Essential Guide to Wireless Communications Applications, The

Summary

• Wireless technology uses radio waves, a type of electromagnetic radiation. Radio signals have a longer wavelength and a lower frequency than other parts of the spectrum, such as visible light.

• The higher the radio frequency, the shorter the range. Mobile phones and wireless data systems use microwaves, which have a higher frequency and thus a shorter range than the waves used for broadcast radio and TV stations.

• The range of frequencies used by a radio system is called the bandwidth. The greater the bandwidth, the more the information it can carry.

• Most radio systems encode information by modulating the frequency, which provides a high-quality connection. Older technologies modulate the amplitude instead.

• Radio spectrum is a finite resource; ...