How do Mobile Phones work?

The Beginning:
On a typical sunny morning in New York on April 3, 1973, a petite young man called up his friend who happened to work at a research and development organisation. It appeared to be an ordinary phone call, the only difference was that, it was covered by a swarm of reporters. This dear readers was the first ever phone call made using a phone that was mobile – a mobile phone. It was Motorola’s Dr. Martin Cooper who made the first call using a mobile phone to Bell Labs head of research Dr. Joel S. Engel from the streets of New York city. The mobile phone has come a really long way since that sunlit morning.

A few decades back, did any of us even dream of a single gadget that has everything in it but the kitchen sink? Mobile phones – how much they’ve changed the way we see life..Have you ever wondered how our voices fly through our mobile phone to reach even the tiniest crevice on earth? How do mobile phones actually work? Well, it’s not all that a big deal, we assure you. Here it goes.

After Alexander Graham Bell first invented the telephone in 1876, it was only a matter of time for it to wed wireless communication that lifted its head first in the 1880s. A mobile phone as we know it does not have any wires whatsoever sticking out form it. So how does it carry our voices? Mobile phones convert the voice signals they receive in to radio frequency waves that can travel through air at the speed of light.

How can you turn a voice signal into radio waves?
The most important changeover that has to take place for our voice to travel in air is the conversion of our voice to radio waves. And this takes place with the help of the tiny microphone that’s present inside the handset. When we say, “Hello” into our mobile phone, for example, the modulations of the sound is converted into corresponding electrical signals that mimic the same pattern. With the help of a microchip present inside the handset, the information in this signal further undergoes a conversion which is then transmitted from the antenna of the mobile phone.

The Mobile Radio:
A mobile phone functions like a two-way radio that consists of a transmitter to beam out signals and a receiver to receive the incoming signals. This radio cannot work without a base station. It can even be said that without base stations, mobiles phones are as good as toys. A base station is basically a radio receiver or transmitter that acts as a bridge between two mobile phones in conversation. The minute a  mobile phone is switched on, it gets connected to its nearest base station.

How does the signal travel?
So, when Sam who is on Vodafone talks to Lizzy through his mobile phone who is on T-Mobile, his call first reaches the nearest base station in the form of radio waves. The base station then transfers the radio waves to a digital telephone exchange which is then sent to the main telephone network. The waves are now routed to Lizzy’s mobile phone, which is again done through a base station. However, were Sam and Lizzy on the same network, the signal travels simply from the base station closest to Sams’s, then over to the one closest to Lizzzy’s and then to her handset itself.

The Cell Concept:
Since it was told that a mobile phone houses a transmitter and a receiver, the necessity of base stations is bound to be questioned. Can’t our handsets communicate by simply transmitting and receiving signals directly without an intermediate bridge? Certainly. But they would weigh hundreds of pounds and we would need to hire a separate cab just to transport our mobile phones! This is why we need base stations – to make mobile phones ‘mobile’.

In a city as vast as London, millions of people would wish to use their mobile phones at the same instance. Wouldn’t the Brobdingnagian assortment of radio waves scramble together and go bust, making it impossible for us to make calls? This is why a city is divided into several ‘cells’, each of which has a base station at its centre. Cells are generally about 26 square kilometers in size and are regarded to be hexagons that are part of a huge hexagonal grid.

What happens when we walk and talk?
Now that we know that all of us are part of a huge hexagonal maze, it’s a wonder how this maze handles several millions of calls without making a face, huh? Well, when it’s so well-equipped, handling our calls is bound to be a walk in the park. In a gigantic city, all of the base stations function like a family holding hands, passing on the signals from one to the other.

When Sam is driving along the busy streets of London, all the while talking through his mobile phone, he doesn’t know that there’s a group of base stations ably passing on his signal from one to the other. There’s no stress what so ever, on any base station, for a signal generally need not travel farther than it’s neighbour. More the number of cells, more is the number of calls that can be made. Though a particular cell hosts only one base station, additional antennas are installed in densely populated areas to handle more calls.

Further Reading:
How Mobile Phone Networks Work
How Cell Phones Work - Howstuffworks
Mobile Phones: Just How Do They Work? – Keep Talking
How do mobile phones work? – The Vodafone website

Compare Mobile Phone Prices

BlackBerry Torch 9800

• 1000 Minutes
• Unlimited Texts
• 500 MB
• 24 Months

• £30.00/Month
• 

Sony Ericsson Xperia arc

• 600 Minutes
• 500 MB
• Unlimited Texts
• 24 Months

• £30.00/Month
• 

Samsung Galaxy S II

• 900 Minutes
• Unlimited Texts
• 500 MB

• £31.00/Month
• 

Comments