What is a cell site and why should we care?
We live in a world where our cellphones are smart enough to do everything we need in order to be up to date with internet memes, chatting, video calls, editing documents with our coworkers/classmates, printing files, ordering something from a website to coding (!).
Honestly, when I talk to someone, I would be impressed if this person say that they own a PC that is not being used for video games. I don’t really play video games, never got into it. I have this addictive behavior where if I start something fun, I won’t stop doing it until I throw up – hence I quit most of real-time chat programs (such as Internet Relay Chat), or playing video games.
Back to cell site topic. Our phones play important role in feeding our addiction with the FOMO culture. We want everything fast and faster and in real-time if we could. What is the difference between Micro seconds and Nano seconds anyway? We need to go faster than that. Pico seconds delay is unacceptable!
Sorry I went off tangent again with cell site. So, as a hardware architect, we have to figure out the latest and greatest hardware we need to put in a cell site so it could radiate the best and fastest technology so your phone could do a “handshake” and benefit from those technologies and by having appropriate hardware/software architecture so you could send the memes to your friends faster than a speed of light.
Can you be more obvious, please?
You probably heard about electromagnetic spectrum. It is a complete range of all of types of radiation in our universe. You might be familiar with the term of Infrared, Ultraviolet, Microwave, Gamma Rays, etc. However, not all of the electromagnetic waves are dangerous for us. Some of the waves are visible, some are not – it’s all depend on the range of frequency and wavelengths.
Protips: The higher the frequencies, the more dangerous they usually are. Higher frequency related to the wave length itself. High Frequencies means shorter wavelengths and the waves does not propagate nicely, meaning you have to be super close to it to get radiated.
Based on the diagram shown above, we can see how the wavelengths/frequencies are divided into several categories; Radio, Microwave, Infrared, etc. If you pay attention to the wavelength, right side of the arrow corresponds to long wavelength, and left side of the arrow corresponds to short wavelength. As I mentioned above. Short wavelength = high frequencies = does not propagate for shit = danger, more damaging.
Now when we talk about smartphones, cell sites, memes and stuff. We are talking the range of electromagnetic spectrums from Radio to Microwave. Which roughly from 600MHz to 300GHz. In Telecom world, we called those FR1 (Frequency Range 1 = less than 6GHz) and FR2 (Frequency Range 2 = 6GHz – to 300GHz).
As operators (see T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T), guess where they spend their most money on? They would spend BILLIONS on purchasing Electromagnetic Spectrums from the FCC. For these operators, they only interest in 600MHz – 300GHz. So say, T-Mobile has license to majority of 2.5GHz (Band 41) spectrum (up to 180MHz Bandwidth), then T-Mobile customers will get the best experience to browse their internet with the speed that 2.5GHz B41 provided. It has nice propagation and decent capacity/speed.
Behind the scene, what did the engineers do with the license to specific electromagnetic spectrum? How did they translate that to best customers experience with fast and faster 5G technology?
I’ll post more! Time for some midnight ramen.
Olce's Brain Dumpster 