Cell phones transmit and detect radio or microwave energy.
How do Cell Phones Work?
When a mobile phone is switched on, its radio receiver finds a nearby mobile phone network base station, and its transmitter sends a request for service. Computers in the base station check if the phone is allowed to use the network. The base station covers an area called a cell. A phone can move between different cells, but will only communicate with one cell at a time. This is why mobile communications are sometimes called cellular communications.
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How Do Cell Phones Work Exactly?
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- A microchip inside the phone turns these signals into strings of digitized numbers which are basically coded 1’s and 0’s. The numbers are packed up into a radio wave and transmitted from the phone's antenna.
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- If each phone call uses a slightly different frequency, the calls are easy to keep separate. That's fine if there are only a few people calling at once. But suppose you're in the middle of a big city and millions of people are all calling at once. Then you'd need just as many millions of separate frequencies—more than are usually available.
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Network Basics: 3G, 4G and 5G?
The “G” stands for generation, meaning 5G is the most current generation of cell phone network coverage and speeds. 3G technology created the first networks fast enough to make smartphones practical. Before that, cell phones were too slow to allow you do all the things that make smartphones great, like streaming videos, surfing the web and downloading music. Using a 4G smartphone means you can download files from the Internet up to 10 times faster than with 3G. 5G is the next stage in building a better network. 5G runs on a much higher frequency than 4G, which provides users with a much larger bandwidth.
Topic Tips
- Cell phones transmit and detect radio or microwave energy.