ADVANCED MOBILE PHONE SERVICE - AN OVERVIEW

VIJAYA CHANDRAN RAMASAMI (KUID - 698659)

Abstract. This report describes the architecture and the capacity of the
Advanced Mobile Phone Service.
The Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) was developed in the Bell Labo-
ratories [1] in the mid-70s’. Following a service trial of a fully operational cellular
system at Chicago [2] in 1978, the first commercial systems in the US were in
operation in 1982 and 1983.

1. System Architecture
The AMPS uses a network of cell-sites and switching offices to interface with
the landline network of the existing telephone system and the mobiles. It used the
cellular concept [3] (first proposed by D.H.Ring of the Bell Laboratories in 1947)
with hexagonal cells to divide the total coverage area of the system with no gaps
and no overlaps as shown in Figure - 1.

2. Cell-Sites
The cell-sites were positioned either on the center of the cell (in the start-up
system) and on alternate corners of the cell (in the mature system)[Fig 2]. These
cell-sites covered the mobile users within those specific cells in which they were
present. In the mature system, each cell-site present on the alternate corner of
the cell used directional antennas with a 1200 beam-width to illuminate portions
of the 3 adjacent cells that meet at the cell-site. This arrangement provides spa-
tial radiation diversity and allows more uniform signal coverage in the presence of
propagation obstacles like buildings, hills etc. The use of such directional antennas
rather than Omni-directional ones provides a 4-5dB signal [4] to interference ratio
(SINR) advantage.

Date: September 22, 2000.

Figure 1. The Cellular Concept

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2 VIJAYA CHANDRAN RAMASAMI (KUID - 698659)

Figure 2. The start-up and the mature systems

Figure 3. The Mobile Network Elements

3. Mobile Telecommunications Switching Office (MTSO)

The cell-sites were interconnected with the Mobile Telecommunications Switch-
ing office (MTSO) by means of wires. Voice frequency trunks carried the voice calls
and there were 2.4 kbps data-links between the MTSO and each of the cell-sites for
signaling purposes. [Fig 3]
 ADVANCED MOBILE PHONE SERVICE - AN OVERVIEW 3

4. Frequency of Operation
The AMPS System used a total system bandwidth of 40 MHz in the 800 MHz
band (as allocated by the FCC Docket 18262) [6] with 20 MHz allocated to cell-site
to mobile communication (downlink) and 20 MHz of mobile for cell-site commu-
nication (uplink). The uplink channels used to the 825-845 MHz frequency band
and the downlink channels used the 870-890 MHz frequency band. Each channel
consists of a pair of one way channels separated by 45 MHz. Frequency modulation
was used for communication and the bandwidth per channel was 30 kHz with 12
kHz maximum frequency deviation. This provided a total of 666 available duplex
channels to the system.

5. Frequency Reuse
The AMPS system used the frequency reuse concept in cellular communications,
wherein, the total number of cells are divided into clusters and each cell within
the cluster will be assigned frequencies which are distinct and do no interfere with
the frequencies of the adjacent cells. The same pattern of channel assignment is
repeated in adjacent clusters. The minimum cluster size (N) was determined by
co-channel interference conditions and was directly related to a parameter called
the d/r ratio, where ’d’ is the distance between the cells which reuse the same
channels and ’r’ is the radius of the cell. A value of d/r = 4.6 was found to be
adequate for directional antennas and D/R of 6.0 was required for Omni-directional
antennas to maintain a SINR of 17dB required for a good transmission quality. This
corresponds to a value of N=7 (for directional antennas) and N=12 (for Omni-
directional antennas) which was used as the cluster size in the AMPS system.[Fig
4]

6. Cell Splitting
Since, the separation between cells required to avoid co-channel interference is
a ratio (d/r) and not a specific distance, there can be a large number of cells in a
given area with each cell covering only a small region. In areas where the traffic
density is very high, new cells can be added mid-way between existing cell-sites to
obtain a new pattern of cells with linear dimension half that of the original cell-sites.
Splitting cells in this pattern increases the number of channels, since the small cells
can support as many channels as the large ones, maintaining the same d/r ratio.
By assigning radio channel frequencies
properly, the AMPS system can allow the co-existence of large and small cells.
As customer growth increases, the small cells can be sub-divided further to increase
the system capacity. Spectrum efficiency was achieved in the AMPS system by this
method at the cost of increasing the number of cell sites required for a particular
area.

7. Control Channels
There are two types of control channels:
• Paging - Used to determine whether a mobile is available to receive an
incoming call.
• Access - Used for the complementary function of a mobile originated call
(or) to respond to a paging signal.
4 VIJAYA CHANDRAN RAMASAMI (KUID - 698659)

Figure 4. The Concept of frequency reuse and cell clustering (for N=7)

The highest 21 channels are always used for paging and access and there is a reuse
factor of N for control channels also, which is, in general, different from that of the
voice channels. This frequency reuse factor varies from city to city and is broad-
casted to all the mobiles on the forward setup channels. In the initial system, both
paging and access are done in the same physical channels. But as the system grows,
the no of paging and access channels will be increased to handle the traffic capacity.

8. System Capacity
With the total of 666 duplex channels (40MHz/60kHz) available, we can calculate
the system capacity as follows:
• Omni-directional case -With each cluster having 12 cells, the number of
channels per cell is approximately 56.
• 1200 Directional Antenna case - With each cluster having 7 cells, the num-
ber of channels per cell is approximately 96. Each directional antenna now
handles 32 channels.
It is important to note that this capacity includes the control channels also. In
order to calculate the capacity due to the voice channels alone, we can assume that
the highest 21 channels are always used for control purposes and proceed to derive
the new capacity as 54 channels for the Omni-directional case and 92 channels for
the 1200 directional antennas case.

9. Conclusion
The architecture and the system capacity of the Advanced Mobile Phone Service
have been described.

References
[1] The Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 58, n. 1, Jan 1979 - A comprehensive description of
the Advanced Mobile Phone Service.
[2] “Advanced Mobile Phone Service - The Developmental System”, Duane L Huff, Bell System
Technical Journal , vol. 58, n. 1, pp 249-269, Jan 1979.
[3] “Advanced Mobile Phone Service - The Cellular Concept”, Verne H MacDonald, Bell System
Technical Journal, vol. 58, n. 1, pp 15-41, Jan 1979.
 ADVANCED MOBILE PHONE SERVICE - AN OVERVIEW 5

[4] “Advanced Mobile Phone Service”, Franklin H. Blecher, IEEE Trans. on Vehicular Tech. ,
vol. vt-29, n. 2, pp 238-244, May 1980.
[5] “The Advanced Mobile Phone Service”, Nathan Ehrlich, IEEE Comm. Magazine , pp 9-15,
1979.
[6] “Technology Evolution for Mobile and Personal Communications”, George Zysman et al, Bell
Labs Technical Journal, pp 107-127, Jan-Mar 2000.

EECS Department, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

E-mail address: rvc@rsl.ukans.edu