Mobile Computing

Radio Frequency (RF) Technology

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V i j a y K u m a r
C o m p u t e r S c i e n c e
U n i v e r s i t y o f M i s s o u r i - K a n s a s C i t y
K a n s a s C i t y , M O 6 4 1 1 0 , U S A .
k u m a r @ c s t p . u m k c . e d u
 References
1. Wireless Communications; Principles and Practice by Theodore S. Rappaport. Prentice
Hall, 1996.
2. Internerwork Mobility. The CDPD approach, by Mark S. Taylor, William Waung, and
Moshen Banan. Prentice Hall, PTR, 1997.
3. Mobile Telecommunications Networking by Michael Gallagher and Randall Snyder.
McGraw-Hill, 1997.
4. Wireless and Mobile Network Architectures, by Yi-Bing Lin and Imrich Chlamtac. John
Wiley, 2001.

2 © Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

Electromagnetic Spectrum
Electromagnetic waves move through free space and are excellent carriers of information.
By attaching an antenna of the appropriate size to an electrical circuit, the electromagnetic waves
can be broadcast and can be received by another antenna, which could be located far away. The
electromagnetic waves can be categorized on the basis of its frequency. This categorization is
called electromagnetic spectrum as illustrated in the following figure (taken from Tanenbaum
Computer Networks).

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
f(Hz) 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Radio Microwave Infrared UV X-ray Gamma ray

Visible light

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
f(Hz) 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Twisted pair Satellite Fiber
Coax optics
Terrestrial
AM FM microwave
Maritine Radio Radio

TV

Band LF MF HF VHF UHF SHF EHT THF

Figure 6: Electromagnetic Spectrum

RF (Radio Frequency) Basics and History
These electromagnetic waves can be used for information transmission by amplitude or
frequency or phase modulation. Higher frequency waves such as UV, X-ray, etc., are even
better, however, they are hard to produce and modulate, do not propagate well through physical
objects such as buildings, etc., and moreover they are dangerous to living things.
The amount of information that an electromagnetic wave can carry is related to its
bandwidth. From telecommunication view point the term bandwidth refers to the capacity of
communication equipment or network service in terms of bits per second. For example, a router
or communication switch may have a bandwidth of 1.544 Mbps (million bits per second). In
wireless, however, bandwidth refers to the range of frequencies available or allowed that could
be used for transmission. A bandwidth can be viewed in terms of a diameter of a tube. If the
diameter is wider the capacity of the tube to carry larger amount of fluid is larger. Thus a higher
bandwidth channel can carry larger amount of information. For example, television has a very
wide bandwidth of 6000 KHz because it has to carry audio, video, closed captioning, and other
signals. Bandwidths are assigned by the FCC or by the spectrum regulating body.
As shown in the diagram, the radio transmission starts at a Very Low Frequency (VLF)
range. These are very long waves. Waves in the Low Frequency (LF) range are used by
submarines because they can penetrate water and can follow the earth's surface. The Medium
Frequency (MF) and High Frequency (HF) ranges are typical of transmission of hundreds of
radio stations either as amplitude modulation (AM) between 520 kHz and 1605.5 kHz, as Short
Wave (SW) between 5.9 MHz and 26.1 MHz, or as frequency modulation (FM) between 87.5

3 © Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

MHz and 108 MHz. The frequencies limiting these ranges are typically fixed by national
regulation and, thus, vary from country to country. Short Waves (SF) are typically used for
(amateur) radio transmission around the world, enabled by reflection at the ionosphere. Transmit
power is up to 500 kW, which is quite high compared to 1 W of a mobile phone.
Conventional analogue TV is transmitted in ranges of 174-230 MHz and 470-790 MHz using
the Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) bands. In this range,
digital audio broadcasting (DAB) takes place as well (223-230 MHz and 1452-1472 MHz) and
digital TV is planned (470-862 MHz), reusing some of the old frequencies for analog TV. UHF
is also used for mobile phones with analog technology (450-465 MHz), the digital GSM (890-
960 MHz, 1710-1880 MHz), digital cordless telephones following the DECT standard (1880-
1900 MHz) and many more. VHF and especially UHF allow for small antennas and relatively
reliable connections for mobile telephony.
Super High Frequencies (SHF) are typically used for directed microwave links (approx. 2-40
GHz) and fixed satellite services in the C-band (4 to 6 GHz), ku-band (11 and 14 GHz), or ka-
band (19 and 29 GHz). Some systems are planned in the Extremely High Frequency (EHF)
range, which comes close to infrared.
The next step into higher frequencies involves optical transmission, which is not only used
for fiber optical links but also for wireless communications. Infrared (IR) transmission is used
for direct links, e.g., to connect different buildings via laser links. The most widespread IR
technology, infrared data association (IrDA), uses wavelengths of approximately 850-900 nm to
connect laptops, PDAs, etc. Finally, visible light is not very reliable due to interference, it is
nevertheless useful due to built-in human receivers.
Table 1 gives some examples for frequencies used for (analog and digital) mobile phones,
cordless telephones, and wireless LANs for countries in the three regions. Older systems like
Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) are not available all over Europe, and sometimes they have
been standardized with different national frequencies. The newer systems (digital) are
compatible throughout Europe (standardized by ETSI).
Europe is heavily dominated by the common fully digital GSM at 900 MHz and 1800 MHz
(also known as DCS1800, Digital Cellular System). In contrast to Europe, the US FCC allowed
several cellular technologies in the same frequency bands around 850 MHz. Starting from the
Analog Advanced Mobile System (AMPS), this led to the co-existence of several solutions, such
as dual mode mobile phones supporting digital time division multiple access (TDMA) service
and analog AMPS according to the standard IS-54. Furthermore, all digital TDMA phones
according to IS-136 (also known as NA (North American)-TDMA) and digital code division
multiple access (CDMA) phones according to IS-95 have been developed. Thus the US did not
adopt a common mobile phone system but waited for market force to decide. This led to many
islands of different systems, and consequently full coverage, as in Europe, is not available in the
US. The Personal Digital Cellular (PDC), formerly known as Japanese Digital Cellular (JDC)
was established in Japan. The first mobile phones covering all systems around the world were
announced for late 1999.
Similar to mobile phone standards, many different cordless telephone standards exist around
the world. Some older analog systems such as Cordless Telephone (CT1+) are still in use, but
frequently digital technology has been introduced for cordless telephones as well. Examples
include CT2 as the first digital cordless telephone introduced in the UK, Digital Enhanced

4 © Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

Communication Telecommunications (DECT) as a European standard, Personal Access
Communications System (PACS) and PACS-Unlicensed Band (PACS-UB) in the US, as well as
Personal Handyphone System (PHS) as replacement for the analog Japanese Cordless Telephone
(JCT) in Japan.
Table 1. Examples of frequency allocations
Europe US Japan
Mobile Phones NMT AMPS, TDMA, CDMA PDC
453-457 MHz, 824-849 MHz, 810-826 MHz,
463-467 MHz; 869-894 MHz; 940-956 MHz,
1429-1465 MHz,
GSM GSM, TDMA, CDMA 1477-1513 MHz.
890-915 MHz, 1850-1910 MHz,
935-960 MHz, 1930-1990 MHz;
1710-1785 MHz,
1805-1880 MHz.
CT1+ PACS PHS
Cordless phones 885-887 MHz, 1850-1910 MHz, 1895-1918 MHz;
930-932 MHz; 1930-1990 MHz;
CT2 PACS-UB JCT
864-868 MHz; 1910-1930 MHz; 254-380 MHz;
DECT
1880-1900 MHz;
IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.11
Wireless LAN 2400-2483 MHz; 2400-2483 MHz. 2471-2497 MHz.
HIPERLAN 1
5176-5270 MHz.
(Taken from Mobile Communications by Jochen Schiller)
Acronyms: NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone), PDC (Pacific Digital Cellular),
PACS (Personal Access Communications System), PHS (Personal Handyphone System),
PACS-UB (PACS Unlicensed Band), JCT (Japanese Cordless Telephone).

Channel: A channel represents a frequency and a bandwidth. Usually for wireless

communication network designers break the channel bandwidth into two parts (a) uplink channel
and (b) downlink channel. In a wireless client/server architecture the server uses downlink
channel to communicate with the client and the client uses uplink channel. ARDIS's public
shared packet radio network in USA, for example, uses 802-821 MHz for its uplink (terminal to
the network) and 851-866 MHz for its downlink (network to terminal). Cordless phone operates
in the 46 to 69 MHz frequency range.
Wideband and Narrowband: These terms refer to the width of a band rather than the specific
spectrum range allocated to a user. It is a relative term used in the context of a discussion. A
bandwidth of 30 MHz allocated for a packet radio networks such as ARDIS or RAM is a
wideband compared to the narrowband 30 KHz bandwidth allocated to cellular network. On the
other hand, the 30 KHz bandwidth of cellular phones is relatively a wideband compared to, say,
the 10 KHz allocated to another use for some other purpose.
Radio waves are used for transmission for the following reasons:
• Easy to generate.
• Can travel long distance.
• Can penetrate easily.
• Can reflect from physical obstacles.

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 • Are omnidirectional
The properties of radio waves are frequency dependent. At low frequencies, radio waves
pass through obstacles well, but the power falls off sharply with distance from the source. At
high frequencies, radio waves tend to travel in straight lines and bounce off obstacles. They are
also absorbed by rain. At all frequencies, radio waves are subject to interference from motors
and other electrical equipment.

6 © Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA