Trials of mobile computing applications using circuit-switched cellular and cellular digital packet data (CDPD)

As the Department of Defense (DoD) lead agency for wireless systems/services, the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) has been involved in multiple wireless activities including trials of wireless commercial products and services. In support of the DoD wireless trials, the MITRE corporation was tasked to evaluate a number of wireless services and technologies for a wireless trial of mobile computing applications. This paper describes several demonstrations that we conducted including wireless e-mail using both circuit-switched cellular and cellular digital packet data (CDPD) and Internet access using CDPD. Many issues related to the integration of different hardware and software packages were resolved and several mobile computing applications were successfully demonstrated. This paper describes our trials in detail and documents the result and the lessons learned from this project.