Mobile Communication
A cellular mobile communications system uses a large number of low-power wireless transmitters to create cells—the basic geographic service area of a wireless communications system. Variable power levels allow cells to be sized according to the subscriber density and demand within a particular region. As mobile users travel from cell to cell, their conversations are handed off between cells to maintain seamless service. Channels (frequencies) used in one cell can be reused in another cell some distance away. Cells can be added to accommodate growth, creating new cells in unserved areas or overlaying cells in existing areas.
Mobile Communications Principles
Each mobile uses a separate, temporary radio channel to talk to the cell site. The cell site talks to many mobiles at once, using one channel per mobile. Channels use a pair of frequencies for communication—one frequency (the forward link) for transmitting from the cell site and one frequency (the reverse link) for the cell site to receive calls from the users. Radio energy dissipates over distance, so mobiles must stay near the base station to maintain communications. The basic structure of mobile networks includes telephone systems and radio services. Where mobile radio service operates in a closed network and has no access to the telephone system, mobile telephone service allows interconnection to the telephone network (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Basic Mobile Telephone Service Network
Early Mobile Telephone System Architecture
Traditional mobile service was structured in a fashion similar to television broadcasting: One very powerful transmitter located at the highest spot in an area would broadcast in a radius of up to 50 kilometers. The cellular concept structured the mobile telephone network in a different way. Instead of using one powerful transmitter, many low-power transmitters were placed throughout a coverage area. For example, by dividing a metropolitan region into one hundred different areas (cells) with low-power transmitters using 12 conversations (channels) each, the system capacity theoretically could be increased from 12 conversations—or voice channels using one powerful transmitter—to 1,200 conversations (channels) using one hundred low-power transmitters. Figure 2 shows a metropolitan area configured as a traditional mobile telephone network with one high-power transmitter.
Cellular System Architecture
Increases in demand and the poor quality of existing service led mobile service providers to research ways to improve the quality of service and to support more users in their systems. Because the amount of frequency spectrum available for mobile cellular use was limited, efficient use of the required frequencies was needed for mobile cellular coverage. In modern cellular telephony, rural and urban regions are divided into areas according to specific provisioning guidelines. Deployment parameters, such as amount of cell-splitting and cell sizes, are determined by engineers experienced in cellular system architecture.
Provisioning for each region is planned according to an engineering plan that includes cells, clusters, frequency reuse, and handovers.
Cells
A cell is the basic geographic unit of a cellular system. The term cellular comes from the honeycomb shape of the areas into which a coverage region is divided. Cells are base stations transmitting over small geographic areas that are represented as hexagons. Each cell size varies depending on the landscape. Because of constraints imposed by natural terrain and man-made structures, the true shape of cells is not a perfect hexagon.
Clusters
A cluster is a group of cells. No channels are reused within a cluster. Figure 4 illustrates a seven-cell cluster.
Figure 4. A Seven-Cell Cluster
Frequency Reuse
Because only a small number of radio channel frequencies were available for mobile systems, engineers had to find a way to reuse radio channels to carry more than one conversation at a time. The solution the industry adopted was called frequency planning or frequency reuse. Frequency reuse was implemented by restructuring the mobile telephone system architecture into the cellular concept.
The concept of frequency reuse is based on assigning to each cell a group of radio channels used within a small geographic area. Cells are assigned a group of channels that is completely different from neighboring cells. The coverage area of cells is called the footprint. This footprint is limited by a boundary so that the same group of channels can be used in different cells that are far enough away from each other so that their frequencies do not interfere
Cells with the same number have the same set of frequencies. Here, because the number of available frequencies is 7, the frequency reuse factor is 1/7. That is, each cell is using 1/7 of available cellular channels.
Cell Splitting
Unfortunately, economic considerations made the concept of creating full systems with many small areas impractical. To overcome this difficulty, system operators developed the idea of cell splitting. As a service area becomes full of users, this approach is used to split a single area into smaller ones. In this way, urban centers can be split into as many areas as necessary to provide acceptable service levels in heavy-traffic regions, while larger, less expensive cells can be used to cover remote rural regions.
