ABSTRACT
Mobile wireless communications show an incredible growth, as illustrated in Figure 9.1. It is estimated that by the year 2010, wireless phones will surpass wire line phones, each having a worldwide penetration of more than 20%. The market for digital signal processors (DSPs) has a growth rate of 40%. In 1966, it was a $2 billion market, and by 1999 it had grown to a $4.4 billion market. After a dip in 2001-2002, the forecast for 2004 is $7.7 billion and a predicted $17 billion by 2008 [28]. More than 60% of all DSP shipments are used in cellular phones [28]. In the industrialized world, the numbers are even more impressive: in a small country like Belgium with a population of 10 million, more than 2 million cell phones are sold every year compared with approximately 600,000 PCs [6].
