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FCC: Spectrum Crunch Looming Sooner than Thought

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? for Cellstudent. . .

Jayshmay

Oct 21, 2010, 3:22 PM
With reguards to high demand for mobile broadband (*real* broadband) are people ?constantly? sending/receiving data to cell towers? The FCC & wireless companies act like there are people transmitting data constantly from the cell towers.
Plus the newer technologies WiMax/LTE are supposed to have multiple input/multiple output (MIMO), which is suppose to handle traffic so much better.

I'm just wondering, are cell towers at capacity 24/7/365?
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CellStudent

Oct 21, 2010, 3:44 PM
Jayshmay said:
With reguards to high demand for mobile broadband (*real* broadband) are people ?constantly? sending/receiving data to cell towers? The FCC & wireless companies act like there are people transmitting data constantly from the cell towers.
Plus the newer technologies WiMax/LTE are supposed to have multiple input/multiple output (MIMO), which is suppose to handle traffic so much better.

I'm just wondering, are cell towers at capacity 24/7/365?


Yes, all handsets are constantly signaling the network (pinging) to do a couple of things like:
a)tell the network which tower you're on
b)look to see if there is a call or SMS coming through with your name on it.

You can't have push-services unl...
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Jayshmay

Oct 21, 2010, 3:53 PM
Good post thanks.

One thing though, this pinging is only for a short second. Whereas a phone call, or streaming video, is constant in comparison. So I would thing watching videos uses the spectrum more than just pinging.
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CellStudent

Oct 21, 2010, 4:09 PM
Jayshmay said:
I would thing watching videos uses the spectrum more than just pinging.


Of course it does, but even when you're just pinging you're occupying a channel that could otherwise be used for a constant stream of data to an individual (or group of individuals). It is true that hundreds of users can share a single channeling path, but there have to be gaps of silence between each ping from each handset so the tower doesn't get cross-talk from two overlapping signals and have no idea what to do with them. Because of the space required between signal pings, overhead signaling channels function at a much lower efficiency then the streaming channels do.

If the signaling channels get overloaded, the ...
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Jayshmay

Oct 21, 2010, 4:27 PM
Another ? about pinging. Your talking about checking for txt, emails, and IMs, all of which are very, very small amounts of data, at. 50kb's at the very most. So I guess I'm having a little bit of a hard time understanding the umm strectral hardship.
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CellStudent

Oct 21, 2010, 6:02 PM
You're still tied up under the thinking that volume of data is what matters. That's not what matters. Each ping on the network is way less then 50kb. It's more like 0.1 to 0.15 kb, only about 150 bits (not bytes).

CDMA systems typically have 1 signal channel to support about 30 active, streaming channels. In the 1900 MHz band (the only data I could find oh short notice) a signal channel can process data at about 4800 bits per second. If there were no "dead zones" required for pinging, like I mentioned earlier, that gives a maximum theoretical capacity of 36 "idle" signals processed every second. That's not very many pings. This is why there are lots of signaling channels.

Now things should start to make sense conceptually. If e...
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Jayshmay

Oct 21, 2010, 6:09 PM
Dude, your way advanced! I try my best to follow.

So are you going to school for wireless networking? You gotta be good at math for that. Me and math don't get along!
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slolearner

Oct 21, 2010, 7:10 PM
For people (like myself) interested in all this goodness, but not yet well learned, is there a book that you would recommend reading?
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Jayshmay

Oct 21, 2010, 9:53 PM
I think maybe you meant to ask Cellstudent that question.
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slolearner

Oct 22, 2010, 3:14 PM
Indubitably!
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WiWavelength

Oct 21, 2010, 8:58 PM
CellStudent said:
CDMA systems typically have 1 signal channel to support about 30 active, streaming channels. In the 1900 MHz band (the only data I could find oh short notice) a signal channel can process data at about 4800 bits per second. If there were no "dead zones" required for pinging, like I mentioned earlier, that gives a maximum theoretical capacity of 36 "idle" signals processed every second. That's not very many pings. This is why there are lots of signaling channels.

Now things should start to make sense conceptually. If each handset only pings once per second, then 36 phones can use one signaling channel. If three of those users all of a sudden start pinging 5 times per second instead of once per se
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CellStudent

Oct 22, 2010, 9:06 AM
I appreciate the clarification. Thanks! Your description varies slightly from the few IEEE articles I pulled putting that original thought together, but the primary article I looked at was focusing on boundary conditions for CDMA when a mobile is travelling along the SID/NID boundary and excessive pinging is expected between SIDs. So, yes, I am painting kind of a worst case scenario for pinging. Yours is more realistic.

While my values are clearly less useful than yours, I think I got the main idea across to an audience that has no idea what you or I are really talking about: smartphone signalling is a big impactor and smartphones can easily consume 5x - 100x the signalling bandwidth of a conventional handset due to individual apps hav...
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Arjuun

Oct 22, 2010, 9:25 AM
just want to say i understand what you guys are saying for the majority 85% and the mathe is the asty part and it does halp understand the inharent issues with the system
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Azeron

Oct 22, 2010, 3:22 PM
Either you were typing in the dark or...
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Azeron

Oct 22, 2010, 3:23 PM
Excellent! Welcome back.
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ecycled

Oct 22, 2010, 10:10 AM
Great post, super fun.

Tech nerds unite!
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