For most of us a mobile phone is a partof our lives.
but i'm sure your curious minds havealways been struck by such questions ashow a mobile phone makes a calland why there are different generationsof mobile communications.let's explore the technology behindmobile communicationswhen you speak on your phone your voiceis picked up by your phone's microphonethe microphone turns your voice into adigital signal with the help of a memssensor and icthe digital signal contains your voicein the form of zeros and onesan antenna inside the phone receives.these zeros and ones and transmits themin the form of electromagnetic waveselectromagnetic waves transmit the zerosand ones by altering the wavecharacteristics such as the amplitudefrequency phase or combinations of thesefor example in the case of frequency 0and 1 are transmitted by using low andhigh frequencies respectivelyso if you could find a way to transmit.
these electromagnetic waves to yourfriend's phone you would be able toestablish a callhowever electromagnetic waves areincapable of traveling long distancesthey lose their strength due to thepresence of physical objects electricalequipment and some environmental factorsin fact if there were no such issueseven then electromagnetic waves wouldnot carry on forever due to the earth'scurved structureto overcome these issues cell towerswere introduced using the concept ofcellular technologyin cellular technology a geographic areais divided into hexagonal cells witheach cell having its own tower andfrequency slot generally these celltowers are connected through wires.
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more specifically optical fiber cablesthese optical fiber cables are laidunder the ground or the ocean to providenational or international connectivitythe electromagnetic waves produced byyour phone are picked up by the tower inyour cell and convert them into highfrequency light pulsesthese light pulses are carried to thebase transceiver box located at the baseof the tower for further signalprocessingafter processing your voice signal isrouted towards the destination towerupon receiving the pulses thedestination tower radiates it outwardsin the form of electromagnetic waves andyour friend's phone then receives thesignalthis signal undergoes a reverse processand your friend hears your voiceso it's true that mobile communicationsare not entirely wireless they do use awired medium toothis is how mobile communications arecarried out.
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however there is a big issue that weintentionally left unansweredmobile communication is only successfulwhen your tower transfers the signal toyour friend's tower but how does yourtower know in which cell tower area yourfriend is locatedwell for this process the cell towergets help from something called a mobileswitching centerthe mfc is the central point of a groupof cell towersbefore moving further let's explain moreinformation about the mscwhen you purchase a sim card all thesubscription information is registeredin a specified mscthis msc will be your home mscthe home msc stores information such asservice plans your current location andyour activity status if you move outsidethe range of your home msc the new mscwhich serves you instead is known as aforeign mscas you enter a foreign msc region itcommunicates with your home mscin short your home msc always knowswhich msc area you are into understand in which cell location asubscriber is within the msc area themsc uses a few techniquesone way is to update the subscriberlocation after a certain period.
when the phone crosses a predefinednumber of towers the location update isagain donethe last one of these is when the phoneis turned onlet's try to understand all of theseprocedures with an examplesuppose emma wants to call johnwhen emma dials john's number the callrequest arrives at emma's home mscupon receiving john's number the requestwill be forwarded to john's home mscnow john's msc checks for his currentmseif john is in his home mse the callrequest will be immediately sent to hiscurrent cell location and it checkswhether john is engaged on another callor if his mobile is switched offif everything is positive john's phonerings and the call will be connectedhowever if john is not in his home mscjohn's home msc simply forwards the callrequest to the foreign mscthe foreign msc will follow thepreviously explained procedure to locatejohn's phone and will then establish thecallnow let's discuss why the frequencyspectrum is quite important in mobilephone.
communications to transfer zerosand ones in digital communication eachsubscriber is allocated a frequencyrangehowever the frequency spectrum availablefor cellular communications is quitelimited and there are billions ofsubscribersthis issue is solved with the help oftwo technologiesonefrequency slot distribution and twomultiple access techniquein the first technique differentfrequency slots are carefully allocatedto different cell towersin the multiple access technique thisfrequency slot is efficientlydistributed amongst all the active usersin the cell areanow the big question why are theredifferent generations of mobile phonetechnologies1g originally allowed users for thefirst time to carry a phone without acable attached to it but 1g sufferedfrom two major problemsthe first problem was that the wirelesstransmission was in an analog formatanalog signals are easily altered byexternal sources so it provided poorvoice quality and poor securitythe second problem was that it used thefrequency division multiple accesstechnique which used the availablespectrum in an inefficient waythese factors paved the way for thesecond generation of mobilecommunications 2g used digital multipleaccess.
technologies namely tdma or cdmatechnologythe second generation also introduced arevolutionary data service sms andinternet browsing3g technology was focused on giving ahigher data transfer speed it used a wcdmultiple access technique along with anincrease in bandwidth to achieve thisthe 3g speed of 2 mbps allowed thetransfer of data for uses such as gpsvideos voice calls etc3g was a huge step in the transformationof the basic phone to a smartphonenext came 4g.
which achieved speeds of 20to 100 mbpsthis was suitable for high resolutionmovies and televisionthis higher speed was made possible dueto the ofd multiple access technologyand mimo technologymimo uses multiple transmitter receiverantennas inside both the mobile phoneand the towersthe next generation of mobilecommunication 5g to be rolled out soonwill use enhanced mimo technology andmillimeter waves it will provideseamless connectivity to support theinternet of things such as driverlesscars and smart homeswould you like to learn how a touchscreen worksplease check out this video.
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