TOPICS:

1. ABSTRACT
2. HOW CELL PHONES WORK
3. ENCODING AND MULTIPLEXING
Analog vs. Digital
FDMA
TDMA
CDMA
GSM
CALL HAND OFF
SECURITY
4. SWITCHING
Finding the user
Connecting the call
Roaming
5. WIRELESS DATA
Analog modems
Packet Data (CDPD over IS-136 and
AMPS networks)
GSM

6. DETERMING CAPACITY
Iridium
Globalstar
Teledesic

7. FUTURE
8. SATELLITE SYSTEMS
9. OTHER FUTURE SYSTEMS
10. CONCLUSION

ABSTRACT
Cellular telephones have revolutionized the communications arena,
redefining how we perceive voice communications. Traditionally, cellular
phones remained out of the hands of most consumers due to their high cost.
As a result, cell phone carriers have invested time and resources into finding
ways to give the systems higher capacity and thus lower cost. Cell systems
are benefiting from this research and starting to develop into large-scale
consumer products.
Today, cellular phones are truly consumer electronics devices with
over 59 million subscribers. The Nokia Bowl and Qualcomm Stadium are
further evidence of the idea that cell phones are consumer electronics
devices. Since cell phones have ceased to be an exclusive status symbol of
high-powered lawyers and are now in the hands of millions of consumers,
they are now incredibly cost sensitive. Specifically, it is not the cost of the
device that counts, but the cost of using the device. As a result, the cellular
phone infrastructure is being optimized to allow calls to be placed as
inexpensively and reliably as possible. Today, more than ever, cellular
companies are looking for ways to bring down the call cost to attain even
higher market penetration, especially in metropolitan areas.
In this report, we will begin by examining how cell phone systems
work, paying close attention to details in system design that reduce cost and
increase quality. After we have explained how cell phone systems work, we
will examine the various cell phone systems in existence, examining the
details of their operation and how that impacts the cost of using the system
and the call quality on the system. Since the most important factor in cell
phone airtime cost is the capacity, we will focus on issues related to capacity.

Cellular Technology:
In telephony, a generic term for all wireless phones, regardless of the
technology they use; the term derives from cellular base stations that receive
and transmit calls. Both cellular and PCs phones use cellular technology.
[After the FCC] Note: The strategically placed rf base stations have limited,
usually overlapping coverage areas (cells) that serve to connect mobile,
usually small handheld radio transceivers (cellular mobile telephones (called
"cell phones") to the public switched telephone network. When necessary,
based on the rf signal strength from a given moving cell phone, calls in
progress may be automatically switched via landlines from one cell to
another, to maintain the connection.

How Cell Phones Work:

An Overview:
It is common knowledge that Cellular Phones (referred to as "cell"
phones from here on) are wireless phones; however, many are confused
about how a cell phone actually works. Essentially, cell phones use highfrequency radio signals to communicate with "cell towers" located throughout
the calling area. Cell phones communicate in the frequency range of 806-890
MHz and 1850-1990 MHz for the newly allocated "PCS" frequency range.
When the user wants to make a call, the cell phone sends a message
to the tower, asking to be connected to a given telephone number. If the
tower has sufficient resources to grant the request, a device called a "switch"
patches the cell phone s signal throughout to a channel on the "public
switched telephone network" (otherwise known as the PSTN). This call now
takes up a wireless channel as well as a PSTN channel that will be held open
until the call is completed. The following figure illustrates this process.

Phone call is this channel cannot be used for anyone else s calls until the cell
discontinued.
Given this simple description of how cell phones work, we will add
technical details about various facets of cell phone systems throughout the
remainder of this section.

Cells:

As the name implies, cell phone systems are made up of many

small "cells." Each cell in a cell phone system represents the area served by
one cell phone tower. The concept of cells is key behind the success of cell
phones because by spacing many cells fairly close to each other, the cell
phones may broadcast at very low power levels (typically 200mW 1W,
depending on system). Since the cell phones may broadcast at low power
levels, they use small transmitters and small batteries, and thus are able to
fit in a shirt pocket, unlike amateur radios can occupy a tabletop.
Cells are typically spaced around 1-2 miles apart but can be spaced
up to 20 miles apart in rural areas. In loaded areas or areas with many
obstacles (such as tall buildings), the cell sites may be spaced closer
together. Some technologies, like PCS, require closer cell spacing due to their
higher frequency and lower power operation. Additionally, buildings interfere
with cell signals coming from outside, so many buildings have their own
"microcell." The Kingdome and New York subway are two examples of where
microcells are used. Microcells may also be used to increase overall capacity
within a heavily populated area such as a city s core downtown area. In fact,
homes may have "picocells" connected to the home s PSTN connection to
allow the cell phone to be used as a cordless phone. An example of typical
microcell and picocell environments is pictured in the following figure.

Encoding and Multiplexing:

Overview:
With thousands of cellular phone calls going on at any given time
within a city, it certainly would not work for everyone to talk on the came
channel at once (as in CB and short-wave radios). Therefore, several
different techniques were developed by cell phone manufacturers to split up
the available bandwidth into many channels each capable of supporting one
conversation. The following sections will discuss each technology and how it
works.

Analog vs. Digital:

While the distinction between analog and digital

encoding is probably obvious to most readers, a short discussion is included
for those who are not. Essentially, analog broadcasts audio as a series of
continuously changing, voltage levels representing the amplitude of the voice
conversation. When sent on the cell phone network using the standard
frequency modulation (meaning voltage levels translate into frequency shifts)
into channels separated by 30 kHz, we find that the amplitude can be
effectively transmitted at 15 kHz due to Nyquist limitations.
Instead of sending data as various voltage levels, a digital signal
quantizes the voltage levels into a number of bins (typically 28 or 256
representing an 8-bit encoding). These bins are encoded as a binary number
and sent as a series of ones and zeros. This allows for digital compression in
the encoding stage enabling voice to be sent at as little as 8000 bits per
second.

FDMA:
FDMA stands for "frequency division multiple access" and, though it
could be used for digital systems, is exclusively used on all analog cellular
systems. Essentially, FDMA splits the allocated spectrum into many channels.
In current analog cell systems, each channel is 30 kHz. When a FDMA cell
phone establishes a call, it reserves the frequency channel for the entire
duration of the call. The voice data is modulated into this channel s frequency
band (using frequency modulation) and sent over the airwaves. At the
receiver, the information is recovered using a band-pass filter. The phone
uses a common digital control channel to acquire channels.
FDMA systems are the least efficient cellular system since each
analog channel can only be used by one user at a time. Not only are these
channels larger than necessary given modern digital voice compression, but
they are also wasted whenever there is silence during the cell phone
conversation. Analog signals are also especially susceptible to noise and
there is no way to filter it out. Given the nature of the signal, analog cell
phones must use higher power (between 1 and 3 watts) to get acceptable

call quality. Given these shortcomings, it is easy to see why FDMA is being
replaced by newer digital techniques.

TDMA:
TDMA stands for "time division multiple access." TDMA builds on
FDMA by dividing conversations by frequency and time. Since digital
compression allows voice to be sent at well under 10 kilobits per second
(equivalent to 10 kHz), TDMA fits three digital conversations into a FDMA
channel (which is 30 kHz). By sampling a person s voice for, say 30
milliseconds, then transmitting it in 10 milliseconds; the system is able to
offer 3 timeslots per channel in a round-robin fashion. This technique allows
compatibility with FDMA while enabling digital services and easily boosting
system capacity by three times.
While TDMA is a good digital system, it is still somewhat inefficient
since it has no flexibility for varying digital data rates (high quality voice, low
quality voice, pager traffic) and has no accommodations for silence in a
telephone conversation. In other words, once a call is initiated, the
channel/timeslot pair belongs to the phone for the duration of the call. TDMA
also requires strict signaling and timeslot synchronization. A digital control
channel provides synchronization functionality as well as adding voice mail
and message notification. Due to the digital signal, TDMA phones need only
broadcast at 600 miliwatts.

CDMA:
CDMA stands for "code division multiple access" and is both the most
interesting and the hardest to implement multiplexing method. CDMA has
been likened to a party: When everyone talks at once, no one can be
understood, however, if everyone speaks a different language, then they can
be understood. CDMA systems have no channels, but instead encodes each
call as a coded sequence across the entire frequency spectrum. Each
conversation is modulated, in the digital domain, with a unique code (called a
pseudo-noise code) that makes it distinguishable from the other calls in the
frequency spectrum. Using a correlation calculation and the code the call was
encoded with, the digital audio signal can be extracted from the other signals
being broadcast by other phones on the network. From the perspective of
one call, upon extracting the signal, everything else appears to be low-level
noise. As long as there is sufficient separation between the codes (said to be
mutually orthogonal), the noise level will be low enough to recover the digital
signal. Each signal is not, in fact, spread across the whole spectrum (12.5
MHz for traditional cellular or 60 MHz in PCS cellular), but is spread across
1.25 MHz "pass-bands."

CDMA systems are the latest technology on the market and are already
eclipsing TDMA in terms of cost and call quality. Since CDMA offers far
greater capacity and variable data rates depending on the audio activity,
many more users can be fit into a given frequency spectrum and higher
audio quality can be provide. The current CDMA systems boast at least three
times the capacity of TDMA and GSM systems. The fact that CDMA shares
frequencies with neighboring cell towers allows for easier installation of extra
capacity, since extra capacity can be achieved by simply adding extra cell
sites and shrinking power levels of nearby sites. CDMA technology also allows
lower cell phone power levels (200 miliwatts) since the modulation
techniques expect to deal with noise and are well suited to weaker signals.
The downside to CDMA is the complexity of deciphering and extracting the
received signals, especially if there are multiple signal paths (reflections)
between the phone and the cell tower (called multipath interference). As a
result, CDMA phones are twice as expensive as TDMA phones and CDMA cell
site equipment is 3-4 times the price of TDMA equivalents.

GSM:

GSM stands for "Global System for Mobile Communications." GSM is

mostly a European system and is largely unused in the US. GSM is
interesting in that it uses a modified and far more efficient version of TDMA.
GSM keeps the idea of timeslots and frequency channels, but corrects several
major shortcomings. Since the GSM timeslots are smaller than TDMA, they
hold less data but allow for data rates starting at 300 bits per second. Thus,
a call can use as many timeslots as necessary up to a limit of 13 kilobits per
second. When a call is inactive (silence) or may be compressed more, fewer
timeslots are used. To facilitate filling in gaps left by unused timeslots, calls
do "frequency hopping" in GSM. This means that calls will jump between
channels and timeslots to maximize the system s usage. A control channel is
used to communicate the frequency hopping and other information between
the cell tower and the phone. To compare with the other systems, it should
be noted that GSM requires 1 Watt of output power from the phone.

Call Handoff:
It is apparent that cells must somehow overlap, and when a user
travels between cells, one cell must hand the call off to the other cell. The
cells must also not interfere with each other. This is accomplished by giving
each cell a slightly different chunk of the frequency spectrum (note that
CDMA does not do this) and by measuring power levels. When the power
level of the user begins to fade, the cell tower determines which cell is the
closest cell. Upon finding this information, the current cell tower sends an
over-the-air message to the new cell tower and to the cell phone. At this
point, the new cell tower picks up the call and the old one drops the call as
the cell phone switches frequencies. This type of handoff is called a "hard
handoff" since the audio feed is lost for between 10 milliseconds and 100
milliseconds while the new tower picks up the signal. Often these "hard"

handoffs fail when the new tower tries to pick the call up, leading to frequent
dropped calls.
In most systems, each cell tower typically receives a 1.8 MHz
frequency spectrum. In normal cellular systems that have a 12.5 MHz
spectrum (not the high-band PCS systems that have more bandwidth), this
allows for 7 cells before cells have to reuse frequencies. Generally, there are
1-2 cells and 10-20 miles separating cells using the same frequency in order
to minimize interference.
A discussion of call handoff is not complete without CDMA
technology. Since CDMA uses the entire spectrum available, there is no real
distinction between cells in terms of frequency use. Since each call is
scattered across a whole 1.25 MHz pass band in CDMA, every cell tower can
access the whole 12.5 MHz spectrum (60 MHz in a PCS system). This means
that there is no necessity to change frequencies during a handoff since
everyone is using the same frequencies. Therefore, two cell towers intercept
the signal where the cells overlap. This means no sudden switch, since this
handoff (called a "soft handoff") is actually handled in the switch, changing
from one weaker audio feed to a stronger audio feed. This technique
removes the loud "pop" associated with normal "hard" handoffs and greatly
reduces problems with dropped calls. The soft handoff concept is pictured
below.

Security:

One of the largest problems in wireless communication is security.

There are two worries: Other people listening into phone calls and other
people illegally billing time to a user s account (called "phone cloning").
Unfortunately, analog phones transmit in plain FM, and provide no
security. For instance, a few years ago, Newt Gingrich had a cell phone
conversation taped by someone using a simple police scanner, which is
designed to receive police activity on the CB frequencies. Since analog
phones have such weak security, the architects of digital technology designed
digital phones with much more robust security.
Digital phones employ encryption to secure the phone and the
conversation. Encryption is used in TDMA and CDMA to make sure that it is
almost impossible to "latch" onto a conversation. The encryption works by
picking a key that is used in an equation that compresses the audio. The
encrypted key is sent to the cell tower so the cell tower knows how to decode
the conversation. Therefore, even if the person with the scanner finds the
channel and time slice you are using, they would need to find the encryption
code to make sense of the signal. It is also important to mention that CDMA
also uses its modulation code to provide increased security, resulting in over
four billion possible encryption codes. Cell phones also must be protected
from cloning. By encrypting the cell phone number and related information
when sending the information to the switch, cloning is prevented.

Switching:
Overview:
When a user places a call on a cell phone, the system must figure
out how to route the call to the PSTN. Additionally, when someone calls the
cell phone, the system must figure what cell the user is in. This section
describes how this is done.

Finding the user:

Whenever you turn your cell phone on, the phone sends its
identification to the cell phone tower. This includes the "MIN" (mobile
identification number, usually the phone number) and the "ESN" (electronic
serial number). The cell tower forwards this information to a centrally located
switch via special leased phone lines that connect a switch to many cell sites
(T-1 lines are often used). When the switch gets this information, it forwards
it to any higher level switches.

Connecting the call:

Whenever a call comes in, it will come to the switch that serves the
exchange (the exchange is the 555 in (206) 555-1212). This top-level switch
will pass that call onto any lower level switches, if there is one, although
there usually is not. When the call is passed to the lowest level switch, it
checks to make sure the phone is still registered (it is turned on and in
range). If it is registered, the phone is notified via the signaling channel and
the phone begins ringing. When the user chooses to accept the call, the
switch establishes the voice channel and the call begins.

Roaming:

Roaming was one of the most challenging issues the cell phone
industry faced. The goal was simple: a phone could be used anywhere in the
US or the world where compatible technology is used. The difficult part is
getting various systems to communicate and pass routing and billing
information to each other.
When a user turns his or her cell phone on in a roaming area, the
cell phone identifies itself to the switch. When the switch looks up the
information and discovers it is not a local phone, it will attempt to find the
"home" switch based on the exchange. When it locates the home switch, it
will determine if roaming is possible. If roaming is possible, the switch
(referred to here as the "roaming switch") sets up a "Visitor Location
Register" (VLR) registering the phone in the locality. The home switch will
also be notified about the change so that it can route calls to the switch in
the roaming location. Outbound calls are handled through the roaming switch
as they would be handled if the user were at home. Incoming calls are routed
from the home switch to the roaming switch after sending a message to the
roaming switch requesting a "temporary local directory number" (TLDN). This
TLDN will be used to make a connection from the home switch to the
roaming switch across the PSTN. Finally, whenever the roaming phone is
turned off, the phone is unregistered with the roaming switch and the home
switch is notified. The process of registering the phone and notifying the
home switch takes 2 seconds.

Wireless Data:
Overview:
In modern times, we depend on e-mail and on the World Wide Web.
We have access to these resources at home and at the offices, and we would
like to use these resources while traveling. This is the goal that "wireless
data" hopes to accomplish. In the following section, we will discuss various
types of wireless data systems that run on top of cellular networks. Systems
that run on other systems, such as ricochet, which runs on the pager
network, will not be discussed.

Analog modems:
Analog modems are the simplest type of wireless data. Analog
modems work on any cellular system by simply encoding the digital data as
audio signals. Analog cellular modems make the same squealing sounds as
an ordinary desktop computer s analog modem, but operate at far slower
speeds. On an analog modem, these modems typically average between
4800 to 9600 bits per second. This is slower than the maximum possible rate
because of the inefficiency of converting digital to analog. It should also be
noted that digital cell systems do not support analog modems since their
data compression would damage the analog modem signal, preventing it
from being decoded by the receiving modem.

Packet Data (CDPD over IS-136 and AMPS networks)

By using some of the channels of the TDMA or FDMA (IS-136 and AMPS
standards) network as large aggregated digital data lines, packetized digital
data may be sent over this line. CDPD describes how every cell phone on the
network may insert packets on this shared data channel without causing
collisions, which would happen if two packets were sent at the same time by
two different phones. CDPD is useful since it runs on top of old FDMA
systems as well as newer TDMA systems and offers a 19.2 kilobits per
second data rate. Using a TDMA system, the CDPD protocol can be scaled by
adding more frequency channels.

GSM:
GSM uses an intriguing method to send data. By simply sending
computer data as it would send voice data, GSM allows every phone to be
"data enabled." Since the GSM network is already a packet network of sorts
because of its frequency hopping, it requires no additional hardware to
support data. GSM allows data rates in multiples of 300 bits per second, up
to 64 kilobits per second.

Determining capacity:
The cell towers themselves are perhaps the most costly part of
operating a cellular phone network. Cell towers are exposed to environmental
hazards, such as weather, wildlife, and vandalism. The quality of service
obtainable from cell towers varies widely depending upon interference from
other sources such as radio towers, interference from other cell towers, and
obstacles such as tall buildings.
Also taken into account is the relative power consumption of each
tower. If each tower consumes a substantial amount of power, it would not
be cost effective to put up many towers in a small area. The density of cell
towers must offset their power consumption.
Finally, the users themselves demand a high quality of service. In
densely populated urban areas, users will complain if a tower fails and an
entire neighborhood loses cell phone coverage. In this case, it might be cost
effective to put in more towers that offer higher bandwidth or make some
towers redundant as a backup for failure.
Unlike the user devices, which the users maintain themselves, service
providers must setup and operate the towers. Because users demand
extensive coverage and the ability to roam, the areas serviced by cell towers
must therefore cover a large and extensive area. However, cell towers are
limited in their range and power; consequently, service providers must
determine the optimal mix of power consumption, quality of service, and
number of users per tower in order to optimize placement.
With this in mind, there are a number of different algorithms, which
approximately determine the number of users each tower can handle. For
FDMA and TDMA systems, this is clearly a more or less linear function. In the
case of an FDMA system, the amount of noise from other sources and the
amount of power transmitted determine the number of discrete frequency
bands into which the total transmission band can be divided. Although fewer
bands do not necessarily mean clearer service, fewer bands generally means
less distortion from noise. The number of users is equal to the number of
frequency bands, since each user receives a band for the duration of the call.
In the case of TDMA systems, noise and power determine the number of
frequency bands as well as the rate at which users may be swapped. The
number of users each tower can handle is a multiple of the number that can
be handled in FDMA. This multiple is simply the number of calls that may be
swapped round-robin fashion.

The number of callers handled by a CDMA tower is much more complex to

determine because the power output of a CDMA tower is not constant. As a
result, the number of users a CDMA tower can handle depends upon the data
rate, the spreading bandwidth of each tower, and the targeted signal to noise
ratio.
A simple equation from given below, is used to model this behavior.

In this equation, W is the spreading bandwidth given in decibels and is a

specified multiple of R, the data rate. A greater spreading bandwidth means
a greater ability to accommodate users far away from the tower. The rate set
used for this model as specified by IS-95A CDMA sets the data rate at 9.6
kbps. Eb/N0 is the signal to noise ratio. I0 is a correction factor that takes
into account interference from other towers. For the purposes of this
experiment, I0 is taken to be zero. The signal to noise ratio is varied to see
the effects on the user capacity.
As seen in the figure below, the number of possible users varies
exponentially with the signal to noise ratio.
The tower can dynamically increase or decrease its user capacity
depending upon variations in signal to noise ratio or spreading bandwidth.

Future:

Overview
As cellular systems reach maturity, many are looking to the future.
While the PCS frequencies (1800 MHz 2000 MHz) are still being built out, the
next generation of cellular communication is being launched. To provide true
homogeneous worldwide wireless coverage with no gaps, LEO (low earth
orbit) satellites are being used. These LEO satellites orbit the earth in high
speed, low altitude orbits with an orbital time of 70-90 minutes and an
altitude of 400 700 miles. LEO s provides small coverage cells around the
size Washington state. Since LEO s are not geosynchronous, they are forced
to fly complete orbits, and thus many must exist to guarantee every area is
covered by at least one satellite at all times. Therefore, call handoff is
executed when the satellite moves, not when the person moves as it is with
ground-based cellular systems.

A figure outlining the different orbits follows.

Satellite Systems:

Iridium:
Motorola has just launched the last satellite in the Iridium system, a
LEO system consisting of 66 satellites with 6 in-orbit spares. Iridium
satellites have an orbital altitude of 485 miles and weigh 1,500 pounds each.
Iridium will allow a person to place a call anywhere in the world using a
device slightly larger than a small hand-held cell phone.

Globalstar:

Globalstar is a CDMA system headed up by Qualcomm. This system

will have 48 satellites with 8 in-orbit spares. Each satellite will weigh 1000
pounds and will orbit at 880 miles. Again, this system will use phones that
are just slightly larger than today s conventional cell phones and allow calls
to be placed anywhere in the world. Globalstar system has been launched in
1998 and started to provide service from 1999.

Teledesic:

Teledesic is the most promising and furthest off of the LEO

systems. Teledesic is a partnership of many large players in this industry,
including Motorola, Microsoft, Boeing, Nextel, and Matra Marconi, with
Motorola being the prime contractor. Teledesic will use 288 satellites flying at
an altitude of less than 800 miles. This means that Teledesic will have five
times the satellites as the other systems and will fly lower than the other
systems. This translates into more bandwidth per region (smaller coverage
area per satellite) and smaller cellular phone devices (lower power since
satellites are closer). Teledesic also plans to provide high-speed data access,
starting at 64 megabits per second. Teledesic has begun development of
their satellites, and started its service from 2003.

Other Future Systems:

There are several other future cellular systems planned. One of these
systems involves sending unmanned blimps high above the city at 70,000
feet. These blimps would provide cellular voice and data service to a city,
with service similar to what LEO s provide. Another plan is to have highflying (flying at a 52,000 foot altitude) unmanned solar-powered aircraft that
would continually fly west to east across the US and provide LEO like cellular
voice and data service. Though these other ideas appear farfetched, if they
are implemented, they will provide more competition and thus lower prices.

Conclusion:

Cellular phone customers clearly have many different service

choices that they did not have several years ago. Furthermore, it is
inevitable that as the technology evolves, the quality of service will
increase and the equipment cost will decrease. Older technologies will
become cheaper as newer technologies are introduced to the global
market.
The analysis in the "Cost Factors" section has demonstrated on
a theoretical level how newer technologies such as CDMA can give
finer control over the cost per user of providing service by regulating
user capacity as a function of signal noise. Although limiting factors
still exist, the number of frequency bands allocated in the total
frequency range no longer fixes the user capacity. This allows service
providers to target a more optimum quality of service and user load,
which benefits both user and service provider.
By eliminating the requirement that towers transmit at constant
power, CDMA systems can better optimize their utilization. Other
technologies such as satellite networks and GSM improve their
utilization by similarly exploiting their advances over standard FDMA
and TDMA networks.The result is the newer cellular networks will be
intelligent enough to improve their utilization and quality of service,
which in turn benefits the user.