A PROJECT REPORT ON

Submitted by:

Manish Gupta
Manish Chauhan

Submitted To
Acknowledgement:

We would like to express our gratitude to ERNET India and Ms.

Tejal Tiwary for letting us work on the project titled Research on Mobile
Networking. We would also like to thank Maharaja Agrasen Institute of
Management Studies for offering this excellent MBA program. We would
like to thank the faculty, administrative and technical staff who has
bestowed much help and patience during the internship.

We would also like to express our deepest appreciation to all our friends and
family for their unwavering support and faith in us.

Lastly, we would like to thank everyone else who has helped us in one way
or another in making this research possible.
Ernet India
Education and Research Network (ERNET), India is an autonomous
scientific society of Ministry of Communication & information technology
(Govt. of India). ERNET has made a significant contribution to the
emergence of networking in the country. It practically brought the Internet to
India and has built up national capabilities in the area of net-working,
especially in protocol software engineering. It has not only succeeded in
building a large network that provides various facilities to the intellectual
segment of Indian society—the research and education community, it has
over the years become a trendsetter in the field of networking. It has not only
succeeded in building a large network that provides various facilities to the
intellectual segment of Indian society--the research and education
community, it has over the years become a trendsetter in the field of
networking. UNDP has lauded ERNET as one of the most successful
programmes it has funded. The Govt. of India has committed itself to further
strengthen the project by including it in the 9th Plan with the allocation of
funds and by creation of a new organizational set-up in the form of a
Society. The Science community of the country has also recognized
ERNET's contribution--both for infrastructure services as well as for R&D.
The Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet has adopted ERNET as
the platform for launching an S&T network in the country.

How it began

ERNET was initiated in 1986 by the Department of Electronics (DoE), with

funding support from the Government of India and United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), involving eight premier institutions as
participating agencies--NCST (National Centre for Software Technology)
Bombay, IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Bangalore, five IITs (Indian
Institutes of Technology) at Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur and
Madras, and the DoE, New Delhi. ERNET began as a multi protocol
network with both the TCP/IP and the OSI-IP protocol stacks running over
the leased-line portion of the backbone. Since 1995, however, almost all
traffic is carried over TCP/IP.
Focus:
ERNET is largest nationwide terrestrial and satellite network with point of
presence located at the premiere educational and research institutions in
major cities of the country. Focus of ERNET is not limited to just providing
connectivity, but to meet the entire needs of the educational and research
institutions by hosting and providing relevant information to their users.
Research and Development and Training are integral parts of ERNET
activities. The activities at ERNET India are organized around five
technology focus areas:

 National Academic and Research Network.

 Research and Development in the area of Data Communication and its
Application.
 Human Resource Development in the area of High-end Networking.
 Educational Content.
 Campus-wide High Speed Local Area Network

History of ERNET:

 ERNET started with Dial-up network in 1986-87.

 Initially UUCP mail was only service started by ERNET.
 First leased line of 9.6 kbit/s was installed in Jan’1991 between Delhi
and Mumbai.
 ERNET was alloted Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by InterNIC in
1990. Subsequently Class C addresses were alloted to ERNET by
APNIC.
 All IITs, IISc Bangalore, DOE Delhi and NCST Mumbai were
connected by 9.6 kbit/s leased line by 1992.
 In 1992, 64 kbit/s Internet gateway link was commissioned from
NCST Mumbai to UUNet in Virginia near Washington DC.
 In 1998 ERNET India was registered as Autonomous Society.
 In 1999-2000 new terrestrial high speed backbone was setup.
 In 2000 POP infrastructure was upgraded.
 Satellite WAN was setup in 1993.
  Today, 1100 institutes are ERNET users under different schemes.

Objectives:

 ERNET operations, i.e. providing state-of-the-art communication

infrastructure and services to Academic and Research institutions,
Govt. organisations, NGOs, private sector R&D organisations, and
various other non-commercial organizations.
 Research and development.
 Training and Consultancy.
 Content development.

Achievements:
Foundation of national capability building in the area of computer
networking laid through:

 Setting up of a chain of core groups at the participating agencies with

a minimal setof lab facilities and creation of skilled manpower to
carry out R&D.
 Generating man power at different levels.
 Making the world of standards (TCP/IP, OSI etc.) well understood.
 Providing an insight into emerging issues such as ATM networks,
networked multi-media, and information infrastructure.

Network infrastructure and services set up, including:

 Installation, maintenance and operation of large Campus LANs.

 Design, commissioning and testing of SATWAN hub and the
installation of VSATs.
 Seamless interconnection of LAN-WAN segments, & multi-protocol
capability provided.
 Provision of the whole range of Internet services.
 Deployment of TDM/TDMA based VSAT network for Internet
access.
Mobile network
A mobile network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served
by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. When joined
together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area. This enables a
large number of portable transceivers (mobile phones, pagers, etc) to communicate with
each other and with fixed transceivers and telephones anywhere in the network, via base
stations, even if some of the transceivers are moving through more than one cell during
transmission.

Mobile networks offer a number of advantages over alternative solutions:

• increased capacity
• reduced power usage
• larger coverage area
• reduced interference from other signals

An example of a simple non-telephone Mobile system is an old taxi driver's radio system
where the taxi company has several transmitters based around a city that can
communicate directly with each taxi.

The concept
In a Mobile radio system, a land area to be supplied with radio
service is divided into regular shaped cells, which can be
hexagonal, square, circular or some other irregular shapes,
although hexagonal cells are conventional. Each of these cells
is assigned multiple frequencies (f1 - f6) which have
corresponding radio base stations. The group of frequencies
can be reused in other cells, provided that the same frequencies
are not reused in adjacent neighboring cells as that would
cause co-channel interference.

The increased capacity in a cellular network, compared with a network with a single
transmitter, comes from the fact that the same radio frequency can be reused in a different
area for a completely different transmission. If there is a single plain transmitter, only one
transmission can be used on any given frequency. Unfortunately, there is inevitably some
level of interference from the signal from the other cells which use the same frequency.
This means that, in a standard FDMA system, there must be at least a one cell gap
between cells which reuse the same frequency.
In the simple case of the taxi company, each radio had a manually operated channel
selector knob to tune to different frequencies. As the drivers moved around, they would
change from channel to channel. The drivers know which frequency covers
approximately what area. When they do not receive a signal from the transmitter, they
will try other channels until they find one that works. The taxi drivers only speak one at a
time, when invited by the base station operator (in a sense TDMA).

Cell signal encoding

To distinguish signals from several different transmitters,
frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and code
division multiple access (CDMA) were developed.

With FDMA, the transmitting and receiving frequencies

used in each cell are different from the frequencies used in
each neighbouring cell. In a simple taxi system, the taxi
driver manually tuned to a frequency of a chosen cell to
obtain a strong signal and to avoid interference from
signals from other cells.

The principle of CDMA is more complex, but achieves the same result; the distributed
transceivers can select one cell and listen to it.

Other available methods of multiplexing such as polarization division multiple access

(PDMA) and time division multiple access (TDMA) cannot be used to separate signals
from one cell to the next since the effects of both vary with position and this would make
signal separation practically impossible. Time division multiple access, however, is used
in combination with either FDMA or CDMA in a number of systems to give multiple
channels within the coverage area of a single cell.

Frequency reuse
The key characteristic of a cellular network is the ability to re-use frequencies to increase
both coverage and capacity. As described above, adjacent cells must utilise different
frequencies, however there is no problem with two cells sufficiently far apart operating
on the same frequency. The elements that determine frequency reuse are the reuse
distance and the reuse factor.

The reuse distance, D is calculated as

where R is the cell radius and N is the number of cells per cluster. Cells may vary in
radius in the ranges (1 km to 30 km). The boundaries of the cells can also overlap
between adjacent cells and large cells can be divided into smaller cells .

The frequency reuse factor is the rate at which the same frequency can be used in the
network. It is 1/K (or K according to some books) where K is the number of cells which
cannot use the same frequencies for transmission. Common values for the frequency
reuse factor are 1/3, 1/4, 1/7, 1/9 and 1/12 (or 3, 4, 7, 9 and 12 depending on notation).

In case of N sector antennas on the same base station site, each with different direction,
the base station site can serve N different sectors. N is typically 3. A reuse pattern of
N/K denotes a further division in frequency among N sector antennas per site. Some
current and historical reuse patterns are 3/7 (North American AMPS), 6/4 (Motorola
NAMPS), and 3/4 (GSM).

If the total available bandwidth is B, each cell can only utilize a number of frequency
channels corresponding to a bandwidth of B/K, and each sector can use a bandwidth of
B/NK.

Code division multiple access-based systems use a wider frequency band to achieve the
same rate of transmission as FDMA, but this is compensated for by the ability to use a
frequency reuse factor of 1, for example using a reuse pattern of 1/1. In other words,
adjacent base station sites use the same frequencies, and the different base stations and
users are separated by codes rather than frequencies. While N is shown as 1 in this
example, that does not mean the CDMA cell has only one sector, but rather that the entire
cell bandwidth is also available to each sector individually.

Depending on the size of the city, a taxi system may not have any frequency-reuse in its
own city, but certainly in other nearby cities, the same frequency can be used. In a big
city, on the other hand, frequency-reuse could certainly be in use.

Directional antennas
 Cellular telephone frequency reuse pattern.

Although the original 2-way-radio cell towers were at the centers of the cells and were
omni-directional, a cellular map can be redrawn with the cellular telephone towers
located at the corners of the hexagons where three cells converge. Each tower has three
sets of directional antennas aimed in three different directions and receiving/transmitting
into three different cells at different frequencies. This provides a minimum of three
channels for each cell. The numbers in the illustration are channel numbers, which repeat
every 3 cells. Large cells can be subdivided into smaller cells for high volume areas.

Broadcast messages and paging

Practically every cellular system has some kind
of broadcast mechanism. This can be used
directly for distributing information to multiple
mobiles, commonly, for example in mobile
telephony systems, the most important use of
broadcast information is to set up channels for
one to one communication between the mobile
transceiver and the base station. This is called
paging.

The details of the process of paging vary somewhat from network to network, but
normally we know a limited number of cells where the phone is located (this group of
cells is called a Location Area in the GSM or UMTS system, or Routing Area if a data
packet session is involved). Paging takes place by sending the broadcast message to all of
those cells. Paging messages can be used for information transfer. This happens in
pagers, in CDMA systems for sending SMS messages, and in the UMTS system where it
allows for low downlink latency in packet-based connections.

Movement from cell to cell and handover

In a primitive taxi system, when the taxi moved away from a first tower and closer to a
second tower, the taxi driver manually switched from one frequency to another as
needed. If a communication was interrupted due to a loss of a signal, the taxi driver asked
the base station operator to repeat the message on a different frequency.

In a cellular system, as the distributed mobile transceivers move from cell to cell during
an ongoing continuous communication, switching from one cell frequency to a different
cell frequency is done electronically without interruption and without a base station
operator or manual switching. This is called the handover or handoff. Typically, a new
channel is automatically selected for the mobile unit on the new base station which will
serve it. The mobile unit then automatically switches from the current channel to the new
channel and communication continues.

The exact details of the mobile system's move from one base station to the other varies
considerably from system to system (see the example below for how a mobile phone
network manages handover).

Example of a cellular network: the mobile phone

network
The most common example of a cellular network is a mobile phone (cell phone) network.
A mobile phone is a portable telephone which receives or makes calls through a cell site
(base station), or transmitting tower. Radio waves are used to transfer signals to and from
the cell phone.

Modern mobile phone networks use cells because radio frequencies are a limited, shared
resource. Cell-sites and handsets change frequency under computer control and use low
power transmitters so that a limited number of radio frequencies can be simultaneously
used by many callers with less interference.

A cellular network is used by the mobile phone operator to achieve both coverage and
capacity for their subscribers. Large geographic areas are split into smaller cells to avoid
line-of-sight signal loss and to support a large number of active phones in that area. All of
the cell sites are connected to telephone exchanges (or switches) , which in turn connect
to the public telephone network.
In cities, each cell site may have a range of up to approximately ½ mile, while in rural
areas, the range could be as much as 5 miles. It is possible that in clear open areas, a user
may receive signals from a cell site 25 miles away.

Since almost all mobile phones use cellular technology, including GSM, CDMA, and
AMPS (analog), the term "cell phone" is in some regions, notably the US, used
interchangeably with "mobile phone". However, satellite phones are mobile phones that
do not communicate directly with a ground-based cellular tower, but may do so indirectly
by way of a satellite.

There are a number of different digital cellular technologies, including: Global System
for Mobile Communications (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Code
Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO), Enhanced Data
Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), 3GSM, Digital Enhanced Cordless
Telecommunications (DECT), Digital AMPS (IS-136/TDMA), and Integrated Digital
Enhanced Network (iDEN).

GSM

Structure of a 2G cellular network

A simple view of the cellular mobile-radio network consists of the following:

• A network of Radio base stations forming the Base station subsystem.

 • The core circuit switched network for handling voice calls and text
• A packet switched network for handling mobile data
• The Public switched telephone network to connect subscribers to the wider
telephony network

This network is the foundation of the GSM system network. There are many functions
that are performed by this network in order to make sure customers get the desired
service including mobility management, registration, call set up, and handover.

Any phone connects to the network via an RBS in the corresponding cell which in turn
connects to the MSC. The MSC allows the onward connection to the PSTN. The link
from a phone to the RBS is called an uplink while the other way is termed downlink.

Radio channels effectively use the transmission medium through the use of the following
multiplexing schemes: frequency division multiplex (FDM), time division multiplex
(TDM), code division multiplex (CDM), and space division multiplex (SDM).
Corresponding to these multiplexing schemes are the following access techniques:
frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA),
code division multiple access (CDMA), and space division multiple access (SDMA).

Cellular handover in mobile phone networks

As the phone user moves from one cell area to another cell whilst a call is in progress, the
mobile station will search for a new channel to attach to in order not to drop the call.
Once a new channel is found, the network will command the mobile unit to switch to the
new channel and at the same time switch the call onto the new channel.

With CDMA, multiple CDMA handsets share a specific radio channel. The signals are
separated by using a pseudonoise code (PN code) specific to each phone. As the user
moves from one cell to another, the handset sets up radio links with multiple cell sites (or
sectors of the same site) simultaneously. This is known as "soft handoff" because, unlike
with traditional cellular technology, there is no one defined point where the phone
switches to the new cell.

In IS-95 inter-frequency handovers and older analog systems such as NMT it will
typically be impossible to test the target channel directly while communicating. In this
case other techniques have to be used such as pilot beacons in IS-95. This means that
there is almost always a brief break in the communication while searching for the new
channel followed by the risk of an unexpected return to the old channel.

If there is no ongoing communication or the communication can be interrupted, it is

possible for the mobile unit to spontaneously move from one cell to another and then
notify the base station with the strongest signal.Cellular frequency choice in mobile
phone networks
GSM frequency bands

The effect of frequency on cell coverage means that different frequencies serve better for
different uses. Low frequencies, such as 450 MHz NMT, serve very well for countryside
coverage. GSM 900 (900 MHz) is a suitable solution for light urban coverage. GSM 1800
(1.8 GHz) starts to be limited by structural walls. UMTS, at 2.1 GHz is quite similar in
coverage to GSM 1800.

Higher frequencies are a disadvantage when it comes to coverage, but it is a decided

advantage when it comes to capacity. Pico cells, covering e.g. one floor of a building,
become possible, and the same frequency can be used for cells which are practically
neighbours.

Cell service area may also vary due to interference from transmitting systems, both
within and around that cell. This is true especially in CDMA based systems. The receiver
requires a certain signal-to-noise ratio. As the receiver moves away from the transmitter,
the power transmitted is reduced. As the interference (noise) rises above the received
power from the transmitter, and the power of the transmitter cannot be increased any
more, the signal becomes corrupted and eventually unusable. In CDMA-based systems,
the effect of interference from other mobile transmitters in the same cell on coverage area
is very marked and has a special name, cell breathing.

One can see examples of cell coverage by studying some of the coverage maps provided
by real operators on their web sites. In certain cases they may mark the site of the
transmitter, in others it can be calculated by working out the point of strongest coverage.
Coverage comparison of different frequencies
Following table shows the dependency of frequency on coverage area of one cell of a
CDMA2000 network:

Frequency (MHz) Cell radius (km) Cell area (km2) Relative Cell Count
450 48.9 7521 1
950 26.9 2269 3.3
1800 14.0 618 12.2
2100 12.0 449 16.2

CELLULAR TRAFFIC
This article discusses the mobile cellular network aspect of teletraffic measurements.
Mobile radio networks have traffic issues that do not arise in connection with the fixed
line PSTN. Important aspects of cellular traffic include: quality of service targets, traffic
capacity and cell size, spectral efficiency and sectorization, traffic capacity versus
coverage, and channel holding time analysis.

Teletraffic engineering is a necessary field in telecommunications network planning to

ensure that network costs are minimised without compromising the quality of service
delivered to the user of the network. This field of engineering is based on probability
theory and can be used to analyse mobile radio networks, as well as other
telecommunications networks.

A mobile handset which is moving in a cell will record a signal strength that varies.
Signal strength is subject to slow fading, fast fading and interference from other signals,
resulting in degradation of the carrier-to-interference (C/I) ratio. A high C/I ratio yields
quality communication. A good C/I ratio is achieved in cellular systems by using
optimum power levels through the power control of most links. When carrier power is
too high, excessive interference is created, degrading the C/I ratio for other traffic and
reducing the traffic capacity of the radio subsystem. When carrier power is too low, C/I is
too low and QoS targets are not met.

Quality of Service targets

At the time that the cells of a radio subsystem are designed, Quality of Service (QoS)
targets are set, for: traffic congestion and blocking, dominant coverage area, C/I, dropped
call rate, handover failure rate, overall call success rate.

Traffic load and cell size

The more traffic generated, the more base stations will be needed to service the
customers. The number of base stations for a simple cellular network is equal to the
number of cells. The traffic engineer can achieve the goal of satisfying the increasing
population of customers by increasing the number of cells in the area concerned, so this
will also increases the number of base stations. This method is called cell splitting (and
combined with sectorization) is the only way of providing services to a burgeoning
population. This simply works by dividing the cells already present into smaller sizes
hence increasing the traffic capacity. Reduction of the cell radius enables the cell to
accommodate extra traffic. The cost of equipment can also be cut down by reducing the
number of base stations through setting up three neighbouring cells, with the cells serving
three 120° sectors with different channel groups.

Mobile radio networks are operated with finite, limited resources (the spectrum of
frequencies available). These resources have to be used effectively to ensure that all users
receive service, that is, the quality of service is consistently maintained. This need to
carefully use the limited spectrum, brought about the development of cells in mobile
networks, enabling frequency re-use by successive clusters of cells. Systems that
efficiently use the available spectrum have been developed e.g. the GSM system. Walke
defines spectral efficiency as the traffic capacity unit divided by the product of bandwidth
and surface area element, and is dependent on the number of radio channels per cell and
the cluster size (number of cells in a group of cells):

where Nc is the number of channels per cell, BW is the system bandwidth, and Ac is Area
of cell.

Sectorization is briefly described in traffic load and cell size as a way to cut down
equipment costs in a cellular network. When applied to clusters of cells sectorization also
reduces co-channel interference, according to Walke. This is because the power radiated
backward from a directional base station antenna is minimal and interfering with adjacent
cells is reduced. (The number of channels is directly proportional to the number of cells.)
The maximum traffic capacity of sectored antennas (directional) is greater than that of
omnidirectional antennas by a factor which is the number of sectors per cell (or cell
cluster).

Traffic capacity versus coverage

Cellular systems use one or more of four different techniques of access (TDMA, FDMA,
CDMA, SDMA). See Cellular concepts. Let a case of Code Division Multiple Access be
considered for the relationship between traffic capacity and coverage (area covered by
cells). CDMA cellular systems can allow an increase in traffic capacity at the expense of
the quality of service.

In TDMA/FDMA cellular radio systems, Fixed Channel Allocation (FCA) is used to

allocate channels to customers. In FCA the number of channels in the cell remains
constant irrespective of the number of customers in that cell. This results in traffic
congestion and some calls being lost when traffic gets heavy.

A better way of channel allocation in cellular systems is Dynamic Channel Allocation

(DCA) which is supported by the GSM, DCS and other systems. DCA is a better way not
only for handling bursty cell traffic but also in efficiently utilising the cellular radio
resources. DCA allows the number of channels in a cell to vary with the traffic load,
hence increasing channel capacity with little costs. Since a cell is allocated a group of
frequency carries (e.g. f1-f7) for each user, this range of frequencies is the bandwidth of
that cell, BW. If that cell covers an area Ac, and each user has bandwidth B then the
number of channels will be BW/B. The density of channels will be . This formula shows
that as the coverage area Ac is increased, the channel density decreases.
Channel holding time
Important parameters like the carrier to interference (C/I) ratio, spectral efficiency and
reuse distance determine the quality of service of a cellular network. Channel Holding
Time is another parameter that can affect the quality of service in a cellular network,
hence it is considered when planning the network. It must be mentioned that it is not an
easy task to calculate the channel holding time. (This is the time a Mobile Station (MS)
remains in the same cell during a call). Channel holding time is therefore less than call
holding time if the MS travels more than one cell as handover will take place and the MS
relinquishes the channel. Practically, it is not possible to determine exactly the channel
holding time. As a result, different models exists for modelling the channel holding time
distribution. In industry, a good approximation of the channel holding time is usually
sufficient to determine the network traffic capability.

One of the papers in Key and Smith defines channel holding time as being equal to the
average holding time divided by the average number of handovers per call plus one.
Usually an exponential model is preferred to calculate the channel holding time for
simplicity in simulations. This model gives the distribution function of channel holding
time and it is an approximation that can be used to obtain estimates channel holding time.
The exponential model may not be correctly modelling the channel holding time
distribution as other papers may try to prove, but it gives an approximation. Channel
holding time is not easily determined explicitly, call holding time and user's movements
have to be determined in order to implicitly give channel holding time. The mobility of
the user and the cell shape and size cause the channel holding time to have a different
distribution function to that of call duration (call holding time). This difference is large
for highly mobile users and small cell sizes. Since the channel holding time and call
duration relationships are affected by mobility and cell size, for a stationary MS and large
cell sizes, channel holding time and call duration are the same.
Base station subsystem
The base station subsystem (BSS) is the section of a traditional cellular telephone
network which is responsible for handling traffic and signaling between a mobile phone
and the network switching subsystem. The BSS carries out transcoding of speech
channels, allocation of radio channels to mobile phones, paging, transmission and
reception over the air interface and many other tasks related to the radio network.
Two GSM base station antennas disguised as trees in Dublin, Ireland.

A solar-powered GSM base station on top of a mountain in the wilderness of Lapland

Base transceiver station

The base transceiver station, or BTS, contains the equipment for transmitting and
receiving radio signals (transceivers), antennas, and equipment for encrypting and
decrypting communications with the base station controller (BSC). Typically a BTS for
anything other than a picocell will have several transceivers (TRXs) which allow it to
serve several different frequencies and different sectors of the cell (in the case of
sectorised base stations).

A BTS is controlled by a parent BSC via the "base station control function" (BCF). The
BCF is implemented as a discrete unit or even incorporated in a TRX in compact base
stations. The BCF provides an operations and maintenance (O&M) connection to the
network management system (NMS), and manages operational states of each TRX, as
well as software handling and alarm collection.

The functions of a BTS vary depending on the cellular technology used and the cellular
telephone provider. There are vendors in which the BTS is a plain transceiver which
receives information from the MS (mobile station) through the Um (air interface) and
then converts it to a TDM (PCM) based interface, the Abis interface, and sends it towards
the BSC. There are vendors which build their BTSs so the information is preprocessed,
target cell lists are generated and even intracell handover (HO) can be fully handled. The
advantage in this case is less load on the expensive Abis interface.

The BTSs are equipped with radios that are able to modulate layer 1 of interface Um; for
GSM 2G+ the modulation type is GMSK, while for EDGE-enabled networks it is GMSK
and 8-PSK.

Antenna combiners are implemented to use the same antenna for several TRXs (carriers),
the more TRXs are combined the greater the combiner loss will be. Up to 8:1 combiners
are found in micro and pico cells only.

Frequency hopping is often used to increase overall BTS performance; this involves the
rapid switching of voice traffic between TRXs in a sector. A hopping sequence is
followed by the TRXs and handsets using the sector. Several hopping sequences are
available, and the sequence in use for a particular cell is continually broadcast by that cell
so that it is known to the handsets.

A TRX transmits and receives according to the GSM standards, which specify eight
TDMA timeslots per radio frequency. A TRX may lose some of this capacity as some
information is required to be broadcast to handsets in the area that the BTS serves. This
information allows the handsets to identify the network and gain access to it. This
signalling makes use of a channel known as the broadcast control channel (BCCH).

Sectorisation

By using directional antennae on a base station, each pointing in different directions, it is

possible to sectorise the base station so that several different cells are served from the
same location. Typically these directional antennas have a beamwidth of 65 to 85
degrees. This increases the traffic capacity of the base station (each frequency can carry
eight voice channels) whilst not greatly increasing the interference caused to neighboring
cells (in any given direction, only a small number of frequencies are being broadcast).
Typically two antennas are used per sector, at spacing of ten or more wavelengths apart.
This allows the operator to overcome the effects of fading due to physical phenomena
such as multipath reception. Some amplification of the received signal as it leaves the
antenna is often used to preserve the balance between uplink and downlink signal
 Base station controller

GSM transmitter
The base station controller (BSC) provides, classically, the intelligence behind the BTSs.
Typically a BSC has tens or even hundreds of BTSs under its control. The BSC handles
allocation of radio channels, receives measurements from the mobile phones, and
controls handovers from BTS to BTS (except in the case of an inter-BSC handover in
which case control is in part the responsibility of the anchor MSC). A key function of the
BSC is to act as a concentrator where many different low capacity connections to BTSs
(with relatively low utilisation) become reduced to a smaller number of connections
towards the mobile switching center (MSC) (with a high level of utilisation). Overall, this
means that networks are often structured to have many BSCs distributed into regions near
their BTSs which are then connected to large centralised MSC sites.

The BSC is undoubtedly the most robust element in the BSS as it is not only a BTS
controller but, for some vendors, a full switching center, as well as an SS7 node with
connections to the MSC and serving GPRS support node (SGSN) (when using GPRS). It
also provides all the required data to the operation support subsystem (OSS) as well as to
the performance measuring centers.

A BSC is often based on a distributed computing architecture, with redundancy applied to

critical functional units to ensure availability in the event of fault conditions. Redundancy
often extends beyond the BSC equipment itself and is commonly used in the power
supplies and in the transmission equipment providing the A-ter interface to PCU.
The databases for all the sites, including information such as carrier frequencies,
frequency hopping lists, power reduction levels, receiving levels for cell border
calculation, are stored in the BSC. This data is obtained directly from radio planning
engineering which involves modelling of the signal propagation as well as traffic
projections.

Transcoder

The transcoder is responsible for transcoding the voice channel coding between the
coding used in the mobile network, and the coding used by the world's terrestrial circuit-
switched network, the Public Switched Telephone Network. Specifically, GSM uses a
regular pulse excited-long term prediction (RPE-LTP) coder for voice data between the
mobile device and the BSS, but pulse code modulation (A-law or μ-law standardized in
ITU G.711) upstream of the BSS. RPE-LPC coding results in a data rate for voice of
13 kbit/s where standard PCM coding results in 64 kbit/s. Because of this change in data
rate for the same voice call, the transcoder also has a buffering function so that PCM 8-
bit words can be recoded to construct GSM 20 ms traffic blocks.

Although transcoding (compressing/decompressing) functionality is defined as a base

station function by the relevant standards, there are several vendors which have
implemented the solution outside of the BSC. Some vendors have implemented it in a
stand-alone rack using a proprietary interface. In Siemens' and Nokia's architecture, the
transcoder is an identifiable separate sub-system which will normally be co-located with
the MSC. In some of Ericsson's systems it is integrated to the MSC rather than the BSC.
The reason for these designs is that if the compression of voice channels is done at the
site of the MSC, the number of fixed transmission links between the BSS and MSC can
be reduced, decreasing network infrastructure costs.

This subsystem is also referred to as the transcoder and rate adaptation unit (TRAU).
Some networks use 32 kbit/s ADPCM on the terrestrial side of the network instead of
64 kbit/s PCM and the TRAU converts accordingly. When the traffic is not voice but data
such as fax or email, the TRAU enables its rate adaptation unit function to give
compatibility between the BSS and MSC data rates.

Packet control unit

The packet control unit (PCU) is a late addition to the GSM standard. It performs some of
the processing tasks of the BSC, but for packet data. The allocation of channels between
voice and data is controlled by the base station, but once a channel is allocated to the
PCU, the PCU takes full control over that channel.

The PCU can be built into the base station, built into the BSC or even, in some proposed
architectures, it can be at the SGSN site. In most of the cases, the PCU is a separate node
communicating extensively with the BSC on the radio side and the SGSN on the Gb side.

BSS interfaces
Image of the GSM network, showing the BSS interfaces to the MS, NSS and GPRS Core
Network
Um
The air interface between the mobile station (MS) and the BTS. This interface
uses LAPDm protocol for signaling, to conduct call control, measurement
reporting, handover, power control, authentication, authorization, location update
and so on. Traffic and signaling are sent in bursts of 0.577 ms at intervals of
4.615 ms, to form data blocks each 20 ms.
Abis
The interface between the BTS and BSC. Generally carried by a DS-1, ES-1, or
E1 TDM circuit. Uses TDM subchannels for traffic (TCH), LAPD protocol for
BTS supervision and telecom signaling, and carries synchronization from the
BSC to the BTS and MS.
A
The interface between the BSC and MSC. It is used for carrying traffic channels
and the BSSAP user part of the SS7 stack. Although there are usually transcoding
units between BSC and MSC, the signaling communication takes place between
these two ending points and the transcoder unit doesn't touch the SS7 information,
only the voice or CS data are transcoded or rate adapted.
Ater
The interface between the BSC and transcoder. It is a proprietary interface whose
name depends on the vendor (for example Ater by Nokia), it carries the A
interface information from the BSC leaving it untouched.
Gb
Connects the BSS to the SGSN in the GPRS core network.

CELL ON WHEEL
COW in parking lot of the Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California for the 2005 Rose Bowl
game, with its own power generator
A cell on wheels, usually referred to as a COW, is a mobile cell site that consists of a
cellular antenna tower and electronic radio transceiver equipment on a truck or trailer,
designed to be part of a cellular network.

Expanded or emergency service

COWs are used to provide expanded cellular network coverage and/or capacity at special
events such as major sporting events (Super Bowl, World Series, Rose Bowl), major
conventions, or in disaster areas where cellular coverage either was never present (e.g., in
a wilderness area where firefighters have set up a command center during a major forest
fire) or was compromised by the disaster (e.g., in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina).
Following the September 11 attacks on New York City in 2001, 36 cellular COWs were
deployed< by September 14, 2001 in Lower Manhattan to support the U.S. Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and provide critical phone service to rescue
and recovery workers. COWs provided cellular service in Southwest Florida the
aftermath of Hurricane Charley in 2004 with most of the area's stationary cell towers
destroyed.[2] 26 Cell on Wheels towers were put in place in Washington, D.C. for the
inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009 to handle the millions of extra people and
calls in the city, especially on and near the National Mall.

Many telecommunications companies also use COWs for long-term placement when
financing or infrastructure considerations prevent building a permanent site at the
location. For instance, a carrier may have approved the placement of a cell site for
coverage reasons, but the remaining budget is inadequate to fund the construction for a
fiscal quarter or even longer. An engineering team may be able to place a COW on
location to provide immediate coverage with few costs other than leasing, electricity, and
backhaul. The decision to use a COW for an extended period of time may also be driven
by the property owner. Installations on government or military facilities may be granted
only on a temporary basis, and may require the use of non-permanent facilities.
A COW may also be referred to as a site on wheels (SOW) or mobile tower unit (MTU)
Not all portable communication centers are created equally. Many are nothing more than
a cargo trailer or box that has been modified to hold communication equipment and have
an antenna tower. Tower types vary from one manufacturer to another; guyed vs.
unguyed, methods of deploying the tower, whether it meets TIA/EIA specifications.
Many COWs do not protect their sensitive equipment from the effects of lightning or
power surges. The backhaul to the network can be via terrestrial microwave,
communication satellite, or existing wired infrastructure.

CIAB (Cell-in-a-Box)

Cell in a box (CIAB)

Related to a COW is a CIAB (cell in a box). Like COWs, CIABs provide temporary
service with temporary equipment. The main difference is that a CIAB is typically placed
for a longer period of time than a COW. COWs may also be known as COLTs by some
companies, standing for "cell on light trailer". These are in most respects the same as a
COW but may have a taller tower that collapses in a nested fashion, tilting to ride
perpendicular to the trailer.

CELL SITE
A cell site is a term used to describe a site where antennas and electronic
communications equipment are placed on a radio mast or tower to create a cell in a
cellular network. A cell site is composed of a tower or other elevated structure for
mounting antennas, and one or more sets of transmitter/receivers transceivers, digital
signal processors, control electronics, a GPS receiver for timing (for CDMA2000 or IS-
95 systems), regular and backup electrical power sources, and sheltering.

A synonym for "cell site" is "cell tower", although many cell site antennas are mounted
on buildings rather than as towers. In GSM networks, the technically correct term is Base
Transceiver Station (BTS), and colloquial British English synonyms are "mobile phone
mast" or "base station". The term "base station site" might better reflect the increasing co-
location of multiple mobile operators, and therefore multiple base stations, at a single
site. Depending on an operator's technology, even a site hosting just a single mobile
operator may house multiple base stations, each to serve a different air interface
technology (CDMA or GSM, for example). Preserved treescapes can often hide cell
towers inside an artificial tree or preserved tree. These installations are generally referred
to as concealed cell sites or stealth cell sites.

Operation
Range

The working range of a cell site - the range within which mobile devices can connect to it
reliably is not a fixed figure. It will depend on a number of factors, including

• The frequency of signal in use (i.e. the underlying technology).

• The transmitter's rated power.
• The transmitter's size.
• The array setup of panels may cause the transmitter to be directional or omni-
directional.
• It may also be limited by local geographical or regulatory factors and weather
conditions.

Generally, in areas where there are enough cell sites to cover a wide area, the range of
each one will be set to:

• Ensure there is enough overlap for "handover" to/from other sites (moving the
signal for a mobile device from one cell site to another, for those technologies that
can handle it - e.g. making a GSM phone call while in a car or train).
• Ensure that the overlap area is not too large, to minimize interference problems
with other sites.

In practice, cell sites are grouped in areas of high population density, with the most
potential users. Cell phone traffic through a single cell mast is limited by the mast's
capacity; there is a finite number of calls that a mast can handle at once. This limitation is
another factor affecting the spacing of cell mast sites. In suburban areas, masts are
commonly spaced 1-2 miles apart and in dense urban areas, masts may be as close as ¼-
½ mile apart. Cell masts always reserve part of their available bandwidth for emergency
calls.

Objects intruding into the fresnel zone between radio transmitters and receivers can
greatly affect signal strength.

The maximum range of a mast (where it is not limited by interference with other masts
nearby) depends on the same circumstances. Some technologies, such as GSM, have a
fixed maximum range of 40km (23 miles), which is imposed by technical limitations.
CDMA and iDEN have no built-in limit, but the limiting factor is really the ability of a
low-powered personal cell phone to transmit back to the mast. As a rough guide, based
on a tall mast and flat terrain, it is possible to get between 50 to 70 km (30-45 miles).
When the terrain is hilly, the maximum distance can vary from as little as 5 kilometres
(3.1 mi) to 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) due to encroachment of intermediate objects into the
wide center fresnel zone of the signal. Depending on terrain and other circumstances, a
GSM Tower can replace between 2 and 50 miles of cabling for fixed wireless networks.

Channel reuse

The concept of "maximum" range is misleading, however, in a cellular network. Cellular

networks are designed to create a mass communication solution from a limited amount of
channels (slices of radio frequency spectrum necessary to make one conversation) that
are licensed to an operator of a cellular service. To overcome this limitation, it is
necessary to repeat and reuse the same channels at different locations. Just as a car radio
changes from one local station to a completely different local station with the same
frequency when you travel to another city, the same radio channel gets reused on a cell
mast only a few miles away. To do this, the signal of a cell mast is intentionally kept at
low power and many cases tilting downward to limit its area. The area sometimes needs
to be limited when a large number of people live, drive or work near a particular mast;
the range of this mast has to be limited so that it covers an area small enough not to have
to support more conversations than the available channels can carry. Due to the
sectorized arrangement of antennas on a tower, it is possible to vary the strength and
angle of each sector depending on the coverage of other towers in view of the sector.

A cellphone may not work at times, because it is too far from a mast, but it may also not
work because the phone is in a location where there is interference to the cell phone
signal from thick building walls, hills or other structures. The signals do not need a clear
line of sight but the more interference will degrade or eliminate reception. Too many
people may be trying to use the cell mast at the same time, e.g. a traffic jam or a sports
event, then there will be a signal on the phone display but it is blocked from starting a
new connection. The other limiting factor for cell phones is the ability of the cell phone
to send a signal from its low powered battery to the mast. Some cellphones perform better
than others under low power or low battery, typically due to the ability to send a good
signal from the phone to the mast.

The base station controller (a central computer that specializes in making phone
connections) and the intelligence of the cellphone keeps track of and allows the phone to
switch from one mast to the next during conversation. As the user moves towards a mast
it picks the strongest signal and releases the mast from which the signal has become
weaker; that channel on that mast becomes available to another user.

Completed in December 2009 at Epiphany Lutheran Church, in Lake Worth, Florida, this
100' tall cross conceals equipment for T-Mobile.

Geolocation

Cellular geolocation is less precise than the GPS, but it is available to devices that do not
have GPS receivers and where the GPS is not available. The precision of this system
varies widely. Precision is highest where trilateration is possible (where a device is within
range of at least three cell sites) and lowest where only a single cell site can be reached,
in which case the location is only known to be within the coverage of that site. Another
method using angle of arrival (AoA), possible when in range of at least two cell sites,
produces intermediate precision. In the United States, for emergency calling service using
location data (locally called "Enhanced 911"), it was required that at least 95% of cellular
phones in use on 31 December 2005 support such service. Many carriers missed this
deadline and were fined by the Federal Communications Commission.[citation needed]

Cell phone tower power emission

The U.S. government agency, the FCC, says:

"For example, measurement data obtained from various sources have consistently
indicated that "worst-case" ground-level power densities near typical cellular towers are
on the order of 1 µW/cm2 or less (usually significantly less)."

That is 0.01 Watt per square meter. There is no temptation to use more power. The entire
idea of a "cell" phone system is to create small "cells" that don't interfere with each other.

The average energy received over the entire earth is about 250 Watts per square meter
over a 24 hour day, ignoring clouds. So, on a day with no clouds, the average
electromagnetic energy received from the Sun is 25,000 times that received near a cell
phone tower.

Temporary set-up

Cell on wheels, or COW

Although cell antennas are normally attached to permanent structures, carriers also
maintain fleets of vehicles, called cells-on-wheels (COWs), that serve as temporary cell
sites. A generator may be included for use where network electrical power isn't available,
and the system may have a wireless backhaul link allowing use where a wired link is not
available.

COWs are also used at permanent cell sites—as temporary replacements for damaged
equipment, during planned outages, and to augment capacity such as during conventions.
CELLULAR FREQUENCIES
All cellular phone networks worldwide use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum
designated as Ultra High Frequency, or "UHF", for the transmission and reception of
their signals. The UHF band is also shared with Television, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
transmission. The cellular frequencies are the sets of frequency ranges within the UHF
band that have been allocated for cellular phone use.

Due to historical reasons, radio frequencies used for cellular networks differ in the
Americas, Europe, and Asia. The first commercial standard for mobile connection in the
United States was AMPS, which was in the 800 MHz frequency band. In Nordic
countries of Europe, the first widespread automatic mobile network was based on the
NMT-450 standard, which was in the 450 MHz band. As mobile phones became more
popular and affordable, mobile providers encountered a problem because they couldn't
provide service to the increasing number of customers. They had to develop their existing
networks and eventually introduce new standards, often based on other frequencies.
Some European countries (and Japan) adopted TACS operating in 900 MHz. The GSM
standard, which appeared in Europe to replace NMT-450 and other standards, initially
used the 900 MHz band too. As demand grew, carriers acquired licenses in the
1800 MHz band. (Generally speaking, lower frequencies allow carriers to provide
coverage over a larger area, while higher frequencies allow carriers to provide service to
more customers in a smaller area.)

In the U.S., the analog AMPS standard that used the Cellular band (800 MHz) was
replaced by a number of digital systems. Initially, systems based upon the AMPS mobile
phone model were popular, including IS-95 (often known as "CDMA", the air interface
technology it uses) and IS-136 (often known as D-AMPS, Digital AMPS, or "TDMA",
the air interface technology it uses.) Eventually, IS-136 on these frequencies was replaced
by most operators with GSM. GSM had already been running for some time on US PCS
(1900 MHz) frequencies.

And, some NMT-450 analog networks have been replaced with digital networks using
the same frequency. In Russia and some other countries, local carriers received licenses
for 450 MHz frequency to provide CDMA mobile coverage.

Many GSM phones support three bands (900/1800/1900 MHz or 850/1800/1900 MHz) or
four bands (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), and are usually referred to as tri band and quad
band phones, or world phones; with such a phone one can travel internationally and use
the same handset. This portability is not as extensive with IS-95 phones, however, as IS-
95 networks do not exist in most of Europe.

Mobile networks based on different standards may use the same frequency range; for
example, AMPS, D-AMPS, N-AMPS and IS-95 all use the 800 MHz frequency band.
Moreover, one can find both AMPS and IS-95 networks in use on the same frequency in
the same area that do not interfere with each other. This is achieved by the use of
different channels to carry data. The actual frequency used by a particular phone can vary
from place to place, depending on the settings of the carrier's base station.

Frequency bands recommended by ITU

UMTS frequency bands

ITU-R approved in June 2003 the following bands to the terrestrial Mobile
telecommunication IMT-2000: 806-960 MHz, 1710-2025 MHz, 2110-2200 MHz and
2500-2690 MHz.

Frequency bands used in the United States

Current / Planned Technologies Band Frequency (MHz)
SMR iDEN 800 806-824 and 851-869
AMPS, GSM, IS-95 (CDMA), IS-136 (D- 824-849, 869-894, 896-901,
Cellular
AMPS), 3G 935-940
GSM, IS-95 (CDMA), IS-136 (D-AMPS), 3G PCS 1850–1910 and 1930–1990
3G, 4G, MediaFlo, DVB-H 700 MHz 698-806
Unknown 1.4 GHz 1392–1395 and 1432–1435
3G, 4G AWS 1710–1755 and 2110–2170
4G BRS/EBS 2500–2690

The usage of frequencies within the United States is regulated by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). The US is then divided geographically into a
number of Trading Areas. A mobile operator (or other interested parties) must bid on
each trading area individually. A bidder can use the frequency spectrum for whatever
purpose he wants. Go to Wireless Advisor for a listing of the network operators for a
given ZIP-code.

The Cellular band (869-894 MHz) is divided into 2 frequency blocks (A and B). There
are 306 Metropolitan Service Areas and 428 rural service areas. Each trading area
consists of one or more counties.

The PCS band (1850-1990 MHz) is divided into six frequency blocks (A through F).
Each block is between 10 MHz and 30 MHz bandwidth. License (A or B) is granted for a
Major Trading Areas (MTAs). License (C to F) is granted for a Basic Trading Areas
(BTAs). There are 51 MTAs and 493 BTAs in the United States.

The AWS bands, auctioned in the summer of 2006, were for 1710-1755 MHz, and 2110-
2155 MHz. The spectrum was divided into blocks: A blocks were for Cellular Market
Areas, based on existing cellular (1G) licenses, and were 2x10 MHz. B and C blocks
(2x10 MHz and 2x5 MHz respectively) were for Basic Economic Areas, larger than
CMAs, usually comprising of large portions of single states. D, E, and F blocks covered
huge areas of the country, typically several states at a time, and covered 2x5 MHz for D
and E blocks, 2x10 MHz for F.

The 700 MHz band was auctioned in early 2008, with Verizon Wireless and AT&T
Mobility winning the majority of available spectrum. Qualcomm and Echostar were
winners of a significant amount of broadcast-oriented spectrum. The winners have not yet
announced what technology they intend to deploy on this spectrum, but it is expected to
host a range of 3G, 4G, and broadcast technologies such as MediaFlo and DVB-H.

More bands are under consideration for auction by the FCC. These are currently used by
DoD, NASA, and other government agencies.

Cellular and PCS bands are also used in other countries in the Americas.

Most widely used channelization and frequencies

The following chart presents graphically the forward link (base station to mobile)
frequencies and channelization most prevalently used in today's cellular communication
systems.

Frequency bands used by GSM

Main article: GSM frequency bands
System Band Uplink Downlink Channel Number
GSM 400 450 450.4 - 457.6 460.4 - 467.6 259 - 293
GSM 400 480 478.8 - 486.0 488.8 - 496.0 306 - 340
GSM 850 850 824.0 - 849.0 869.0 - 894.0 128 - 251
GSM 900 (P-GSM) 900 890.0 - 915.0 935.0 - 960.0 1 - 124
GSM 900 (E-GSM) 900 880.0 - 915.0 925.0 - 960.0 0 - 124, 975 - 1023
GSM-R (R-GSM) 900 876.0 - 880.0 921.0 - 925.0 955 - 973
DCS 1800 1800 1710.0 - 1785.0 1805.0 - 1880.0 512 - 885
PCS 1900 1900 1850.0 - 1910.0 1930.0 - 1990.0 512 - 810

GSM Frequency band usage is defined in ETS 05.05.

Other Regions
System Country Uplink Downlink
CDMA fff China 2300–2400
CDMA Japan 915-925 860-870
CDMA S. Korea 1750–1780 1840–1870
CDMA-450 Sweden 452.5-457.5 462.5-467.5

GSM frequency bands

GSM frequency bands or frequency ranges are the cellular frequencies designated by
the ITU for the operation of the GSM for mobile phones.

There are fourteen bands defined in 3GPP TS 45.005, which succeeded 3GPP TS 05.05:

System Band Uplink (MHz) Downlink (MHz) Channel number

T-GSM-380 380 380.2–389.8 390.2–399.8 dynamic
T-GSM-410 410 410.2–419.8 420.2–429.8 dynamic
GSM-450 450 450.4–457.6 460.4–467.6 259–293
GSM-480 480 478.8–486.0 488.8–496.0 306–340
GSM-710 710 698.0–716.0 728.0–746.0 dynamic
GSM-750 750 747.0–762.0 777.0–792.0 438–511
T-GSM-810 810 806.0–821.0 851.0–866.0 dynamic
GSM-850 850 824.0–849.0 869.0–894.0 128–251
P-GSM-900 900 890.2–914.8 935.2–959.8 1–124
E-GSM-900 900 880.0–914.8 925.0–959.8 975–1023, 0-124
R-GSM-900 900 876.0–914.8 921.0–959.8 955–1023, 0-124
T-GSM-900 900 870.4–876.0 915.4–921.0 dynamic
DCS-1800 1800 1710.2–1784.8 1805.2–1879.8 512–885
PCS-1900 1900 1850.0–1910.0 1930.0–1990.0 512–810

• P-GSM, Standard or Primary GSM-900 Band

• E-GSM, Extended GSM-900 Band (includes Standard GSM-900 band)
• R-GSM, Railways GSM-900 Band (includes Standard and Extended GSM-900
band)
• T-GSM, TETRA-GSM

GSM-900, GSM-1800 and EGSM/EGSM-900

GSM-900 and GSM-1800 are used in most parts of the world: Europe, Middle East,
Africa, Oceania and most of Asia. In South and Central America the following countries
use the following:
 • Costa Rica - GSM-1800
• Brazil - GSM-850, 900, 1800 and 1900
• Guatemala - GSM-850, GSM-900 and 1900
• El Salvador - GSM-850, GSM-900 and 1900

GSM-900 uses 890–915 MHz to send information from the mobile

station to the base station (uplink) and 935–960 MHz for the
other direction (downlink), providing 124 RF channels (channel
numbers 1 to 124) spaced at 200 kHz. Duplex spacing of 45 MHz
is

E-GSM

In some countries the GSM-900 band has been extended to cover a larger frequency
range. This 'extended GSM', E-GSM, uses 880–915 MHz (uplink) and 925–960 MHz
(downlink), adding 50 channels (channel numbers 975 to 1023 and 0) to the original
GSM-900 band. The GSM specifications also describe 'railways GSM', GSM-R, which
uses 876–915 MHz (uplink) and 921–960 MHz (downlink). Channel numbers 955 to
1023. GSM-R provides additional channels and specialized services for use by railway
personnel.

Phones described as having "EGSM" or "EGSM 900" support both the original GSM 900
band and the extended band. Older phones with "GSM 900" may not support EGSM.
Most newer phones with "GSM 900" do support EGSM, it is just not listed that way since
it is assumed that newer phones support it.

All these variants are included in the GSM-900 specification.

GSM-1800

GSM-1800 uses 1710–1785 MHz to send information from the mobile station to the base
tranceiver station (uplink) and 1805–1880 MHz for the other direction (downlink),
providing 374 channels (channel numbers 512 to 885). Duplex spacing is 95 MHz.

GSM-1800 is also called DCS (Digital Cellular Service) in the United Kingdom, while
being called PCS in Hong Kong (not to mix up with GSM-1900 which is commonly
called PCS in the rest of the world.)

Mobile Communication Services on Aircraft (MCA) uses GSM1800.

GSM-850 and GSM-1900

GSM-850 and GSM-1900 are used in the United States, Canada, and many other
countries in the Americas.

• GSM-850 uses 824–849 MHz to send information from the mobile station to the
base station (uplink) and 869–894 MHz for the other direction (downlink).
Channel numbers are 128 to 251.

GSM-850 is also sometimes called GSM-800 because this frequency range was
known as the "800 MHz band" (for simplification) when it was first allocated for
AMPS in the United States in 1983.
The term Cellular is sometimes used to describe the 850 MHz band, because the
original analog cellular mobile communication system was allocated in this
spectrum.

• GSM-1900 uses 1850–1910 MHz to send information from the mobile station to
the base station (uplink) and 1930–1990 MHz for the other direction (downlink).
Channel numbers are 512 to 810.

PCS is the original name in North America for the 1900 MHz band. It is an
initialism for Personal Communications Service.

GSM-450

Another less common GSM version is GSM-450. It uses the same band as, and can co-
exist with, old analog NMT systems. NMT is a first generation (1G) mobile phone
system which was primarily used in Nordic countries, Benelux, Alpine Countries, Eastern
Europe and Russia prior to the introduction of GSM. It operates in either 450.4–
457.6 MHz paired with 460.4–467.6 MHz (channel numbers 259 to 293), or 478.8–
486 MHz paired with 488.8–496 MHz (channel numbers 306 to 340). GSM Association
claims one of its around 680 operator-members has a license to operate a GSM 450
network in Tanzania. However, currently all active public operators in Tanzania use
GSM 900/1800 MHz. Overall, where the 450 MHz NMT band exists, it either still runs
NMT, or its been replaced by CDMA. GSM-450 is a provision, it has not seen
commercial deployment.

GSM frequency usage across the world

The Americas
In North America, GSM operates on the primary mobile communication bands 850 MHz
and 1900 MHz. In Canada, GSM-1900 is the primary band used in urban areas with 850
as a backup, and GSM-850 being the primary rural band. In the United States, regulatory
requirements determine which area can use which band.

GSM-1900 and GSM-850 are also used in most of South and Central America, and both
Ecuador and Panama use GSM-850 exclusively(Note: Since November 2008, Panama
starts to have an operator running 1900 service). Venezuela and Brazil use GSM-850 and
GSM-900/1800 mixing the European and American bands. Some countries in the
Americas use GSM-900 or GSM-1800, some others use 3, GSM-850/900/1900, GSM-
850/1800/1900, GSM-900/1800/1900 or GSM-850/900/1800. Soon some countries will
use GSM-850/900/1800/1900 MHZ like the Dominican Republic, Trinidad & Tobago
and Venezuela.

In Brazil, the 1900 MHz band is paired with 2100 MHz to form the IMT-compliant
2100 MHz band for 3G services.

The result is a mixture of usage in the Americas that requires travelers to confirm that the
phones they have are compatible with the band of the networks at their destinations.
Frequency compatibility problems can be avoided through the use of multi-band (tri-band
or, especially, quad-band), phones.

Europe, Middle East and Asia

In Europe, Middle East and Asia most of the providers use 900 MHz and 1800 MHz
bands. GSM-900 is most widely used. Fewer operators use DCS-1800 and GSM-1800. A
dual-band 900/1800 phone is required to be compatible with almost all operators. At least
GSM-900 band must be supported to be compatible with many operators.

Multi-band and multi-mode phones

Today, most telephones support multiple bands as used in different countries to facilitate
roaming. These are typically referred to as multi-band phones. Dual-band phones can
cover GSM networks in pairs such as 900 and 1800 MHz frequencies (Europe, Asia,
Australia and Brazil) or 850 and 1900 (North America and Brazil). European tri-band
phones typically cover the 900, 1800 and 1900 bands giving good coverage in Europe
and allowing limited use in North America, while North American tri-band phones utilize
850, 1800 and 1900 for widespread North American service but limited worldwide use. A
new addition has been the quad-band phone, also known as a world phone, supporting all
four major GSM bands, allowing for global use (excluding non-GSM countries such as
Japan).

There are also multi-mode phones which can operate on GSM as well as on other mobile
phone systems using other technical standards or proprietary technologies. Often these
phones use multiple frequency bands as well. For example, one version of the Nokia
6340i GAIT phone sold in North America can operate on GSM-1900, GSM-850 and
legacy TDMA-1900, TDMA-800, and AMPS-800, making it both multi-mode and multi-
band.

Note that while the Nexus One, like many other devices on the market, may also become
available in a UMTS I/II/IV or 2100/1900/850MHz combo, it would still be considered
tri-band UMTS, not quint-band, as the hardware is limited to supporting any 3 bands at
one time. Further, as HSPA runs atop UMTS, it would not be considered a "mode" by
strict definition.

UMTS frequency bands

In telecommunications, UMTS frequency bands are the radio spectrum frequencies
designated for the operation of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS) / High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) / High-Speed Uplink Packet
Access (HSUPA) / HSPA+ / system for mobile phones.

UMTS-TDD

UMTS-TDD is designed to operate in the following bands:

Frequencies (MHz) Channel Number (UARFCN)

1900 - 1920 9512 - 9588
2010 - 2025 10062 - 10113
1850 - 1910 9262 - 9538
1930 - 1990 9662 - 9938
1910 - 1930 9562 - 9638
2570 - 2620 12862 - 13088

Frequency bands deployment

Further information: List of UMTS networks

In general, the various UMTS bands are deployed as follows:

 • Band I (W-CDMA 2100) in Europe, India, Africa, Asia, Australia (all carriers'
metropolitan networks), New Zealand (ITU Region 1) and Brazil (part of ITU
Region 2)
• Band II (W-CDMA 1900) in North America and South America (ITU Region 2)
• Band IV (W-CDMA 1700 or Advanced Wireless Services) in the United States
(T-Mobile USA) and Canada (WIND Mobile, Mobilicity and Vidéotron)
• Band V (W-CDMA 850) in Australia (Telstra NextG Network), New Zealand
(XT Mobile Network), Brazil, Canada, the USA, Guatemala, Costa Rica,
Venezuela, other parts of South America, Israel[2], parts of Asia (ITU Region 2
and ITU Region 3), Poland
• Band VIII (W-CDMA 900) in Europe, Asia, Australia (Optus and Vodafone
regional/country 3G networks), New Zealand (ITU Region 1 and ITU Region 3),
and Venezuela (Digitel GSM)

Multi-band
Further information: List of HSPA mobile phones, List of UMTS networks

Today, most mobiles support multiple bands as used in different countries to facilitate
roaming. These are typically referred to as multi-band phones. Dual-band phones can
cover networks in pairs such as 2100/900 (bands I/VIII) in Europe, Middle East, Asia,
Oceania or 1900/850MHz (bands II/V) in North and South America. With the recent
release of AWS spectrum (band IV) in North America, the dual-band combo of
1700/2100 is also becoming popular there.

European/Asian tri-band phones typically cover the 900, 1900 and 2100MHz bands
giving good coverage in Europe and allowing very limited use in North America, while
North American tri-band phones utilize 850, 1900 and 2100MHz for widespread North &
South American service and good coverage for worldwide use thanks to the popularity of
the 2100MHz spectrum. AWS versions of phones support normally 900/1700/2100
allowing for North American coverage on AWS enabled networks and roaming coverage
on 2100MHz and on forthcoming 900MHz overlays in Europe and Asia.

Most UMTS phones also operate on GSM as well, supporting EDGE to ensure data
coverage where HSPA still lacks coverage. Note however, that while a phone may have
overlapping GSM & UMTS frequency support, being tri-band/quad-band in
GSM/GPRS/EDGE does not imply the same support for UMTS, as was the case with
many early 2100MHz-only UMTS devices.

CELLULAR REPEATER
A cellular repeater, cell phone repeater, or wireless cellular signal booster, a type of
bi-directional amplifier (BDA) as commonly named in the wireless telecommunications
industry, is a device used for boosting the cell phone reception to the local area by the
usage of a reception antenna, a signal amplifier and an internal rebroadcast antenna.
These are similar to the cellular broadcast towers used for broadcasting by the network
providers, but are much smaller, usually intended for use in one building. Modern cellular
repeater amplifiers rebroadcast cellular signals inside the building. The systems usually
use an external, directional antenna to collect the best cellular signal, which is then
transmitted to an amplifier unit which amplifies the signal, and retransmits it locally,
providing significantly improved signal strength. The more advanced models often also
allow multiple cell phones to use the same repeater at the same time, so are suitable for
commercial as well as home use.

The market for cellular repeaters is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years,
particularly in the USA. This is due to the combination of the poor network coverage in
some areas, and the large scale departure from the land-line system. The CTIA – The
Wireless Association (formerly the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association)
had predicted that by 2007 30% of phone users in the US would be mobile only - more
than 60 million lines. This combined with the low population density (compared with
Europe and Japan) means that many people will have to use some method to improve
their home signal.

Other advantages of cellular repeaters include an increase in the cell phone's battery life
and a lower level of radiation emitted by the handset - both caused by the lower power
required to broadcast the signal to the local bi-directional amplifier, due to its proximity
to the phone.

Typical components
External directional antenna

Although some of the less expensive models do not include an external directional
antenna they are crucial to providing significant signal strength gain. This is because the
antenna can be oriented and located outside to provide the best possible signal, usually
aligned with the nearest cell tower. Generally speaking the larger the external antenna the
better the signal - although even a small, correctly oriented external antenna should
provide better signal than the internal antenna on any cell phone. These can either be
fitted by professionals or will include a signal strength monitor for easy alignment.

Internal rebroadcast antenna

The better systems will generally include an internal monopole antenna (although the
type of antenna is far from standardised) for rebroadcasting the signal internally - the
advantage of using a monopole antenna is that the signal will be equally distributed in all
directions (subject, of course, to attenuation from obstacles).Because all radio antennas
are intrinsically polarized, cell phones perform best when their antennas are oriented
parallel to the booster's antenna - although within reasonable proximity the booster's
signal will be strong enough that the orientation of the cell phone's antenna will not make
a significant difference in usability.

Signal amplifier

All models will include a signal amplifier. Even the cheaper home-use models (typically
band selective) now provide 20dB - 50dB gain and many of the more expensive models
provide over 50dB. Excellent high-power models (not home usage - smart and expensive
technology of the operators) offering gain around 100dBm (ICE function is welcomed as
a improvement of the radio isolation between donor and service antenna). However, it
should be noted that since the decibel scale is measured on a logarithmic scale a 30dB
gain represents a one thousandfold signal power increase - meaning the total
amplification of a repeater with greater than around 50dB is likely to be useless without a
good, well aligned antenna. This is due to the difficulty of filtering the correct signal out
from the background noise, which will be amplified equally, and the limiting maximum
signal power of the amplifier (for picorepeaters typically from around 5 dBm (3.2 mW)).
Standard GSM channel selective repeater (operated by telecommunication operators for
coverage of large areas and big buildings) has output power around 2W, high power
repeaters (e.g., NodeG from Andrew) offering output power around 10W). The power
gain is calculated by the following equation:

For repeater is needed to secure sufficient isolation between donor and service antenna.
When the isolation is lower than actual gain + reserve (typically 5-15dB) then repeaters is
in loop oscillation.

Also cheap models are equipped by automatic gain reduction in case of poor or weak
isolation. In case of poor isolation the device works but with low gain, and coverage is
poor.

The isolation is possible to improve by antenna type selection, in macro environment by

angle between donor and service antenna (ideally 180°), space separation (typically
vertical distance in case of the tower installation between donor and service antenna is
several meters), inserting of the attenuating environment (smart placement of the donor
and service antenna, e.g., between donor and service antenna is wall, placement of the
metal mesh),reduction of reflections - in front of the donor antenna no near obstacle (like
tree, metal-sheet building, glasshouse, or house)).

Isolation can be also improved by integrated feature called ICE (interference cancellation
equipment) offered in some products (e.g., NodeG, RFWindow). Activating of this
feature has negative impact to internal delay (higher delay => prox. +5us up to standard
rep. delay) and consequently to shorter radius from donor site, where could be repeater
used.
By amplification and filtration there is some delay (typically between 5us to 15us). It
depends on the type of repeater and used features. Additional delay form point of view of
propagation means additional distance. Because of the cellular network has form
principle reduced cell size (depends on the technology and activated features typically
X*10 km (for standard GSM 35 km), urban FDD/TDD network 20 km) usage of repeater
virtually moving user to bigger distance: radio distance = real distance + (repeater
delay)*3.3 km (delay of RF signal in air is 3.3us/km). It is reason why somewhere with
sufficient levels repeater doesn't work. After repeating you have better (or excellent)
coverage but you can't access to network. User is from network point of view too far.

There is also problem with noise amplification (especially in UL) and desensitization of
the donor site.

Amateur installation of the pico/mini repeaters can be harmful for many reasons:

• Poor choice of donor site may not improve signal

• Using the wrong antenna and improperly installing the repeater without paying
attention to minimizing interference (e.g. installing the repeater in a higher place
than necessary, being shaded by buildings (e.g., by wall installation or
suppression of side/back lobes by chimney, etc.)) and without sense to donor site
selection.

• Use of a poor device for signal generation, causing noise and inter-modulation
products.
• Repeating only part of the band, such as in cases where the operator is using
wider band (e.g., EGSM) or more bands and the repeater does not support EGSM
or is only for 900GSM. Operators can operate also EGSM or
GSM900+GSM1800 layers with single BCCH (Siemens(SAG) commonly
supports the BCCH feature. In the case of improper repeater support, many calls
may drop).

Reasons for weak signal

Rural areas

In many rural areas the housing density is too low to make construction of a new base
station commercially viable. In these cases it is unlikely that the service provider will do
anything to improve reception, due to the high cost of erecting a new tower. As a result,
the only way to obtain strong cell phone signal in these areas is usually to install a home
cellular repeater. In flat rural areas the signal is unlikely to suffer from multipath
interference, so will just be heavily attenuated by the distance. In these cases the
installation of a cellular repeater will generally massively increase signal strength just due
to the amplifier, even a great distance from the broadcast towers.

Building construction material

Some construction materials very rapidly attenuate cell phone signal strength. Older
buildings, such as churches, which use lead in their roofing material will very effectively
block any signal. Any building which has a significant thickness of concrete or amount of
metal used in its production will attenuate the signal. Concrete floors are often poured
onto a metal pan which completely blocks most radio signals. Some solid foam insulation
and some fiberglass insulation used in roofs or exterior walls has foil backing, which can
reduce transmittance. Energy efficient windows and metal window screens are also very
effective at blocking radio signals. Some materials have peaks in their absorption spectra
which massively decrease signal strength.

Building size

Large buildings, such as warehouses, hospitals and factories, often have no cellular
reception further than a few meters from the outside wall. Low signal strength is also
often the case in underground areas such as basements and in shops and restaurants
located towards the centre of shopping malls. This is caused by both the fact that the
signal is attenuated heavily as it enters the building and the interference as the signal is
reflected by the objects inside the building. For this reason in these cases an external
antenna is usually desirable.

Multipath interference

Even in urban areas which usually have strong cellular signals throughout, there are often
dead zones caused by destructive interference of waves which have taken different paths
(caused by the signal bouncing off buildings etc.) These usually have an area of a few
blocks and will usually only affect one of the two frequency ranges used by cell phones.
This is because the different wavelengths of the different frequencies interfere
destructively at different points. Directional antennas are very helpful at overcoming this
since they can be placed at points of constructive interference and aligned so as not to
receive the destructive signal. See Multipath interference for more.

Diffraction and general attenuation

The longer wavelengths have the advantage of being able to diffract to a greater degree
so are less reliant on line of sight to obtain a good signal, but still attenuate significantly.
Because the frequencies which cell phones use are too high to reflect off the ionosphere
as shortwave radio waves do, cell phone waves cannot travel via the ionospohere.
Different operating frequencies
Repeaters are available for all the different GSM frequency bands, some repeaters will
handle different types of network such as multi-mode GSM and UMTS repeaters
however dual- and tri-band systems cost significantly more. Repeater systems are
available for certain Satellite phone systems, allowing the satphones to be used indoors
without a clear line of sight to the satellite.

CODE DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS

Code division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method utilized by various
radio communication technologies. It should not be confused with the mobile phone
standards called cdmaOne and CDMA2000 (which are often referred to as simply
CDMA), which use CDMA as an underlying channel access method.

One of the basic concepts in data communication is the idea of allowing several
transmitters to send information simultaneously over a single communication channel.
This allows several users to share a bandwidth of different frequencies. This concept is
called multiplexing. CDMA employs spread-spectrum technology and a special coding
scheme (where each transmitter is assigned a code) to allow multiple users to be
multiplexed over the same physical channel. By contrast, time division multiple access
(TDMA) divides access by time, while frequency-division multiple access (FDMA)
divides it by frequency. CDMA is a form of spread-spectrum signaling, since the
modulated coded signal has a much higher data bandwidth than the data being
communicated.

An analogy to the problem of multiple access is a room (channel) in which people wish to
communicate with each other. To avoid confusion, people could take turns speaking
(time division), speak at different pitches (frequency division), or speak in different
languages (code division). CDMA is analogous to the last example where people
speaking the same language can understand each other, but not other people. Similarly, in
radio CDMA, each group of users is given a shared code. Many codes occupy the same
channel, but only users associated with a particular code can communicate.

USES
A CDMA mobile phone

• One of the early applications for code division multiplexing is in GPS. This
predates and is distinct from cdmaOne.
• The Qualcomm standard IS-95, marketed as cdmaOne.
• The Qualcomm standard IS-2000, known as CDMA2000. This standard is used
by several mobile phone companies, including the Globalstar satellite phone
network.
• CDMA has been used in the OmniTRACS satellite system for transportation
logistics.

Steps in CDMA Modulation

CDMA is a spread spectrum multiple access technique. A spread spectrum technique is

one which spreads the bandwidth of the data uniformly for the same transmitted power.
Spreading code is a pseudo-random code which has a narrow Ambiguity function unlike
other narrow pulse codes. In CDMA a locally generated code runs at a much higher rate
than the data to be transmitted. Data for transmission is simply logically XOR (exclusive
OR) added with the faster code. The figure shows how spread spectrum signal is
generated. The data signal with pulse duration of Tb is XOR added with the code signal
with pulse duration of Tc. (Note: bandwidth is proportional to 1 / T where T = bit time)
Therefore, the bandwidth of the data signal is 1 / Tb and the bandwidth of the spread
spectrum signal is 1 / Tc. Since Tc is much smaller than Tb, the bandwidth of the spread
spectrum signal is much larger than the bandwidth of the original signal. The ratio Tb /
Tc is called spreading factor or processing gain and determines to a certain extent the
upper limit of the total number of users supported simultaneously by a base station.
Each user in a CDMA system uses a different code to modulate their signal. Choosing the
codes used to modulate the signal is very important in the performance of CDMA
systems. The best performance will occur when there is good separation between the
signal of a desired user and the signals of other users. The separation of the signals is
made by correlating the received signal with the locally generated code of the desired
user. If the signal matches the desired user's code then the correlation function will be
high and the system can extract that signal. If the desired user's code has nothing in
common with the signal the correlation should be as close to zero as possible (thus
eliminating the signal); this is referred to as cross correlation. If the code is correlated
with the signal at any time offset other than zero, the correlation should be as close to
zero as possible. This is referred to as auto-correlation and is used to reject multi-path
interference.

In general, CDMA belongs to two basic categories: synchronous (orthogonal codes) and
asynchronous (pseudorandom codes).

Code division multiplexing (Synchronous CDMA)

Synchronous CDMA exploits mathematical properties of orthogonality between vectors

representing the data strings. For example, binary string 1011 is represented by the vector
(1, 0, 1, 1). Vectors can be multiplied by taking their dot product, by summing the
products of their respective components. If the dot product is zero, the two vectors are
said to be orthogonal to each other (note: if u = (a, b) and v = (c, d), the dot product u·v =
ac + bd). Some properties of the dot product aid understanding of how W-CDMA works.
If vectors a and b are orthogonal, then and:

Each user in synchronous CDMA uses a code orthogonal to the others' codes to modulate
their signal. An example of four mutually orthogonal digital signals is shown in the
figure. Orthogonal codes have a cross-correlation equal to zero; in other words, they do
not interfere with each other. In the case of IS-95 64 bit Walsh codes are used to encode
the signal to separate different users. Since each of the 64 Walsh codes are orthogonal to
one another, the signals are channelized into 64 orthogonal signals. The following
example demonstrates how each users signal can be encoded and decoded.

Asynchronous CDMA
The previous example of orthogonal Walsh sequences describes how 2 users can be
multiplexed together in a synchronous system, a technique that is commonly referred to
as code division multiplexing (CDM). The set of 4 Walsh sequences shown in the figure
will afford up to 4 users, and in general, an NxN Walsh matrix can be used to multiplex
N users. Multiplexing requires all of the users to be coordinated so that each transmits
their assigned sequence v (or the complement, –v) so that they arrive at the receiver at
exactly the same time. Thus, this technique finds use in base-to-mobile links, where all of
the transmissions originate from the same transmitter and can be perfectly coordinated.

On the other hand, the mobile-to-base links cannot be precisely coordinated, particularly
due to the mobility of the handsets, and require a somewhat different approach. Since it is
not mathematically possible to create signature sequences that are orthogonal for
arbitrarily random starting points, unique "pseudo-random" or "pseudo-noise" (PN)
sequences are used in asynchronous CDMA systems. A PN code is a binary sequence
that appears random but can be reproduced in a deterministic manner by intended
receivers. These PN codes are used to encode and decode a user's signal in Asynchronous
CDMA in the same manner as the orthogonal codes in synchronous CDMA (shown in the
example above). These PN sequences are statistically uncorrelated, and the sum of a large
number of PN sequences results in multiple access interference (MAI) that is
approximated by a Gaussian noise process (following the central limit theorem in
statistics). Gold codes are an example of a PN suitable for this purpose, as there is low
correlation between the codes. If all of the users are received with the same power level,
then the variance (e.g., the noise power) of the MAI increases in direct proportion to the
number of users. In other words, unlike synchronous CDMA, the signals of other users
will appear as noise to the signal of interest and interfere slightly with the desired signal
in proportion to number of users.

All forms of CDMA use spread spectrum process gain to allow receivers to partially
discriminate against unwanted signals. Signals encoded with the specified PN sequence
(code) are received, while signals with different codes (or the same code but a different
timing offset) appear as wideband noise reduced by the process gain.

Since each user generates MAI, controlling the signal strength is an important issue with
CDMA transmitters. A CDM (synchronous CDMA), TDMA, or FDMA receiver can in
theory completely reject arbitrarily strong signals using different codes, time slots or
frequency channels due to the orthogonality of these systems. This is not true for
Asynchronous CDMA; rejection of unwanted signals is only partial. If any or all of the
unwanted signals are much stronger than the desired signal, they will overwhelm it. This
leads to a general requirement in any asynchronous CDMA system to approximately
match the various signal power levels as seen at the receiver. In CDMA cellular, the base
station uses a fast closed-loop power control scheme to tightly control each mobile's
transmit power.

Advantages of asynchronous CDMA over other techniques

Efficient Practical utilization of Fixed Frequency Spectrum

Asynchronous CDMA's main advantage over CDM (synchronous CDMA), TDMA and
FDMA is that it can use the spectrum more efficiently in mobile telephony applications
(In theory, CDMA, TDMA and FDMA have exactly the same spectral efficiency but
practically, each has its own challenges – power control in the case of CDMA, timing in
the case of TDMA, and frequency generation/filtering in the case of FDMA.)

TDMA systems must carefully synchronize the transmission times of all the users to
ensure that they are received in the correct timeslot and do not cause interference. Since
this cannot be perfectly controlled in a mobile environment, each timeslot must have a
guard-time, which reduces the probability that users will interfere, but decreases the
spectral efficiency. Similarly, FDMA systems must use a guard-band between adjacent
channels, due to the unpredictable doppler shift of the signal spectrum which occurs due
to the user's mobility. The guard-bands will reduce the probability that adjacent channels
will interfere, but decrease the utilization of the spectrum.

Flexible Allocation of Resources

Asynchronous CDMA offers a key advantage in the flexible allocation of resources i.e.
allocation of a PN codes to active users. In the case of CDM, TDMA, and FDMA the
number of simultaneous orthogonal codes, time slots and frequency slots respectively is
fixed hence the capacity in terms of number of simultaneous users is limited. There are a
fixed number of orthogonal codes, timeslots or frequency bands that can be allocated for
CDM, TDMA, and FDMA systems, which remain underutilized due to the bursty nature
of telephony and packetized data transmissions. There is no strict limit to the number of
users that can be supported in an asynchronous CDMA system, only a practical limit
governed by the desired bit error probability, since the SIR (Signal to Interference Ratio)
varies inversely with the number of users. In a bursty traffic environment like mobile
telephony, the advantage afforded by asynchronous CDMA is that the performance (bit
error rate) is allowed to fluctuate randomly, with an average value determined by the
number of users times the percentage of utilization. Suppose there are 2N users that only
talk half of the time, then 2N users can be accommodated with the same average bit error
probability as N users that talk all of the time. The key difference here is that the bit error
probability for N users talking all of the time is constant, whereas it is a random quantity
(with the same mean) for 2N users talking half of the time.

In other words, asynchronous CDMA is ideally suited to a mobile network where large
numbers of transmitters each generate a relatively small amount of traffic at irregular
intervals. CDM (synchronous CDMA), TDMA, and FDMA systems cannot recover the
underutilized resources inherent to bursty traffic due to the fixed number of orthogonal
codes, time slots or frequency channels that can be assigned to individual transmitters.
For instance, if there are N time slots in a TDMA system and 2N users that talk half of
the time, then half of the time there will be more than N users needing to use more than N
timeslots. Furthermore, it would require significant overhead to continually allocate and
deallocate the orthogonal code, time-slot or frequency channel resources. By comparison,
asynchronous CDMA transmitters simply send when they have something to say, and go
off the air when they don't, keeping the same PN signature sequence as long as they are
connected to the system.

Spread-spectrum characteristics of CDMA

Most modulation schemes try to minimize the bandwidth of this signal since bandwidth is
a limited resource. However, spread spectrum techniques use a transmission bandwidth
that is several orders of magnitude greater than the minimum required signal bandwidth.
One of the initial reasons for doing this was military applications including guidance and
communication systems. These systems were designed using spread spectrum because of
its security and resistance to jamming. Asynchronous CDMA has some level of privacy
built in because the signal is spread using a pseudorandom code; this code makes the
spread spectrum signals appear random or have noise-like properties. A receiver cannot
demodulate this transmission without knowledge of the pseudorandom sequence used to
encode the data. CDMA is also resistant to jamming. A jamming signal only has a finite
amount of power available to jam the signal. The jammer can either spread its energy
over the entire bandwidth of the signal or jam only part of the entire signal.

CDMA can also effectively reject narrowband interference. Since narrowband

interference affects only a small portion of the spread spectrum signal, it can easily be
removed through notch filtering without much loss of information. Convolution encoding
and interleaving can be used to assist in recovering this lost data. CDMA signals are also
resistant to multipath fading. Since the spread spectrum signal occupies a large
bandwidth only a small portion of this will undergo fading due to multipath at any given
time. Like the narrowband interference this will result in only a small loss of data and can
be overcome.

Another reason CDMA is resistant to multipath interference is because the delayed

versions of the transmitted pseudorandom codes will have poor correlation with the
original pseudorandom code, and will thus appear as another user, which is ignored at the
receiver. In other words, as long as the multipath channel induces at least one chip of
delay, the multipath signals will arrive at the receiver such that they are shifted in time by
at least one chip from the intended signal. The correlation properties of the
pseudorandom codes are such that this slight delay causes the multipath to appear
uncorrelated with the intended signal, and it is thus ignored.

Some CDMA devices use a rake receiver, which exploits multipath delay components to
improve the performance of the system. A rake receiver combines the information from
several correlators, each one tuned to a different path delay, producing a stronger version
of the signal than a simple receiver with a single correlator tuned to the path delay of the
strongest signal.

Frequency reuse is the ability to reuse the same radio channel frequency at other cell sites
within a cellular system. In the FDMA and TDMA systems frequency planning is an
important consideration. The frequencies used in different cells need to be planned
carefully in order to ensure that the signals from different cells do not interfere with each
other. In a CDMA system the same frequency can be used in every cell because
channelization is done using the pseudorandom codes. Reusing the same frequency in
every cell eliminates the need for frequency planning in a CDMA system; however,
planning of the different pseudorandom sequences must be done to ensure that the
received signal from one cell does not correlate with the signal from a nearby cell.

Since adjacent cells use the same frequencies, CDMA systems have the ability to perform
soft handoffs. Soft handoffs allow the mobile telephone to communicate simultaneously
with two or more cells. The best signal quality is selected until the handoff is complete.
This is different from hard handoffs utilized in other cellular systems. In a hard handoff
situation, as the mobile telephone approaches a handoff, signal strength may vary
abruptly. In contrast, CDMA systems use the soft handoff, which is undetectable and
provides a more reliable and higher quality signal.

MOBILE PHONE
 A mobile phone (also called
mobile, cellular phone, cell
phone or handphone) is an
electronic device used for full
duplex two-way radio
telecommunications over a
cellular network of base stations
known as cell sites. Mobile
phones differ from cordless
telephones, which only offer
telephone service within limited
range through a single base
station attached to a fixed land
line, for example within a home
or an office. Low-end mobile
phones are often referred to as
feature phones, whereas high-end
mobile phones that offer more
advanced computing ability are
referred to as smartphones.

A mobile phone allows its user to

make and receive telephone calls
to and from the public telephone network which includes other mobiles and fixed line
phones across the world. It does this by connecting to a cellular network owned by a
mobile network operator. A key feature of the cellular network is that it enables seamless
telephone calls even when the user is moving around wide areas via a process known as
handoff or handover.

In addition to being a telephone, modern mobile phones also support many additional
services, and accessories, such as SMS (or text) messages, email, Internet access, gaming,
Bluetooth, infrared, camera, MMS messaging, MP3 player, radio and GPS.

The first hand held phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973,
using a handset weighing in at two kilos. In the year 1990, 12.4 million people worldwide
had cellular subscriptions. By the end of 2009, only 20 years later, the number of mobile
cellular subscriptions worldwide reached approximately 4.6 billion, 300 times the 1990
number, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic
pyramid.

History
Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's
invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World
War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s, while
hand-held mobile radio devices have been available since 1973.

In 1960, the world’s first partly automatic car phone system, Mobile System A (MTA),
was launched in Sweden. MTA phones were composed of vacuum tubes and relays, and
had a weight of 40 kg. In 1962, a more modern version called Mobile System B (MTB)
was launched, which was a push-button telephone, and which used transistors in order to
enhance the telephone’s calling capacity and improve its operational reliability. In 1971
the MTD version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and
gaining commercial success.

Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive is considered to be the inventor of

the first practical mobile phone for hand-held use in a non-vehicle setting, after a long
race against Bell Labs for the first portable mobile phone. Using a modern, if somewhat
heavy portable handset, Cooper made the first call on a hand-held mobile phone on April
3, 1973 to his rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G generation) was launched in
Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the
NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the
first nation-wide 1G network. In 1981, this was followed by the simultaneous launch of
the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
[8]
. NMT was the first mobile phone network featuring international roaming. The first 1G
network launched in the USA was Chicago based Ameritech in 1983 using the Motorola
DynaTAC mobile phone. Several countries then followed in the early 1980s including the
UK, Mexico and Canada. .

The first "modern" network technology on digital 2G (second generation) cellular

technology was launched by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa Group) in 1991 in Finland on
the GSM standard which also marked the introduction of competition in mobile telecoms
when Radiolinja challenged incumbent Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) who
ran a 1G NMT network.

In 2001 the first commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) was again in Japan by NTT
DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard. One of the newest 3G technologies to be
implemented is High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G
(third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet
Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based
on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer
speeds and capacity.
Handset Features
All mobile phones have a number of features in
common, but manufacturers also try to
differentiate their own products by implementing
additional functions to make them more attractive
to consumers. This has led to great innovation in
mobile phone development over the last twenty
years.

The common components found on all phones are:

• a rechargeable battery providing the power

source for the phone functions
• an input mechanism and display to allow the
user to interact with the phone. The most
common input mechanism is a keypad, but
touch screens are also found in some high end
smart phones.
• basic mobile phone services to allow users to
make calls and send text messages.
• All GSM phones use a SIM card to allow an
account to be swapped to between devices.
Some CDMA devices also have a similar card
called a R-UIM.

Low-end mobile phones are often referred to as feature phones, and offer basic
telephony, as well as functions such as playing music and taking photos, and sometimes
simple applications based on generic managed platforms such as Java ME or BREW.
Handsets with more advanced computing ability through the use of native software
applications became known as smart phones. The first smartphone was the Nokia 9000
Communicator in 1996 which added PDA functionality to the basic mobile phone at the
time. As miniaturisation and increased processing power of microchips has enabled ever
more features to be added to phones, the concept of the smartphone has evolved, and
what was a high-end smartphone five years ago, is a standard phone today.

Several phone series have been introduced to address a given market segment, such as the
RIM BlackBerry focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the
SonyEricsson Walkman series of musicphones and Cybershot series of cameraphones;
the Nokia Nseries of multimedia phones, the Palm Pre the HTC Dream and the Apple
iPhone.

Other features that may be found on mobile phones include GPS navigation, music
(MP3) and video (MP4) playback, RDS radio receiver, alarms, memo recording, personal
digital assistant functions, ability to watch streaming video, video download, video
calling, built-in cameras (1.0+ Mpx) and camcorders (video recording), with autofocus
and flash, ringtones, games, PTT, memory card reader (SD), USB (2.0), dual line
support, infrared, Bluetooth (2.0) and WiFi connectivity, instant messaging, Internet e-
mail and browsing and serving as a wireless modem. Nokia and the University of
Cambridge demonstrated a bendable cell phone called the Morph.

Software and applications

The most commonly used data application on mobile phones is

SMS text messaging. The first SMS text message was sent from
a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK, while the first
person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland
in 1993.

Other non-SMS data services used on mobile phones include

mobile music, downloadable logos and pictures, gaming,
gambling, adult entertainment and advertising. The first
downloadable mobile content was sold to a mobile phone in
Finland in 1998, when Radiolinja (now Elisa) introduced the
downloadable ring tone service. In 1999 Japanese mobile
operator NTT DoCoMo introduced its mobile internet service, i-Mode, which today is the
world's largest mobile internet service.

The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in 2000.
Mobile news services are expanding with many organisations providing "on-demand"
news services by SMS. Some also provide "instant" news pushed out by SMS.

Mobile payments were first trialled in Finland in 1998 when two Coca-Cola vending
machines in Espoo were enabled to work with SMS payments. Eventually the idea spread
and in 1999 the Philippines launched the first commercial mobile payments systems, on
the mobile operators Globe and Smart. Today mobile payments ranging from mobile
banking to mobile credit cards to mobile commerce are very widely used in Asia and
Africa, and in selected European markets.
Power supply

Mobile phone charging service in Uganda

Mobile phones generally obtain power from rechargeable batteries. There are a variety of
ways used to charge cell phones, including USB, portable batteries, mains power (using
an AC adapter), cigarette lighters (using an adapter), or a dynamo. In 2009, wireless
charging became a reality, and the first wireless charger was released for consumer use.

Standardization of Micro-USB connector for charging

Starting from 2010, many mobile phone manufacturers have agreed to use the Micro-
USB connector for charging their phones. The mobile phone manufacturers who have
agreed to this standard include:

• LG
• Motorola
• Nokia
• Research In Motion
• Samsung
• Sony Ericsson

On 17 February 2009, the GSM Association announced that they had agreed on a
standard charger for mobile phones. The standard connector to be adopted by 17
manufacturers in the Open Mobile Terminal Platform including Nokia, Motorola and
Samsung is to be the micro-USB connector (several media reports erroneously reported
this as the mini-USB). The new chargers will be much more efficient than existing
chargers. Having a standard charger for all phones, means that manufacturers will no
longer have to supply a charger with every new phone.

In addition, on 22 October 2009 the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

announced that it had embraced micro-USB as the Universal Charger Solution its
"energy-efficient one-charger-fits-all new mobile phone solution", and added: "Based on
the Micro-USB interface, UCS chargers will also include a 4-star or higher efficiency
rating — up to three times more energy-efficient than an unrated charger."

Charger efficiency

The world's five largest handset makers introduced a new rating system in November
2008 to help consumers more easily identify the most energy-efficient chargers

The majority of energy lost in a mobile phone charger is in its no load condition, when
the mobile phone is not connected but the charger has been left plugged in and using
power. To combat this in November 2008 the top five mobile phone manufacturers
Nokia, Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony Ericsson and Motorola set up a star rating system
to rate the efficiency of their chargers in the no-load condition. Starting at zero stars for
>0.5 W and going up to the top five star rating for <0.03 W (30 mW) no load power.

A number of semiconductor companies offering flyback controllers, such as Power

Integrations and CamSemi, now claim that the five star standard can be achieved with use
of their product.

Battery

Formerly, the most common form of mobile phone batteries were nickel metal-hydride,
as they have a low size and weight. lithium ion batteries are sometimes used, as they are
lighter and do not have the voltage depression that nickel metal-hydride batteries do.
Many mobile phone manufacturers have now switched to using lithium-polymer batteries
as opposed to the older Lithium-Ion, the main advantages of this being even lower weight
and the possibility to make the battery a shape other than strict cuboid. Mobile phone
manufacturers have been experimenting with alternative power sources, including solar
cells and Coca Cola.
SIM card

Subscriber Identity Module and Removable User Identity Module

Typical mobile phone SIM card

GSM mobile phones require a small microchip called a Subscriber Identity Module or
SIM Card, to function. The SIM card is approximately the size of a small postage stamp
and is usually placed underneath the battery in the rear of the unit. The SIM securely
stores the service-subscriber key (IMSI) used to identify a subscriber on mobile
telephony devices (such as mobile phones and computers). The SIM card allows users to
change phones by simply removing the SIM card from one mobile phone and inserting it
into another mobile phone or broadband telephony device.

A SIM card contains its unique serial number, internationally unique number of the
mobile user (IMSI), security authentication and ciphering information, temporary
information related to the local network, a list of the services the user has access to and
two passwords (PIN for usual use and PUK for unlocking).

SIM cards are available in three standard sizes. The first is the size of a credit card
(85.60 mm × 53.98 mm x 0.76 mm). The newer, most popular miniature version has the
same thickness but a length of 25 mm and a width of 15 mm, and has one of its corners
truncated (chamfered) to prevent misinsertion. The newest incarnation known as the 3FF
or micro-SIM has dimensions of 15 mm × 12 mm. Most cards of the two smaller sizes
are supplied as a full-sized card with the smaller card held in place by a few plastic links;
it can easily be broken off to be used in a device that uses the smaller SIM.

The first SIM card was made in 1991, with Munich smart card maker Giesecke &
Devrient selling the first 300 SIM cards to Finnish wireless network operator Radiolinja.
Those cell phones that do not use a SIM Card have the data programmed in to their
memory. This data is accessed by using a special digit sequence to access the "NAM" as
in "Name" or number programming menu. From there, information can be added
including: a new number for the phone, new Service Provider numbers, new emergency
numbers, new Authentication Key or A-Key code, and a Preferred Roaming List or PRL.
However, to prevent the phone being accidentally disabled or removed from the network,
the Service Provider typically locks this data with a Master Subsidiary Lock (MSL). The
MSL also locks the device to a particular carrier when it is sold as a loss leader.

The MSL applies to the SIM only so once the contract has been completed the MSL still
applies to the SIM. The phone however, is also initially locked by the manufacturer into
the Service Providers MSL. This lock may be disabled so that the phone can use other
Service Providers SIM cards. Most phones purchased outside the US are unlocked
phones because there are numerous Service Providers in close proximity to one another
or have overlapping coverage. The cost to unlock a phone varies but is usually very cheap
and is sometimes provided by independent phone vendors.

A similar module called a Removable User Identity Module is present in some CDMA
networks, notably in China.

Mobile phones in society

Market share

Mobile phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants 1997–2007

The world's largest individual mobile operator is China Mobile with over 500 million
mobile phone subscribers. The world's largest mobile operator group by subscribers is
UK based Vodafone. There are over 600 mobile operators and carriers in commercial
production worldwide. Over 50 mobile operators have over 10 million subscribers each,
and over 150 mobile operators have at least one million subscribers by the end of 2009
(source wireless intelligence).

LG Sony
Source Date Nokia Samsung RIM Others References
Electronics Ericsson
IDC Q1/2010 36.6% 21.8% 9.2% 3.6% 3.6% 25.3% [19]
Gartner Q1/2010 35.0% 20.6% 8.6% 3.4% 3.1% 29.3% [20]

In mobile phone handsets, in Q3/2009, Nokia was the world's largest manufacturer of
mobile phones, with a global device market share of 37.8%, followed by Samsung
(21.0%), LG Electronics (11.0%), Sony Ericsson (4.9%) and Motorola (4.7%). These
manufacturers accounted for over 80% of all mobile phones sold at that time.
Other manufacturers include Apple Inc., Audiovox (now UTStarcom), CECT, HTC
Corporation, Fujitsu, Kyocera, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Panasonic, Palm, Matsushita,
Pantech Wireless Inc., Philips, Qualcomm Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), Sagem,
Sanyo, Sharp, Sierra Wireless, SK Teletech, T&A Alcatel, Huawei, Trium, Toshiba and
Vidalco. There are also specialist communication systems related to (but distinct from)
mobile phones.

Media

The mobile phone became a mass media channel in 1998 when the first ringtones were
sold to mobile phones by Radiolinja in Finland. Soon other media content appeared such
as news, videogames, jokes, horoscopes, TV content and advertising. In 2006 the total
value of mobile phone paid media content exceeded internet paid media content and was
worth 31 Billion dollars (source Informa 2007). The value of music on phones was worth
9.3 Billion dollars in 2007 and gaming was worth over 5 billion dollars in 2007.

The mobile phone is often called the Fourth Screen (if counting cinema, TV and PC
screens as the first three) or Third Screen (counting only TV and PC screens). It is also
called the Seventh of the Mass Media (with Print, Recordings, Cinema, Radio, TV and
Internet the first six). Most early content for mobile tended to be copies of legacy media,
such as the banner advertisement or the TV news highlight video clip. Recently unique
content for mobile has been emerging, from the ringing tones and ringback tones in
music to "mobisodes," video content that has been produced exclusively for mobile
phones.

The advent of media on the mobile phone has also produced the opportunity to identify
and track Alpha Users or Hubs, the most influential members of any social community.
AMF Ventures measured in 2007 the relative accuracy of three mass media, and found
that audience measures on mobile were nine times more accurate than on the internet and
90 times more accurate than on TV.

Uses

Mobile phones are used for a variety of purposes, including keeping in touch with family
members, conducting business, and having access to a telephone in the event of an
emergency. Some people carry more than one cell phone for different purposes, such as
for business and personal use. Multiple SIM cards may also be used to take advantage of
the benefits of different calling plans—a particular plan might provide cheaper local
calls, long-distance calls, international calls, or roaming. A study by Motorola found that
one in ten cell phone subscribers have a second phone that often is kept secret from other
family members. These phones may be used to engage in activities including extramarital
affairs or clandestine business dealings.

Cell phone sharing is a phenomenon which exists around the world. It is prevalent in
urban India, as families and groups of friends often share one or more mobiles among
their members. Two types of sharing which exist are "conspicuous" and "stealthy"
sharing. An example of conspicuous sharing takes place when someone calls the friend of
the person they are trying to reach in hopes of being able to talk to that individual;
stealthy sharing occurs when an individual uses another's cell phone without their
knowledge. Phone sharing does not only take place because of its economic benefits, but
also often due to familial customs and traditional gender roles. An example of cell phone
sharing occurs in Burkina Faso. There it is not uncommon for a village to only have
access to one cell phone. This cell phone is typically owned by a person who is not
natively from the village, such as a teacher or missionary. Although the cell phone is the
sole property of one individual, it is the expectation that other members of the village are
allowed to use the cell phone to make necessary calls. Although some may consider this a
burden, it can actually be an opportunity to engage in reciprocal obligations. This type of
cell phone sharing is an important for the small villages in Burkina Faso because it allows
them to keep up with the expectations of the globalizing world.

The mobile phone has also been used in a variety of diverse contexts in society, for
example:

• Organizations that aid victims of domestic violence may offer a cell phone to
potential victims without the abuser's knowledge. These devices are often old
phones that are donated and refurbished to meet the victim's emergency needs.
• Child predators have taken advantage of cell phones to secretly communicate with
children without the knowledge of their parents or teachers.
• The advent of widespread text messaging has resulted in the cell phone novel; the
first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age via text messaging to a website
that collects the novels as a whole. Paul Levinson, in Information on the Move
(2004), says "...nowadays, a writer can write just about as easily, anywhere, as a
reader can read" and they are "not only personal but portable".
• Mobile telephony also facilitates activism and public journalism being explored
by Reuters and Yahoo! and small independent news companies such as Jasmine
News in Sri Lanka.

Privacy

Cell phones have numerous privacy issues associated with them, and are regularly used
by governments to perform surveillance.

Law enforcement and intelligence services in the UK and the US possess technology to
remotely activate the microphones in cell phones in order to listen to conversations that
take place nearby the person who holds the phone.

Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical
location of a mobile phone can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not),
using a technique known multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to
travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.
Restriction on usage
Main article: Mobile phone radiation and health

There exists a community which believes mobile phone use represents a long-term health
risk, although this is currently disputed by the World Health Organization, with
forthcoming mobile phone usage recommendations in 2010. Certain countries, including
France, have warned against the use of cell phones especially by minors due to health risk
uncertainties. Groups of scientists, such as the US based group Bioinitiative, argue that
because mobile phone use is recently introduced technology, long-term "proof" has been
impossible and that use should be restricted, or monitored closely, while the technology
is still new.

Use while driving

Mobile phone use while driving is common but controversial. Being distracted while
operating a motor vehicle has been shown to increase the risk of accident. Because of
this, many jurisdictions prohibit the use of mobile phones while driving. Egypt, Israel,
Japan, Portugal and Singapore ban both hand-held and hands-free use of a mobile phone
whilst many other countries –including the UK, France, and many US states– ban hand-
held phone use only, allowing hands-free use.

Due to the increasing complexity of mobile phones –often more like mobile computers in
their available uses– it has introduced additional difficulties for law enforcement officials
in being able to tell one usage from another as drivers use their devices. This is more
apparent in those countries who ban both hand-held and hands-free usage, rather those
who have banned hand-held use only, as officials cannot easily tell which function of the
mobile phone is being used simply by visually looking at the driver. This can mean that
drivers may be stopped for using their device illegally on a phone call, when in fact they
were not; instead using the device for a legal purpose such as the phones' incorporated
controls for car stereo or satnav usage – either as part of the cars' own device or directly
on the mobile phone itself.

Cases like these can often only be proved otherwise by a check of the mobile operators
phone call records to see if a call was taking place during the journey concerned.
Although in many countries the law enforcement official may have stopped the driver for
a differing offence, for example, for lack of due care and attention in relation to their
driving.

Schools

Some schools limit or restrict the use of mobile phones. Schools set restrictions on the
use of mobile phones because of the use of cell phones for cheating on tests, harassment
and bullying, causing threats to the schools security, distractions to the students and
facilitating gossip and other social activity in school. Many mobile phones are banned in
school locker room facilities, public restrooms and swimming pools due to the built-in
cameras that most phones now feature.

A recently published study has reviewed the incidence of mobile phone use while cycling
and its effects on behaviour and safety.

Future evolution: Broadband Fourth generation (4G)

The recently released 4th generation, also known as Beyond 3G, aims to provide
broadband wireless access with nominal data rates of 100 Mbit/s to fast moving devices,
and 1 Gbit/s to stationary devices defined by the ITU-R 4G systems may be based on the
3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular standard, offering peak bit rates of 326.4
Mbit/s. It may perhaps also be based on WiMax or Flash-OFDM wireless metropolitan
area network technologies that promise broadband wireless access with speeds that
reaches 233 Mbit/s for mobile users. The radio interface in these systems is based on all-
IP packet switching, MIMO diversity, multi-carrier modulation schemes, Dynamic
Channel Assignment (DCA) and channel-dependent scheduling. A 4G system should be a
complete replacement for current network infrastructure and is expected to be able to
provide a comprehensive and secure IP solution where voice, data, and streamed
multimedia can be given to users on a "Anytime, Anywhere" basis, and at much higher
data rates than previous generations. Sprint in the US has claimed its WiMax network to
be "4G network" which most cellular telecoms standardization experts dispute repeatedly
around the world. Sprint's 4G is seen as a marketing gimmick as WiMax itself is part of
the 3G air interface. The officially accepted, ITU ratified standards-based 4G networks
are not expected to be commercially launched until 2011.

Comparison to similar systems

Car phone
A type of telephone permanently mounted in a vehicle, these often have more
powerful transmitters, an external antenna and loudspeaker for hands free use.
They usually connect to the same networks as regular mobile phones.

Cordless telephone (portable phone)

Cordless phones are telephones which use one or more radio handsets in place of
a wired handset. The handsets connect wirelessly to a base station, which in turn
connects to a conventional land line for calling. Unlike mobile phones, cordless
phones use private base stations (belonging to the land-line subscriber), which are
not shared.
Professional Mobile Radio
Advanced professional mobile radio systems can be very similar to mobile phone
systems. Notably, the IDEN standard has been used as both a private trunked
radio system as well as the technology for several large public providers. Similar
attempts have even been made to use TETRA, the European digital PMR
standard, to implement public mobile networks.

Radio phone
This is a term which covers radios which could connect into the telephone
network. These phones may not be mobile; for example, they may require a mains
power supply, or they may require the assistance of a human operator to set up a
PSTN phone call.

Satellite phone
This type of phone communicates directly with an artificial satellite, which in turn
relays calls to a base station or another satellite phone. A single satellite can
provide coverage to a much greater area than terrestrial base stations. Since
satellite phones are costly, their use is typically limited to people in remote areas
where no mobile phone coverage exists, such as mountain climbers, mariners in
the open sea, and news reporters at disaster sites.

IP Phone
This type of phone delivers or receives calls over internet, LAN or WAN
networks using VoIP as opposed to traditional CDMA and GSM networks. In
business, the majority of these IP Phones tend to be connected via wired Ethernet,
however wireless varieties do exist. Several vendors have developed standalone
WiFi phones. Additionally, some cellular mobile phones include the ability to
place VoIP calls over cellular high speed data networks and/or wireless internet.
MIMO
In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO (commonly pronounced my-
moh or me-moh), is the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to
improve communication performance. It is one of several forms of smart antenna
technology.

MIMO technology has attracted attention in wireless communications, because it offers

significant increases in data throughput and link range without additional bandwidth or
transmit power. It achieves this by higher spectral efficiency (more bits per second per
hertz of bandwidth) and link reliability or diversity (reduced fading). Because of these
properties, MIMO is a current theme of international wireless research.

History of MIMO

Background technologies

The earliest ideas in this field go back to work by A.R. Kaye and D.A. George (1970) and
W. van Etten (1975, 1976). Jack Winters and Jack Salz at Bell Laboratories published
several papers on beamforming related applications in 1984 and 1986.

Principle

Arogyaswami Paulraj and Thomas Kailath proposed the concept of spatial multiplexing
(SM) using MIMO in 1993. Their US Patent No. 5,345,599 issued 1994. on Spatial
Multiplexing emphasized applications to wireless broadcast.

In 1996, Greg Raleigh and Gerard J. Foschini refine new approaches to MIMO
technology, which considers a configuration where multiple transmit antennas are co-
located at one transmitter to improve the link throughput effectively.

Bell Labs was the first to demonstrate a laboratory prototype of spatial multiplexing in
1998, where spatial multiplexing is a principal technology to improve the performance of
MIMO communication systems.

Wireless standards

In the commercial arena, Iospan Wireless Inc. developed the first commercial system in
2001 that used MIMO-OFDMA technology. Iospan technology supported both diversity
coding and spatial multiplexing. In 2005, Airgo Networks had developed a pre-11n
version based on their patents on MIMO. Following that in 2006, several companies
(including at least Broadcom, Intel, and Marvell) have fielded a MIMO-OFDM solution
based on a pre-standard for IEEE 802.11n WiFi standard. Also in 2006, several
companies (Beceem Communications, Samsung, Runcom Technologies, etc.) have
developed MIMO-OFDMA based solutions for IEEE 802.16e WIMAX broadband
mobile standard. All upcoming 4G systems will also employ MIMO technology. Several
research groups have demonstrated over 1 Gbit/s prototypes.

Functions of MIMO

MIMO can be sub-divided into three main categories, precoding, spatial multiplexing or
SM, and diversity coding.

Precoding is multi-layer beamforming, in the narrowest definition. In more general

terms, it is considered to be all spatial processing that occurs at the transmitter. In (single-
layer) beamforming, the same signal is emitted from each of the transmit antennas with
appropriate phase (and sometimes gain) weighting such that the signal power is
maximized at the receiver input. The benefits of beamforming are to increase the signal
gain from constructive interference and to reduce the multipath fading effect. In the
absence of scattering, beamforming results in a well defined directional pattern, but in
typical cellular conventional beams are not a good analogy. When the receiver has
multiple antennas, the transmit beamforming cannot simultaneously maximize the signal
level at all of the receive antennas, and precoding is used. Note that precoding requires
knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter.

Spatial multiplexing requires MIMO antenna configuration. In spatial multiplexing, a

high rate signal is split into multiple lower rate streams and each stream is transmitted
from a different transmit antenna in the same frequency channel. If these signals arrive at
the receiver antenna array with sufficiently different spatial signatures, the receiver can
separate these streams, creating parallel channels free. Spatial multiplexing is a very
powerful technique for increasing channel capacity at higher signal-to-noise ratios
(SNR). The maximum number of spatial streams is limited by the lesser in the number of
antennas at the transmitter or receiver. Spatial multiplexing can be used with or without
transmit channel knowledge.

Diversity Coding techniques are used when there is no channel knowledge at the
transmitter. In diversity methods a single stream (unlike multiple streams in spatial
multiplexing) is transmitted, but the signal is coded using techniques called space-time
coding. The signal is emitted from each of the transmit antennas with full or near
orthogonal coding. Diversity coding exploits the independent fading in the multiple
antenna links to enhance signal diversity. Because there is no channel knowledge, there is
no beamforming or array gain from diversity coding.

Spatial multiplexing can also be combined with precoding when the channel is known at
the transmitter or combined with diversity coding when decoding reliability is in trade-
off.
Forms of MIMO

Multi-antenna types

MIMO communications

Up to now, multi-antenna MIMO (or Single user MIMO) technology has been mainly
developed and is implemented in some standards, e.g. 802.11n (draft) products.

• SISO/SIMO/MISO are degenerate cases of MIMO

o Multiple-input and single-output (MISO) is a degenerate case when the
receiver has a single antenna.
o Single-input and multiple-output (SIMO) is a degenerate case when the
transmitter has a single antenna.
o single-input single-output (SISO) is a radio system where neither the
transmitter nor receiver have multiple antenna.

• Principal single-user MIMO techniques

o Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (BLAST), Gerard. J. Foschini
(1996), see also V-blast
o Per Antenna Rate Control (PARC), Varanasi, Guess (1998), Chung,
Huang, Lozano (2001)
o Selective Per Antenna Rate Control (SPARC), Ericsson (2004)

• Some limitations
o The physical antenna spacing are selected to be large-multiple
wavelengths at the base station. The antenna separation at the receiver is
heavily space constrained in hand sets, though advanced antenna design
and algorithm techniques are under discussion. Refer to: Advanced MIMO

Multi-user types

Recently, the research on multi-user MIMO technology has been emerging. While full
multi-user MIMO (or network MIMO) can have higher potentials, from its practicality
the research on (partial) multi-user MIMO (or multi-user and multi-antenna MIMO)
technology is more active.

• Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO)

o In recent 3GPP and WiMAX standards, MU-MIMO is being treated as
one of candidate technologies adoptable in the specification by a lot of
companies including Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, Ericsson, TI, Huawei,
Philips, Alcatel-Lucent, Freescale, et al. since MU-MIMO is more feasible
to low complexity mobiles with small number of reception antennas than
SU-MIMO with the high system throughput capability.
 o PU2RC allows the network to allocate each antenna to the different users
instead of allocating only single user as in single-user MIMO scheduling.
The network can transmit user data through a codebook-based spatial
beam or a virtual antenna. Efficient user scheduling, such as pairing
spatially distinguishable users with codebook based spatial beams, are
additionally discussed for the simplification of wireless networks in terms
of additional wireless resource requirements and complex protocol
modification. Recently, PU2RC is included the system description
documentation (SDD) of IEEE 802.16m (WiMAX evolution to meet the
ITU-R's IMT-Advance requirements).
o Enhanced multiuser MIMO: 1) Employ advanced decoding techniques, 2)
Employ advanced precoding techniques
o SDMA represents either space-division multiple access or super-division
multiple access where super emphasises that orthogonal division such as
frequency and time division is not used but non-orthogonal approaches
such as super-position coding are used.

• Cooperative MIMO (CO-MIMO)

o Utilizes distributed antennas which belong to other users.

• MIMO Routing
o Routing a cluster by a cluster in each hop, where the number of nodes in
each cluster is larger or equal to one. MIMO routing is different from
conventional (SISO) routing since conventional routing protocols route a
node by a node in each hop.

Applications of MIMO

Spatial multiplexing techniques makes the receivers very complex, and therefore it is
typically combined with Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) or with
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) modulation, where the
problems created by multi-path channel are handled efficiently. The IEEE 802.16e
standard incorporates MIMO-OFDMA. The IEEE 802.11n standard, released in October
2009, recommends MIMO-OFDM.

MIMO is also planned to be used in Mobile radio telephone standards such as recent
3GPP and 3GPP2 standards. In 3GPP, High-Speed Packet Access plus (HSPA+) and
Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards take MIMO into account. Moreover, to fully
support cellular environments MIMO research consortia including IST-MASCOT
propose to develop advanced MIMO techniques, i.e., multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO).
Mathematical description
In MIMO systems, a transmitter sends multiple streams by multiple transmit antennas.
The transmit streams go through a matrix channel which consists of all NtNr paths
between the Nt transmit antennas at the transmitter and Nr receive antennas at the
receiver. Then, the receiver gets the received signal vectors by the multiple receive
antennas and decodes the received signal vectors into the original information. A
narrowband flat fading MIMO system is modelled as

where and are the receive and transmit vectors, respectively, and and are the channel
matrix and the noise vector, respectively.

Referring to information theory, the ergodic channel capacity of MIMO systems where
both the transmitter and the receiver have perfect instantaneous channel state information
is

where ()H denotes Hermitian transpose and ρ is the ratio between transmit power and
noise power (i.e., transmit SNR). The optimal signal covariance is achieved through
singular value decomposition of the channel matrix and an optimal diagonal power
allocation matrix . The optimal power allocation is achieved through waterfilling, that is

where are the diagonal elements of , is zero if its argument is negative, and μ is selected
such that .

If the transmitter has only statistical channel state information, then the ergodic channel
capacity will decrease as the signal covariance can only be optimized in terms of the
average mutual information as

The spatial correlation of the channel have a strong impact on the ergodic channel
capacity with statistical information.

If the transmitter has no channel state information it can select the signal covariance to
maximize channel capacity under worst-case statistics, which means and accordingly

Depending on the statistical properties of the channel, the ergodic capacity is mostly
times larger than that of a SISO system.

MIMO Testing
MIMO signal testing focuses first on the transmitter/receiver system. The random phases
of the sub-carrier signals can produce instantaneous power levels that cause the amplifier
to compress, momentarily causing distortion and ultimately symbol errors. Signals with a
high PAR (peak to average ratio) ratio can cause amplifiers to compress unpredictably
during transmission. OFDM signals are very dynamic and compression problems can be
hard to detect because of their noise-like nature.

Knowing the quality of the signal channel is also critical. A channel emulator can
simulate how a device performs at the cell edge, can add noise or can simulate what the
channel looks like at speed. To fully qualify the performance of a receiver, a calibrated
transmitter, such as a vector signal generator (VSG), and channel emulator can be used to
test the receiver under a variety of different conditions. Conversely, the transmitter's
performance under a number of different conditions can be verified using a channel
emulator and a calibrated receiver, such as a vector signal analyzer (VSA).

Understanding the channel allows for manipulation of the phase and amplitude of each
transmitter in order to form a beam. To correctly form a beam, the transmitter needs to
understand the characteristics of the channel. This process is called channel sounding. A
known signal is sent to the mobile device that enables it to build a picture of the channel
environment. The phone then sends back the channel characteristics to the transmitter.
The transmitter then can apply the correct phase and amplitude adjustments to form a
beam directed at the mobile device. This is called a closed-loop MIMO system. For beam
forming, it is required to adjust the phases and amplitude of each transmitter.

MIMO literature
Principal researches

Papers by Gerard J. Foschini and Michael J. Gans, Foschini and Emre Telatar have
shown that the channel capacity (a theoretical upper bound on system throughput) for a
MIMO system is increased as the number of antennas is increased, proportional to the
minimum number of transmit and receive antennas. This basic finding in information
theory is what led to a spurt of research in this area. A text book by A. Paulraj, R. Nabar
and D. Gore has published an introduction to this area.

Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff (DMT)

There exists a fundamental tradeoff between diversity and multiplexing in a MIMO

system .

Research trend

In the IEEE international VTC 2007 fall conference (30 September – 3 October 2007,
Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore), approximately 130 MIMO, or spatial
processing, based papers were presented among 420 other wireless communication
papers. Those about MIMO treat not only antenna processing but also various wireless
technologies over MIMO configurations. Some of those papers take into account multi-
user MIMO in addition to multi-antenna MIMO. Multi-user type techniques consider
multiple active users as a basic unit of multiple element processing while multi-antenna
type techniques consider multiple antenna elements.

Given the nature of MIMO, it is not limited to wireless communication. It can be used for
wire line communication as well. For example, a new type of DSL technology (Gigabit
DSL) has been proposed based on Binder MIMO Channels.
Cellular router
Cellular routers are routers that provide shared Internet access by incorporating a
cellular data modem and providing traditional interfaces like Ethernet and WiFi.

They can be deployed as a primary WAN link to a location where wired connections are
not cost-effective, can also be used as a secondary or business continuity plan should the
primary cabled link fail, or can be used in moving vehicles to provide Internet access
while in motion. Cellular routers range from simple SOHO network oriented devices
through rugged industrial units with advanced features.

Professional Mobile Radio

Motorola HT1000 hand-held two-way radio

Professional Mobile Radio (also known as Private Mobile Radio (PMR) in the UK and
Land Mobile Radio (LMR) in North America) are field radio communications systems
which use portable, mobile, base station, and dispatch console radios. Operation of PMR
radio equipment is based on such standards as MPT-1327, TETRA and APCO 25 which
are designed for dedicated use by specific organizations, or standards such as NXDN
intended for general commercial use. Typical examples are the radio systems used by
police forces and fire brigades. Key features of professional mobile radio systems can
include:

• Point to multi-point communications (as opposed to cell phones which are point
to point communications)
• Push-to-talk, release to listen — a single button press opens communication on a
radio frequency channel
 • Large coverage areas
• Closed user groups
• Use of VHF or UHF frequency bands

Introduction

When Private or Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) first started the systems simply
consisted of a single base station with a number of mobiles that could communicate with
this single base station. These systems are still in widespread use today with taxi firms
and many others using them for communication. Now facilities such as DTMF and
CTCSS provide additional calling selection. Because the antenna may be mounted on a
high tower, coverage may extend up to distances of 50 kilometres, although ranges
somewhat less than this are more usual, especially when antennas are not as high.

Licenses are allocated for operation on a particular channel or channels. The user can
then have use of these channels to contact the mobile stations in their fleet. The base
station may be run by the user themselves or it may be run by an operating company who
will hire out channels to individual users. In this way a single base station with a number
of different channels can be run by one operator for a number of different users and this
makes efficient use of the base station equipment. The base station site can also be
located at a position that will give optimum radio coverage, and private lines can be
provided to connect the users control office to the transmitter site. As there is no
incremental cost for the transmissions that are made, individual calls are not charged, but
instead there is a rental for overall use of the system. For those users with their own
licences they naturally have to pay for the licence and the cost of purchase and
maintenance of that equipment.

Signal strength

In telecommunications, particularly in radio, signal strength refers to the magnitude of

the electric field at a reference point that is a significant distance from the transmitting
antenna. It may also be referred to as received signal level or field strength. Typically, it
is expressed in voltage per length or signal power received by a reference antenna. High-
powered transmissions, such as those used in broadcasting, are expressed in dB-millivolts
per metre (dBmV/m). For very low-power systems, such as mobile phones, signal
strength is usually expressed in dB-microvolts per metre (dBµV/m) or in decibels above a
reference level of one milliwatt (dBm). In broadcasting terminology, 1 mV/m is 1000
µV/m or 60 dBµ (often written dBu).

Examples

• 100 dBµ or 100 mV/m: blanketing interference may occur on some receivers
• 60 dBµ or 1.0 mV/m: frequently considered the edge of a radio station's protected
area in North America
• 40 dBµ or 0.1 mV/m: the minimum strength at which a station can be received
with acceptable quality on most receivers
References
1. J. E. Flood. Telecommunication Networks. Institution of Electrical Engineers,
London, UK, 1997. chapter 12.
2. Cell towers at corners of hexagon cells
3. U.S. Patent 4,144,411 -- Cellular Radiotelephone System for Different Cell Sizes
-- Richard H. Frenkiel (Bell Labs), filed Sep 22, 1976, issued March 13, 1979
4. Bernhard H. Walke. Mobile Radio Networks: Networking, protocols and traffic
performance. John Wiley and Sons, LTD West Sussex England, 2002. Chapter 2.
5. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/imt-2000/Meetings/Slovenia/Presentations/Day
%203/3.3.1_Chandler.pdf