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Private Line covers what has occurred, is occurring, and will ocurr in telecommunications. Since communication technology constantly changes, you can expect new content posted regularly.

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Thomas Farely

Tom has produced privateline.com since 1995. He is now a freelance technology writer who contributes regularly to the site.

His knowledge of telecommunications has served, most notably, the American Heritage Invention and Technology Magazine and The History Channel.
His interview on Alexander Graham Bell will air on the History Channel the end of 2006.

Ken Schmidt

Ken is a licensed attorney who has worked in the tower industry for seven years. He has managed the development of broadcast towers nationwide and developed and built cell towers.

He has been quoted in newspapers and magazines on issues regarding cell towers and has spoke at industry and non-industry conferences on cell tower related issues.

He is recognized as an expert on cell tower leases and due diligence processes for tower acquisitions.

« Multipath equalization | | Discontinuous transmission »

January 17, 2006

Posted by Tom Farley & Mark van der Hoek at 12:54 PM

Frequency hopping

The mobile station already has to be frequency agile, meaning it can move between a transmit, receive, and monitor time slot within one TDMA frame, which normally are on different frequencies. GSM makes use of this inherent frequency agility to implement slow frequency hopping, where the mobile and BTS transmit each TDMA frame on a different carrier frequency. The frequency hopping algorithm is broadcast on the Broadcast Control Channel. Since multipath fading is dependent on carrier frequency, slow frequency hopping helps alleviate the problem. In addition, co-channel interference is in effect randomized.

Here's a huge difference between conventional cellular (IS-136) and GSM: frequency hopping. When enabled, slots within frames can leapfrog from one frequency to another. In IS-136, by comparison, once assigned a channel your call stays on that pair of radio frequencies until the call is over or you have moved to another cell.

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