iDEN

Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) is a mobile telecommunications technology, developed by Motorola, which provides its users the benefits of a trunked radio and a cellular telephone.

[1] iDEN places more users in a given spectral space, compared to analog cellular and two-way radio systems, by using speech compression and time-division multiple access (TDMA).

The iDEN project originally began as MIRS (Motorola Integrated Radio System) in early 1991.

The project was a software lab experiment focused on the utilization of discontiguous spectrum for GSM wireless.

To obtain and maintain this information each base site uses GPS satellites to receive a precise timing reference [citation needed].

iDEN, the platform which WiDEN upgrades, and the protocol on which it is based, was originally introduced by Motorola in 1993, and launched as a commercial network by Nextel in the United States in September 1996.

WiDEN was deactivated on the NEXTEL National Network in October 2005 when rebanding efforts in the 800 MHz band began in an effort to utilize those data channels as a way to handle more cellular phone call traffic on the NEXTEL iDEN network.

Countries which had iDEN networks included United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, India, Korea, Jordan, Guam, China, Philippines, Thailand, Israel, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Motorola originally referred to the platform as wiDEN, choosing to capitalize only the letters representing "Digital Enhanced Network," as it had with iDEN.