An Introduction to Wireless Modems- By: Musarrat Sheikh

Description : A wireless modem is a type of device that connects to a wireless network instead of to the telephone system in order to provide a platform where different signals are able to communicate. Modem is a short form of modulation demodulation and there are two major types of modems in the market which will include wired and wireless modems. Modems are devices that modulate analog carrier signals to encode digital information as well as demodulates the same carrier signals to be able to decode the transmitted information.
The main purpose of modes is to be able to produce signals that can be transmitted in an easy manner and at the same time decoded in order to reproduce the original digital data. Modems are designed to be able to work over any means of transmitting analog signals from driven diodes to radio. Most of these signals that are transmitted by a modem can also be transmitted over a telephone line and demodulated by another modem which is at the receiver side in order to recover the digital data. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given time unit.
The wired modems are supposed to be connected to the main computers system using cables in order to be able to perform its duties while the wireless modems connect to the main computer system without the need of connecting any cables but through wireless platforms. There are several devices that are designed to use wireless modems and this will include:
Mobile phones, Personal Data Assistants and Smart phones can all be used as data modems in order to form a wireless access point connecting a personal computer to the internet. In this platform the device will provide a gateway between the cellular service provider's data network technology and Point to Point Protocol spoken by PC's. These phones will appear like external modems when connected to the PC through USB, serial cable, IrDA or wireless Bluetooth.
Wireless FireWire, Serial and USB modems can also be used as wireless modems in the WiMAX and Wi-Fi standards that operate in microwave frequencies that give laptops, PDA's or desktop computers an access point to a network. These modems can be used either as large regular cable modems or as small Wi-Fi dongle or USB stick. These computing devices can also be combined with VoIP technology in order to achieve telephone like capability where users can make and receive telephone calls.
PCMCIA, compact flash modems and Express Card can also be used as wireless modems and they can have GPS included.
Wireless modems are in most cases associated with telephone systems and are used with computers to connect to the internet. These modems are capable of operating at speeds comparable to dialup modems but not anywhere near the speeds of the broadband internet connections. Each of the wireless modems in the market is designed to access a specific wireless network and the various networks that are capable of supporting wireless modems include CDPD, GPRS as well as EDGE.

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Author Resource : This article touched the basics of the topic. I have 2 more resources related to the above. They are wireless modem and wireless modem. They are worth a read.