COM1204 Spring 2001 -- Cellular Telephone Technology

Introduction

When you do simulation, you have to understand something about the system you're simulating -- pretty obvious. In our case, we're simulating a cellular phone system, so I've assembled information and links here to help us understand these systems.

Books -- Hardcopy and on-line

Most of the books that I've found in this field are focused on the engineering aspects of the low-level RF signalling technology. But in this course, we're focusing on a level higher than this -- primarily on the control signals that pass back and forth which determine dialing, connections, hang-ups, etc. One book that I have found that covers these topics reasonably well is the following:

Wireless Personal Communications Systems by David J. Goodman. ISBN 0-201-63470-8, 448 pages, Hardcover, 1997.
This book is part of the Addison-Wesley Wireless Communications Series
More details here.

The following are links or copies cached on the CCS sites of overviews of cellular technology.

• Telecommunications Systems: An Introductory Guide by Steven Glass, February 1997 (cached copy).



• Wireless Networks: How Cellular Phone Technologies Compare from the University of Washington (cached copy). Simple and colorfully illustrated.



• Overview of the Global System for Mobile Communications by John Scourias, U. of Waterloo (Canada).



• A colorful (too colorful?) collection of cellular phones info and links by Shelly Bortz and Jenny Cheever at Iowa State.

Our "wireless system"

NEW -- ON SUNDAY, APRIL 8 2001

Two important additions have been made to the site:

• CELLULAR TELEPHONE BASICS: AMPS & BEYOND BY TOM FARLEY. This is a fourteen page introduction to cell phone systems. (I would have had this to you earlier, but his site vanished for many weeks and when it came up I grabbed the pages and images for us, so as insurance, here is a copy cached at CCS.)



• Here is a figure, with some explanations, that demonstrates the signals passed when a call originates at the cell phone (the "terminal").



• Here is a second figure, with some explanations, that demonstrates the signals passed when a call originates at a remote phone, directed toward the cell phone.

Note that the Use and Ether are not explicitly modeled in either of the figures referred to above. But they are necessary for our simulation and implicit in the figures. The "channels" referred to are both RF circuitry in the Base Station and Phone as well as being RF signals passing through the ether (or air, if you like).

To do an interesting simulation of a wireless system, we need to have a simple model of a wireless cell phone system. To this end, I've designed one which strips out many details yet retains the "essence" of such a system. Here's the page that discusses this. [Still in preparation, but the new material above should help]

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