Wireless Communications

Dr. Y.C. Wu
HKUEEE
ycwu@eee.hku.hk
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1900-1920
Titanic 1912
The titanic radio page http://www.hf.ro/
The Titanic's "wireless" equipment was the most powerful in use at the time.
Need experts to operate (they were known as Marconi wireless operators or
telegraphists).
The wireless radio on ship handle telegrams of passengers, Messages
concerning navigation, and of course distress signal in case of danger.
The telegram messages will be received by nearby ships and onshore stations.
One of the messages: "Come at once. We have struck a berg.
The operators on titanic were still working until about 3 minutes before the vessel
foundered.
One operator Jack Phillips died, and another operator Harold Bride survived
There were in fact two prior telegraph warnings of iceberg from two nearby ships
But the two telegraphs were accidentally missing MSG prefix, which would direct
the message to Titanic's Captain

 Marconi
1901 first success of long distance of radio transmission
1909 won the Nobel prize in physics

Radio wave
Two basic principles of physics:
Changing electric field generates magnetic field
Changing magnetic field generates electric field

Electric field

Dipole antenna
Alternative
current source

Magnetic
field

 Morse code
Each alphabet is represented as a series of dots
and dashes
The wave is turned on and off

1920-1940
Radio (transmission of voice)
A new form of entertainment
Amplitude Modulation (AM)

 Frequency Modulation (FM)

At the receiver, the signal will be multiplied with a clean wave of the
same frequency, then we can get back the signal
The wave is said to be a carrier wave during transmission
The value of carrier frequency is not that important as long as the
transmitter and receiver use the same frequency
Interference can be avoided if different stations use different
frequencies

 Radar (Radio Detection And Ranging)

Basic principle: radio wave will be reflected by objects
The concept was conceived as early as 1917 by Nikola Tesla (a famous
Electrical Engineer developed the alternating current system and motor)

This guy ??

In 1920-1940, researchers from countries around the world developed

technology related to Radar, but in secrecy due to it usefulness in military
Radar played an important role in WWII
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1970 - present
Boom of personal wireless communications
The first mobile phone exists at around 1950, but few people had access to the
service
Major change came when the concept of cellular system was invented
The whole city is divided into cells, with each cell provides services to a small
number of users
Cellular system also allows frequency reuse
The first generation of cellular system Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS)
was deployed in America in 1978
The first generation of mobile phone was manufactured by Motorola

f4 f6
f1 f3

f1 f3

f10 f12

f7 f9

f1 f3
f4 f6
~5000 mobile users
All users sharing 12 channels : f1 - f12

Cellular system

 Radio Frequency Spectrum

Wave is described using frequency
Anywhere between a few KiloHetz to 1000 GigaHetz is considered to be radio
wave

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 Is useable spectrum unlimited? No

Not all frequencies are suitable for wireless communications

Government regularization
Many other applications: Radio, TV broadcast, police, radio astronomy, satellite,
navigation, amateur radio, scientific research,

Auction of spectrum can be very expensive. In 3G spectrum auction, UK alone

raised 22.5 billions. Governments were happy, but many companies lost
money in 3G businesses.
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High resolution version: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/2003-allochrt.pdf

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 Bandwidth and Data Rate

Communication signals occupy certain width in spectrum
In general, the higher the data rate, the larger the bandwidth
The exact relationship between data rate and bandwidth depends on a number
of other factors, (e.g., modulation, number of antennas) thus complicated
E.g., 4G signals occupy 5-20MHz depending on the operating mode, whereas
2G GSM signals occupy only 200kHz
Narrowband vs broadband
On the other hand, data rate is how many bit you can send through the system
per second, e.g, Peak data rate of 3G is 2Mbps, while that of 4G claims to be
100Mbps
In the Internet, the definition of bandwidth is usually mistakenly confused with
data rate (however data rate is most people concern about)
The advertised data rate is the peak rate that you can get for the last leg of
connection. Therefore, the actual data rate you get would be much smaller.

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 A little bit about digital transmissions

AM and FM are analog transmissions
The original waveform is directly modulated onto the carrier wave
In digital transmission, it is the digital data (0 and 1) being modulated onto the
carrier wave
The original signal (e.g., voice) first need to go through sampling, and then
each sample is represented using a series of 0 and 1

10110110

00100111
There are many other methods for
modulating digital data onto carrier
wave, giving rise to different generations
of wireless systems
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15

Latest creative
use of cell phone
(from Time magazine 19 Oct 2015 issue)

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In Daily Life
Specifications of a WiFi router:

From Wikipedia:

IEEE 802.11ac is a wireless computer networking standard of 802.11, currently

under development (Draft 4.0[1]), providing high-throughput wireless local area
networks on the 5 GHz band.[1] Standard finalization is in late 2012, with final
802.11 Working Group approval in late 2013.[1] According to a study, devices with
the 802.11ac specification are expected to be common by 2015 with an estimated
one billion spread around the world.[2]
Theoretically, this specification will enable multi-station WLAN throughput of at least
1 gigabit per second and a maximum single link throughput of at least 500 megabits
per second (500 Mbit/s). This is accomplished by extending the air interface
concepts embraced by 802.11n: wider RF bandwidth (up to 160 MHz), more MIMO
spatial streams (up to 8), multi-user MIMO, and high-density modulation (up to 256
QAM).
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From: https://www.apple.com/hk/en/iphone/specs.html
LTE bands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks

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News in market

Truth or Lie ?

(Hong Kong, 28 August 2012) SmarTone today announced the

activation of its 4G network in Hong Kong. Operating fully on the
1800MHz band, SmarTones 4G will be able to leverage on the
superior in-building penetration of that frequency over the 2600MHz
band largely relied on by other networks in Hong Kong. Customers
will now be able to enjoy even faster downloads and uploads for all
mobile Internet applications.
SmarTone was among the first in the world to commit to 1800MHz
as it understood that lower frequency bands are better for customers
in Hong Kongs densely built-up environment. Operators globally are
now implementing 4G in lower frequencies, making 1800MHz a key
frequency band. All current 4G smartphones available in Hong Kong
support 1800MHz and this will continue into the future.

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 Questions from a fund manager on 13

Sep 2012:
can u summarize the difference between different spectrum (telecom)?
how many spectrum r there? commercial available? why there r different
spectrum? for 2G, 3G & 4G? any difference?
For the following figure:

these spectrum not exclusively operated by those operators?

there are different bandwidth in any typical spectrum? (say 20MHZ, 40
MHZ bandwidth in 800 MHZ?) or different spectrum in any typical
bandwidth? (say 800MHZ, 900 MHZ in 20 MHZ bandwidth?)

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 Seems all operators have spectrum on 1800MHZ--why news say only Smartone
has 4G LTE 1800 MHZ spectrum?

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References

Titanic on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wTlureUMP8

The Titanic radio page

http://www.hf.ro/

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1909

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1909/marconi.html

Guglielmo Marconi and the invention of radio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM3JEUk6Q2s

Morse code demonstration on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_icJLmsFNU&feature=related

The beginning of Commercial Radio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQANmy2Wcpc

Nikola Tesla on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcuZP3R1HQY

History of Radar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTBdtZ5C16E

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AT&T Archives: Testing the First Cell Phone Network (Bonus Edition)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMQa9AgDmCU

Spectrum Auction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction

Different generations of wireless systems in 5 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3k5Iic4pWI

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