subject: The Secret Behind Mobile Phones [print this page] The Secret Behind Mobile Phones The Secret Behind Mobile Phones
Almost everyone has a mobile phone nowadays. People are seen fidgeting and playingwith the things everywhere. Some people's lives are tangled up in these gadgets, they are lost without them and may even panicif they cannot find themfor several seconds. Teenagers use mobile phones to keep contact with friends on facebook, working people use them to check email and an array of other things. But how exactly do these contraptions that rule our lives work?
A cell phone is really just a glorified radio. Where a radio or walkie-talkie are only able to use forty channels, a mobile phone has the capacity to use 1664 channels. The mobile phones grid is split up into cells, each of which covers a particular area of the city. These cells do overlap slightly to allow calls to be transferred between cells but without the callers noticing. This transfer process is called a handoff or handover. Because of this a person holding a conversation on a mobile phone can travel a good distance without being cut off, provided obviously they do not move through areas that have no cell coverage.
Since there are a limited number of frequencies available on radio waves, cell bases must use low power transmitters to ensure that bases not far from one another can use the same frequency without interfering with each other's signal.
Each mobile phone has an individual code which identifies it to the network and allows the network to keep tabs on which cell the mobile phone is using and when it is about to have to have a handoff. When you make or receive a call, the network locates your phone and provides it a frequency pair to make use of while it is within that cell.
Sometimes you are moving around whilst making a call and may move into the domain of some other cell. When this happens the adjoining cells coordinate a handoff. Which means that the initial cell realises your signal is diminishing and the new cell realises that your signal is increasing and recognizes that it will need to take over the call. Your phone receives a new pair of frequencies and the call is changed over to the new cell with not a hitch.
Your call is made over radio waves. Each sound you or your call partner make is transmitted to the other phone by means of radio waves. The receiving phone picks up and converts the radio waves into voice patterns once more and you'll hear what is being said to you. This all happens at the speed of sound! Give or take a few micro milliseconds naturally for translation to take place.
Mobile phones are rather intricate items of technology. They do not just send signals to a radio tower and from there to a chosen mobile phone. There is a lot more involved than is covered in this post, it is just way to technical to go into in depth. Next time you use your mobile phone take a moment to appreciate the technology working in a simple little call.
