IS-41, also known as ANSI-41, is a mobile, cellular telecommunications system
standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
to support mobility management by enabling the networking of
switches
In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...
. ANSI-41 is the standard now approved for use as the network-side companion to the wireless-side
AMPS (analog), IS-136 (
Digital AMPS
IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation ( 2G) mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS (D-AMPS), and a further development of the North American 1G mobile system Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS). It was once prevalent throughout the America ...
),
cdmaOne
Interim Standard 95 (IS-95) was the first ever CDMA-based digital cellular technology. It was developed by Qualcomm and later adopted as a standard by the Telecommunications Industry Association in TIA/EIA/IS-95 release published in 1995. Th ...
, and
CDMA2000
CDMA2000 (also known as C2K or IMT Multi‑Carrier (IMT‑MC)) is a family of 3G mobile technology standards for sending voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. It is developed by 3GPP2 as a backwards-compatible ...
networks. It competes with
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...
MAP, but the two will eventually merge to support worldwide roaming.
IS-41 facilitates inter-switch operations like handoff and roaming authentication. IS-41 evolved through revisions 0, A, B, C, D, and E with increasingly robust and distributed call processing between switches and their roamer databases. To describe IS-41 messaging requires special terminology to designate the telephone call's originating and terminating switch, called an MSC (anchor-MSC, candidate-MSC, homing-MSC, serving MSC and target MSC) and databases called VLR and HLR. For handoffs the messaging is between switches. For roaming and authentication, the messaging would include an HLR and a VLR. In both cases, the
PSTN
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local teleph ...
may be needed to carry messaging.
References
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Mobile telecommunications standards