Those Big Antenna Bois You See Everywhere
Cell Towers
Most people take for granted the large industrial spires that appear here and there on mountains or nearby highways. Maybe even think they’re an eyesore. But cell phone towers help connect our modern smartphones and technology in our incredibly interconnected world. Each tower covers a cell, typically in a hexagonal shape, that supply coverage. To handle multiple calls, the cell towers must communicate with each other to ensure calls on the same frequency are handled by different towers. These towers must support a variety of network types like CDMA and GSM to work with modern carriers like Verizon and AT&T. In fact, these competitors can work together and use the same towers to provide their service, like with their recent deal to use Tillman Infrastructure to build cell phone towers.
The basic structure of this network is a mobile phone connecting to a base station (cell site). Radio waves transfer signals to and from the cell phone. To manage the limited number of radio frequencies, cell-sites and handsets change frequencies to many callers can use them. These networks can get overwhelmed in emergency situations, which makes service’s like FireChat peer-to-peer chat service so vital. This app uses a Bluetooth (Low Energy) connection to connect two smartphones. Through this, user A can communicate to user B, as well as utilize a cellular connection. Theoretically, a user on one side of town can power a user on the other side of town of multiple people are using the app. By reducing the number of nodes in the cellular connection graph, the network has less congestion and can better perform.
Source: Infrastructure
Source: FireChat App
Source: Cellular NetworksÂ