Packet radio for mobile communications

Packet Radio technology has developed over the past decade in response to the need for real-time, interactive communications among mobile users and shared computer resources. This paper briefly traces the development history of the technology, describes the current state of the art, and discusses two major facets of the technology which are currently in a stage of rapid evolutionary development. These two emphasis areas are the development of adaptive, survivable network control and routing architectures and efficient access to the radio channel. This paper reviews the development and current status of packet radio technology. Current developments which will significantly improve the performance of the technology in the areas of network integrity and channel access efficiency are described. While a direct comparison of the channel access method described with narrow band Signalling based techniques was not discussed, it is hoped that the motivations and performance aspects covered for the spread spectrum based capture access technique will provide added insight into the circumstances and applications for which this technique has advantages.