Cellular Telecommunications Glossary [K - N]

- a glossary of terms used with cell phone or cellular telecommunications technology

Glossary pages: [ 0 - 9 ] , [ A - C ] , [ D - F ] , [ G - J ] , [ K - N ] , [ O - S ] and [ T - Z ]

MAC - Medium Access Control. The networking protocol layer that is used to control transmission requests, authentication and other overheads in local area network. It is widely used in cellular telecommunications (mobile phone) applications.

MIP - Mobile Internet Protocol A scheme allowing users wither using computers connected to a "foreign network" whether by wire or cellular phone to connect using a mobile IP address. In this way they are able to maintain their connection even as they move from one base station and PDSN to the next.

MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service. It is an extension of SMS. It has a much greater capacity allowing larger quantities of text as well as attached images and audio files to be sent and as a result it is often referred to as picture messaging.

MSC - Mobile Switching Centre. Interface between the base station system, i.e. the BTS and the switching subsystem of the mobile phone network.

MSK - Minimum Shift Keying. This is a form of modulation where the phase changes are undertaken at the zero crossing points. By adopting this technique the sidebands and hence the bandwidth required is reduced. It also enables coherent techniques to be used to gain a 3 dB advantage. MSK signals are often filtered to further reduce the bandwidth. One example of this is GMSK.

NAMPS - Narrowband AMPS. A cell system based on the AMPS analog mobile phone system but using a 10 kHz channel spacing rather than 30 kHz. By adopting a narrower channel bandwidth spectrum efficiency could be improved to cater for the increased usage, although voice quality was impaired.

NA-TDMA – North American Time Division Multiple Access. A 2G digital cell phone system using TDMA techniques. It used a 30 kHz channel spacing to provide compatibility with the frequency plans of AMPS. It was also known by names including Digital AMPS (DAMPS) and US Digital Cellular (USDC).

NMT - Nordic Mobile Telephone. An analogue (1G) cellular system that used either the 450 MHz or 900 MHz bands. It was developed for deployment in Scandinavia, but its use spread to many other countries. It was the first cellular system to be used commercially.

Node B - The name for what is effectively a base station for the W-CDMA / UMTS 3G cellular system.