First Mile Access Networks and Enabling Technologies

Chapter 4. Data Wireless Communication

Mobile communication, and the unsurpassed flexibility it provides, is a luxury that has been long sought. The ability to communicate while being portable gives a degree of flexibility that cannot be surpassed. Marconi's invention of radio as a one-way broadcast technology using electromagnetic waves has led to massive research in wireless networking. The one-way broadcast methodology gave way to two-way wireless communication, initially over a simplex channel (where source and destination could not talk at the same time) and finally to full-duplex voice communication. Electromagnetic wave propagation is subject to a dispersive effect (attenuation), such that the power of a signal in free space attenuates ...