How the Cell Phones Operate - Essay Example

The modern era is that of digital devices. These digital devices has shrunk in their size and expanded in their capa The cellular phones are of the prime example of this digital invasion and expansion. Cellular phones which were once limited to being mere wireless devices capable of transmitting voice signals, they in present times consist of entire operating systems and computers within. The modern cellular phones which are termed as the smart phones provide all the features that a complete desktop computer would possess in pervious times. The cellular phones have cameras within as a substitute to the conventional digital photography devices, operating systems as substitute for computers, video options as a substitute for video digital recorder and many more operations, functions and features that make the smart phones an unavoidable device in modern times. These cellular phones operate over a fix signal scheme and they have a designated transmission capacity and system along which the signals are carried. The antennas installed at the back end of the towers provide support for the different kind of frequencies being used. The Frequency Hopping and Frequency Reuse functions are two of the related features and functions that are made use of in the digital domain of cellular phone transmission in the modern times (Petersen, 173). The cell phone communication came about as a breakthrough from the conventional wired transmission that needed support and establishment of the wire interface between the two ends. Initially the wireless communication was tested on small scale. It later on was tested on the basis of half duplex scheme. The modern day mobile phones are transmitters of voice and data collectively. The previous cellular devices and operating units were capable of handling the analogue medium only. T.C.P protocol is being followed by the cellular phones. The T.C.P protocol has seven distinct layers within with each layer performing a distinct function and feature and provides the data and makes the overall transmission possible through the combined working of each of these layers (Hass, 72). The modern day cellular phones operate on the basis of channel allocation along with frequency allocation towards the specific site. The towers erected provide support to the users and connect them to the servers. The servers are supported by the use of the routers and other devices that complete the overall process of communication. The Frequency orthognality is another added feature that comes along with the modern day cellular phones. The base station that provides support for the signal transmission and call connection establishment consists of the tower that catches and transmits the signals and it is further supported by the radio equipment that fulfills the other needs. Apart from the hardware domain of the cell phones, these devices have an established software side domain. The modern day mobile phones have the state of the art technological supported software functions and applications. The mobile phone operating systems are open source which allows space for advancements from time to time. Few of the most common and basic operating systems that are largely incorporated into the cellular phones include Android, Symbian, Blackberry’s R.I.M, Apple Inc’s I.O.S and other associated operating systems. The large number of online applications is an additional feature that makes up for further advanced system of mobile phones in modern day. Different coding techniques are used for the cellular phone transmission. These include FDMA, CDMA, TDMA and other advanced transmission and multiplexing schemes. Each of these is characteristic of different set of frequency and different set of combinations within the mobile phones world. The 4th generation technology that is incorporated into these devices use the Giga bit band(Sauter, 22). The Giga bit band is the new and advanced feature provided which has made the overall mobile phone technological sphere more fast and robust. WiMax is another added feature of the 4th generation technological applications. Apart from these coding schemes there are number of algorithms that are incorporated into the cellular phones systems. These algorithms allow for safer operations and at the same time allow for improved performance functions. Other added features of these modern day cellular phones include the incorporated usage of the H.S.D.P.A (High Speed Downlink Packet Access)) and H.S.U.P.A (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). Each of these functions and feature provides additional capacity support to mobile phones in the different interfaces. Each of the cellular phone in modern times is equipped with an inbuilt antenna which makes the transmission possible through the reception of the signal. In the previous decades, these cellular phones would contain the antenna that would be mounted and would be visible. However with time the mobile phones have become sleek and more effective. The signal catching capacity has increase by multi folds in the recent times as well. The cell phones work on a given set of frequency, the mobile phone which is termed as the user end is the terminal point which is connected to the satellite tower through number of relays and other components. The signals are coded and decoded at either end. Since the signal has to be transmitted in the analogue form, they are only packed and protected at respective ends. The multiplexer and de multiplexers are used at either end to convert the signals back to the digital interface. From this point on, the entire packet and data is sent to the clients in the form of digital stream of packets. The early cellular phones that were introduced in the late 1980s were characterized by the transmission of the signal in the analogue form. Those mobile phones were termed as the AMPS devices. AMPS is acronym for Advanced Mobile Phone Systems. These mobile phones could operate for the function of only conveying voice signals. The AMPS operated over a fixed and designated frequency of 850 to 890 MHZ (Horak, 4). They were susceptible to noise and other forms of distractions within. I.T.U is the governing entity that administers the usage of different kinds of frequency and other features and functions in the mobile phone industry. I.T.U also governs over the rules and regulations pertinent to the usage and the possible future prospect of mobile phones advancements. The cellular phones that are largely used in the present times run on the mechanism of using the digital spectrum for signals transmission. Although the entire signal is being transmitted in the analogue medium and mode, yet the ends receive this content in the form of digital content. The Second Generation technologies of mobile phones are characterized by the digital data streams. They for the first time made use of digital data stream. As a result of this, the mobile phones could now handle the digital data in the form of multimedia and video options. The multimedia options included the SMS option and the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). As a result of the advancements and transfer from analogue to the digital medium, the 2nd generation mobile phones operated on a frequency of 1800 MHZ. This allowed for more accommodation of the clients along single channel. The frequency hopping scheme and frequency reuse mechanism was another feature that was added to it and this in turn made the communication more reliable more effective and more accurate. The 2nd Generation of Mobile phones are formally administered and authorized as the G.S.M (Global Systems of Mobile Communicaiton). Tri band, quad band operational options are provided by the modern day cellular phones. The aforementioned features and band capacity make these cellular phones capable of being operated in different continents with not the need of adjusting the adjustments. References: Haas, Michael. Management of Innovation in Network Industries: The Mobile Internet in Japan and Europe. Springer, 2007 Horak, Ray. Websters New World Telecom Dictionary. John Wiley & Sons, 2008 Petersen, J.K. Fiber Optics Illustrated Dictionary. CRC Press, 2002 Sauter, Martin. 3G, 4G and Beyond: Bringing Networks, Devices and the Web Together. John Wiley & Sons, 2013 Read More