Transfer Mode - A digital transmission switching format, with cells containing 5 bytes of header information followed by 48 data bytes. |
| Attenuation: | A general term indicating a decrease in power from one point to another. In optical fibers, it is measured in decibels per kilometer at a specified wave length. |
