Cellular System Components
The cellular system offers mobile and portable telephone stations the same service provided fixed stations over conventional wired loops. It has the capacity to serve tens of thousands of subscribers in a major metropolitan area. The cellular communications system consists of the following four major components that work together to provide mobile service to subscribers.
- public switched telephone network (PSTN)
- mobile telephone switching office (MTSO)
- cell site with antenna system
- mobile subscriber unit (MSU)
PSTN
The PSTN is made up of local networks, the exchange area networks, and the long-haul network that interconnect telephones and other communication devices on a worldwide basis.
Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO)
The MTSO is the central office for mobile switching. It houses the mobile switching center (MSC), field monitoring, and relay stations for switching calls from cell sites to wireline central offices (PSTN). In analog cellular networks, the MSC controls the system operation. The MSC controls calls, tracks billing information, and locates cellular subscribers.
The Cell Site
The term cell site is used to refer to the physical location of radio equipment that provides coverage within a cell. A list of hardware located at a cell site includes power sources, interface equipment, radio frequency transmitters and receivers, and antenna systems.
Mobile Subscriber Units (MSUs)
The mobile subscriber unit consists of a control unit and a transceiver that transmits and receives radio transmissions to and from a cell site. The following three types of MSUs are available:
- the mobile telephone (typical transmit power is 4.0 watts)
- the portable (typical transmit power is 0.6 watts)
- the transportable (typical transmit power is 1.6 watts)
- The mobile telephone is installed in the trunk of a car, and the handset is installed in a convenient location to the driver. Portable and transportable telephones are hand-held and can be used anywhere. The use of portable and transportable telephones is limited to the charge life of the internal battery.
Digital Systems
As demand for mobile telephone service has increased, service providers found that basic engineering assumptions borrowed from wireline (landline) networks did not hold true in mobile systems. While the average landline phone call lasts at least 10 minutes, mobile calls usually run 90 seconds. Engineers who expected to assign 50 or more mobile phones to the same radio channel found that by doing so they increased the probability that a user would not get dial tone—this is known as call-blocking probability. As a consequence, the early systems quickly became saturated, and the quality of service decreased rapidly. The critical problem was capacity. The general characteristics of time division multiple access (TDMA), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), personal communications service (PCS) 1900, and code division multiple access (CDMA) promise to significantly increase the efficiency of cellular telephone systems to allow a greater number of simultaneous conversations. shows the components of a typical digital cellular system.
The advantages of digital cellular technologies over analog cellular networks include increased capacity and security. Technology options such as TDMA and CDMA offer more channels in the same analog cellular bandwidth and encrypted voice and data. Because of the enormous amount of money that service providers have invested in AMPS hardware and software, providers look for a migration from AMPS to digital analog mobile phone service (DAMPS) by overlaying their existing networks with TDMA architectures.
Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
North American digital cellular (NADC) is called DAMPS and TDMA. Because AMPS preceded digital cellular systems, DAMPS uses the same setup protocols as analog AMPS. TDMA has the following characteristics:
- IS–54 standard specifies traffic on digital voice channels
- initial implementation triples the calling capacity of AMPS systems
- capacity improvements of 6 to 15 times that of AMPS are possible
- many blocks of spectrum in 800 MHz and 1900 MHz are used
- all transmissions are digital
- TDMA/FDMA application 7. 3 callers per radio carrier (6 callers on half rate later), providing 3 times the AMPS capacity
TDMA is one of several technologies used in wireless communications. TDMA provides each call with time slots so that several calls can occupy one bandwidth. Each caller is assigned a specific time slot. In some cellular systems, digital packets of information are sent during each time slot and reassembled by the receiving equipment into the original voice components. TDMA uses the same frequency band and channel allocations as AMPS. Like NAMPS, TDMA provides three to six time channels in the same bandwidth as a single AMPS channel. Unlike NAMPS, digital systems have the means to compress the spectrum used to transmit voice information by compressing idle time and redundancy of normal speech. TDMA is the digital standard and has 30-kHz bandwidth. Using digital voice encoders, TDMA is able to use up to six channels in the same bandwidth where AMPS uses one channel.
Extended Time Division Multiple Access (E–TDMA)
The E–TDMA standard claims a capacity of fifteen times that of analog cellular systems. This capacity is achieved by compressing quiet time during conversations. E–TDMA divides the finite number of cellular frequencies into more time slots than TDMA. This allows the system to support more simultaneous cellular calls.
Fixed Wireless Access (FWA)
FWA is a radio-based local exchange service in which telephone service is provided by common carriers (see Figure 9). It is primarily a rural application—that is, it reduces the cost of conventional wireline. FWA extends telephone service to rural areas by replacing a wireline local loop with radio communications. Other labels for wireless access include fixed loop, fixed radio access, wireless telephony, radio loop, fixed wireless, radio access, and Ionica. FWA systems employ TDMA or CDMA access technologies.
Personal Communications Service (PCS)
The future of telecommunications includes PCS. PCS at 1900 MHz (PCS 1900) is the North American implementation of digital cellular system (DCS) 1800 (GSM). Trial networks were operational in the United States by 1993, and in 1994 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began spectrum auctions. As of 1995, the FCC auctioned commercial licenses. In the PCS frequency spectrum, the operator's authorized frequency block contains a definite number of channels. The frequency plan assigns specific channels to specific cells, following a reuse pattern that restarts with each nth cell. The uplink and downlink bands are paired mirror images. As with AMPS, a channel number implies one uplink and one downlink frequency (e.g., Channel 512 = 1850.2-MHz uplink paired with 1930.2-MHz downlink).
Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
CDMA is a digital air interface standard, claiming 8 to 15 times the capacity of analog. It employs a commercial adaptation of military, spread-spectrum, single-sideband technology. Based on spread spectrum theory, it is essentially the same as wireline service—the primary difference is that access to the local exchange carrier (LEC) is provided via wireless phone. Because users are isolated by code, they can share the same carrier frequency, eliminating the frequency reuse problem encountered in AMPS and DAMPS. Every CDMA cell site can use the same 1.25-MHz band, so with respect to clusters, n = 1. This greatly simplifies frequency planning in a fully CDMA environment.
CDMA is an interference-limited system. Unlike AMPS/TDMA, CDMA has a soft capacity limit; however, each user is a noise source on the shared channel and the noise contributed by users accumulates. This creates a practical limit to how many users a system will sustain. Mobiles that transmit excessive power increase interference to other mobiles. For CDMA, precise power control of mobiles is critical in maximizing the system's capacity and increasing battery life of the mobiles. The goal is to keep each mobile at the absolute minimum power level that is necessary to ensure acceptable service quality. Ideally, the power received at the base station from each mobile should be the same (minimum signal to interference).
Cesar Augusto Suarez
CI 17394384
CAF
CI 17394384
CAF
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