Essential Guide to Wireless Communications Applications, The

Summary

• A cell is the coverage area of a single base station. Wireless operators cover a wide area by using lots of overlapping cells.

• The cell size depends on the frequency and the number of customers within the cell. Higher frequencies require smaller cells.

• All cellular networks use separate frequencies for the uplink to the base station and the downlink to the mobile subscriber.

• Simple analog networks use FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access), which gives each conversation its own frequency band.

• Digital networks use TDMA or CDMA (Time or Code Division Multiple Access), which share a frequency band by assigning each communication channel a time slot or code.

• On digital networks, speech has to be converted to bits using software called a codec ...