How Mobile Phone Networks Work

Introduction

This document is designed to give a very brief explanation of how today's mobile phone
networks work. It explains what is meant by radio communication, and describes how mobile
phone networks, using the cellular radio concept, operate. It also gives details of the technologies
currently used by mobile phone networks in the UK.

The Office Of Communications (Ofcom) also produces a document 'Mobile Phones: Jargon
Explained' and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that will be helpful if you require more
information on this subject.

Radiocommunication

Mobile phones may be a relatively new technology, but radio has been used as a means of
communication for over a hundred years. Marconi made the very first radio transmission in
1895. Within thirty years radio was being used on a daily basis for broadcasting and for two-way
radio communication by the military and the police. Today, a little over a hundred years since
Marconi's first transmission, 60% of the UK population - around 40 million people - enjoy the
benefits of mobile phone use.

What is a radio wave?

Mobile phones and their base stations transmit and receive signals using electromagnetic waves
(also referred to as electromagnetic fields, or radio waves). Electromagnetic waves are emitted
by many natural and man-made sources and play a very important part in our lives. We are
warmed by the electromagnetic emissions of the sun and we see using the part of the
electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes detect as visible light. All electromagnetic radiation
consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields and the frequency, which is the number of
times per second at which the wave oscillates, determines their properties and the use that can be
made of them. Frequencies are measured in hertz or Hz, where 1 Hz is one oscillation per
second, 1 kHz a thousand, 1 MHz is a million, and 1 GHz, is a thousand million. Frequencies
between 30 kHz and 300 GHz are widely used for telecommunication, including broadcast radio
and television, and comprise the radio frequency band.

In the UK, AM radio uses frequencies between about 180 kHz and 1.6 MHz, FM radio ranges
from 88 to 108 MHz, and TV ranges from 470 to 854 MHz. Cellular mobile services operate
within the frequency ranges 872-960 MHz, 1710-1875 MHz and 1920 - 2170 MHz. Waves at
higher frequencies but within the RF region, up to 60 GHz, are referred to as microwaves and
have a wide variety of uses. These include radar, telecommunication links, satellite
communications, weather observation and medical diathermy.
Ofcom produces a set of Radio Frequency Allocation Information Sheets, which give details of
the types of services operating in any particular band. These can be obtained from our website at
www.ofcom.org.uk.

How radio communication works

A radio frequency wave used for radio communication is referred to as a carrier wave. The radio
frequency carrier wave of any system is produced by the transmitter as a sine wave. A sine wave
conveys very little information since it simply repeats over and over. However, it can be
switched on and off and this was the technique used in the earliest radio transmissions which
used Morse code.

If the radio wave is to convey more information, such as speech or computer data etc., this
information has to be added to the carrier wave in some way, a process known as modulation.
The modulation process involves some feature of the carrier wave being varied in accordance
with the information transmitted. For example, for AM (amplitude modulation) transmission, the
electrical signal from a microphone produced by speech or music is used to vary the amplitude of
the carrier wave, so that at any instant the size or amplitude of the RF carrier wave is made
proportional to the size of the electrical modulating signal. Figure 1 below demonstrates this
concept.

Figure 1: Amplitude Modulation

There are many different types of modulation technique, each with different characteristics, and
each suitable for different applications. You might be familiar with the frequency modulation
(FM) used for radio broadcasting, or the digital techniques used by mobile phones. All work by
varying some property of the carrier wave in a way by which the information to be
communicated can be conveyed or carried by the radio frequency carrier wave.
 Mobile Phone Networks

Base Station and handsets

A mobile phone sends and receives information (voice messages, fax, computer data, etc) by
radio communication. Radio frequency signals are transmitted from the phone to the nearest base
station and incoming signals (carrying the speech from the person to whom the phone user is
listening) are sent from the base station to the phone at a slightly different frequency. Base
stations link mobile phones to the rest of the mobile and fixed phone network.

Once the signal reaches a base station it can be transmitted to the main telephone network, either
by telephone cables or by higher frequency radio links between an antenna (e.g. dish) at the base
station and another at a terminal connected to the main telephone network.

'Cellular' Radio

Each base station provides radio coverage to a geographical area known as a cell. Base stations
are connected to one another by central switching centres, which track calls and transfer them as
the caller moves from one cell to the next. Diagram 2 below shows the cell structure of a mobile
phone network . An ideal network may be envisaged as consisting of a mesh of hexagonal cells,
each with a base station at its centre. The cells overlap at the edges to ensure the mobile phone
users always remain within range of the base station. Without sufficient base stations in the right
locations, mobile phones will not work.

The size of each cell depends on three factors. First, the local terrain; radio signals are blocked
by trees, hills and buildings. Second, the frequency band in which the network operates (in
general, the higher the radio frequency, the smaller the cell). Third, the capacity (i.e. number of
calls) needed in any given area. Base stations are typically spaced about 0.2-0.5 km in towns and
2-5 km apart in the countryside.

If a person with a mobile phone starts to moves out of one cell and into another, the controlling
network hands over communications to the adjacent base station.

Figure 2: 'Cellular' Radio

Why are so many base stations required?

Transmitted signal strength falls off rapidly with distance from base stations, and mobile phones
require a certain minimum signal strength to ensure adequate reception. The current generation
of GSM base stations cannot communicate over distances greater than 35 km because the delay
in receiving radio signals becomes too great. However, the decline of signal strength with
distance places a practical limit on coverage of around 10 km. For these reasons an extensive
network of base stations is needed to ensure coverage throughout the UK.

Why can't one base station serve my town?

Radio spectrum is a precious natural resource with many different demands upon it (for example,
radio and TV broadcasting, emergency communication, navigation aids etc). Consequently the
amount made available to each mobile phone operator is limited and this means base stations can
only carry a limited number of calls at any one time.

To accommodate the steadily increasing volume of users, network operators have to use the
limited number of radio frequencies licensed to them to support the maximum number of mobile
phone users. This is achieved by re-using any given radio frequency many times in a network
and carefully controlling base station power so that signals arising in different parts of the
network do not interfere with each other. This concept of frequency re-use is illustrated in figure
3. The cells are grouped into clusters, with the frequencies allocated to a particular cell within a
cluster not being re-used until the corresponding cell in adjacent clusters. This gives a repeating
pattern of cells and clusters which can be expanded to provide national coverage.

To increase the capacity of their networks, operators have to build additional base stations and
thus reduce cell size. It is for this reason that one large base station cannot serve a whole town.

Figure 3: Frequency Re-use

 Types of Mobile PhoneTechnology

Cellular radio networks operate in one of three bands in the UK; 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2.2
GHz ,using two different technologies, GSM and UMTS. A little detail on these two
technologies is given below:

Global system for Mobile Communications or Groupe Speciale Mobile.

The international, pan-European operating standard for the current generation of digital
cellular mobile communications. It enables mobile phones to be used across national
GSM boundaries. In the UK this technology operates in the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz frequency
bands.

Ofcom publishes details of the technical requirements for GSM technology opeOfcomting
in the UK in the form of UK Interface Requirement [IR2014]
Universal Mobile Telecommunication System

The next generation of mobile phone technology, expected to result in widespread use of
video phones and access to multimedia information. In the UK this technology operates in
UMTS
2 GHz region.

Ofcom publishes details of the technical requirements for UMTS technology operating in
the UK in the form of UK Interface Requirement [IR2019]

1
While cells are generally thought of as regular hexagons, making up a 'honeycomb' structure, in
practice they are irregular due to site availability and topography.
Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)
Definition and Overview
Definition
Synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) and synchronous optical network (SONET) refer to a
group
of fiber-optic transmission rates that can transport digital signals with different capacities.
Overview

This tutorial discusses synchronous transmission standards in world public telecommunications

networks. It will cover their origins, features, applications, and advantages, as well as their
impact
on network design and synchronous signal structure.

This tutorial concentrates on the most common form of SDH, that defined by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for Europe but now used everywhere outside of
North America and Japan. The Japanese version of SDH differs only in details that are touched
on
here but are not significant for the purposes of this tutorial. SONET was defined by the
American
National Standards Institution (ANSI) and is used in North America. This tutorial refers to
SONET
where appropriate; a more detailed discussion is available in the International Engineering
Consortium's (IEC's) SONET WebProForum tutorial.

The reader is assumed to be comfortable with the basic concepts of a public telecommunications
network, with its separate functions of transmission and switching, and is assumed to be aware of
the context for the growth of broadband traffic. No specific prior knowledge is assumed a

ntroduction: Emergence of SDH

Since their emergence from standards bodies around 1990, SDH and its variant, SONET, have
helped revolutionize the performance and cost of telecommunications networks based on optical
fibers.

SDH has provided transmission networks with a vendor-independent and sophisticated signal
structure that has a rich feature set. This has resulted in new network applications, the
deployment
of new equipment in new network topologies, and management by operations systems of much
greater power than previously seen in transmission networks.
As digital networks increased in complexity in the early 1980s, demand from network operators
and their customers grew for features that could not be readily provided within the existing
transmission standards. These features were based on high-order multiplexing through a
hierarchy of increasing bit rates up to 140 Mbps or 565 Mbps in Europe and had been defined in
the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the introduction of digital transmission over coaxial
cables. Their features were constrained by the high costs of transmission bandwidth and digital
devices. The multiplexing technique allowed for the combining of slightly nonsynchronous rates,
referred to as plesiochronous, which lead to the term plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH).

The development of optical fiber transmission and large-scale integrated circuits made more
complex standards possible. There were demands for improved and increasingly sophisticated
services that required large bandwidth, better performance monitoring facilities, and gre

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19259342/Synchronous-Digital-Hierarchy