Free Essay Sample: Cellular Network

Rapid technological advancements have made it easier for anyone to have their own cellular network or cell company, popularly known as Micro Telco. With the right technical information and skills, one can easily be on their way to growing the future AT&T. This paper entails the process of deploying a cellular network in an SME of 100 employees. Typically, companies with more than fifty employees incur heavy costs on telephone bills as the employees have to communicate with another and coordinate activities from one department to the other. In a business world that is highly competitive and dynamic, it is paramount that any business keeps operational costs as low as possible so as to remain competitive in the market. One of the ways of doing that is by deploying a cellular network. The deployment of a cellular network will ensure that the company no longer has to incur phone bills as it will be operating its own telecom company. Although there are several legal and technical hurdles to this endeavor, this report entails a thorough guide into how to overcome them and deploy the network successfully. While large Telecommunications companies may not be able to justify their expenses for installation of their expensive cellular network, small Telcos can use low cost cellular installations to provide basic communication services.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Deon Advertisements is a marketing company that specializes in developing marketing strategies for companies seeking to expand their customer base. the company is located in Los Angeles and has 103 employees. All the employees are employed on a full-time basis. The company was established was established in the 1990s with a workforce of five employees. At that time, most of the advertising was analogue and was based on print and TV content. Over time, the company grew to one hundred employees by 2007.

Typically, marketing agencies and salemen heavily rely on telephone communications to make deals. One study shows that an average marketer uses about $500 per month. Most of the calls made involve interdepartmental communications while less than 40% are made to clients and potential clients. The high use of telephone calls for interdepartmental communication is critical to Deon Advertisements since it saves time and ensures that decisions are made faster. Research has shown that increasing the speed of making decisions could make a huge difference by increasing competitive advantage. Therefore, the significance of telephone communications for Deon Advertisements cannot be underscored enough.

Deon Advertisements was chosen for this project because it represents a perfect example of how implementation of a cellular network in an organization can make a huge difference to the performance of a business. These differences are brought about by increased efficiency due to seamless flow of data, faster interdepartmental communication, and reduced operational costs. The section below entails the requirements for implementing a cellular network for Deon Advertisements.

Concept of Cellular Network

A cellular network refers to a connection or link that is wireless. Typically, the area covered by the network connection is divided into cells which obtain their connection from a transreceiver or base stations in one fixed location (Miao et al., 2016). The base stations provide the cell with the connection needed to transmit voice calls, data, among other things. In order to avoid interference, a cell utilizes frequencies from neighboring cells which guarantees seamless service (Miao et al., 2016). Combining several cells provides radio coverage to a given area. The radio coverage in turn makes it possible for portable transreceivers like phones and laptops to transmit data to each other. Also, the transreceivers can transmit to other fixed transreceivers provided they are within the proximity of the radio coverage (Miao et al., 2016).

The general architecture of a cellular network includes a mobile station (MS), a base station (BS), a mobile switching center (MSC), and national carrier exchange (NCE).

The mobile station refers to devices like the mobile phone and laptops. The base station is the total area of coverage which is divided to cells. Each base station communicates with all mobile stations in the cells and then reroutes the traffic to the mobile switching center. The mobile switching center controls a cluster of cells and arranges the frequency channels in the base station in a manner that allows connections. The final component is the national carrier exchange which handles all the connections and the gateway to the national fixed public switched telephone network (PSTN) (Pauli et al., 2010).

For a small business looking to cut costs and gain competitive advantage, a cellular network provides several benefits that include increased capacity than in one big transmitter because one frequency is utilized for several connections provided they come from different cells. Also, mobile phones have higher power efficiency than in one transmitter because the distance from the cell tower is shorter. Further, a business benefits from a larger coverage area because more cell towers can be incorporated into the network indefinitely (Lee, 1989).

According to Lee (1989), the coverage area is subdivided into cells using a pattern that is dependent on the reception characteristics and terrain of the area. Typically, the patterns are shapes like hexagons, circles, and squares. The cells are then assigned a set of frequencies like in the form f1-f6.

The increased performance of cellular networks than a single transmitter is based on Amos Joel's principle of mobile communication switching system (Joel Jnr, 2002). The system was developed in Bell Labs and enabled the users to utilize one frequency by switching calls to the available cell tower in the proximity that has a similar frequency. This principle makes cellular networks advantageous because a certain frequency in one area can be reused in another area for a completely different transmission. However, there is a certain level of interference, that is arguably inevitable, from other cells using similar frequency. Therefore, there should be a gap known as a "cell gap" between the cells using a similar frequency (Joel Jnr, 2002).

Requirements for Cellular Network

Cellular Tower

A cellular tower can be created from a radio broadcaster provided it emits the right frequencies. The software-defined radio should have the capability to meet all the communication protocols for it to enable signal reception. With increase in technological advancements, there are various tools that can be used to fulfill this objective but the most suitable one is bladeRF x40 which costs about $450.

Antenna

In case the signal from the radio broadcaster is not strong enough, an antenna or a DAS system installation should be incorporated. It is important to note that the quality of the antenna determines the extent to which the signal strength is boosted. For that reason, high quality antennas should be used to allow the employees use the network services even when their offices are farther apart. To enable data transfer, the tower should be connected to the internet. The response time and rate of data transfer is dependent on the speed of the internet (Ngo, Nguyen, & Le-Ngoc, 2013).

OpenBTS Software

In order to have an operational base station, it must be installed with components that carry functions like maintenance of the database and switching calls. The conventional infrastructure for this task is largely expensive for an SME (costs about $250,000) and requires specialized skills to configure besides storing in an air conditioned room. These requirements are unattractive to an SME and also hard to meet in areas where OpenBTS is targeted. As such, a VoIP software called Asterisk is used as a replacement for the physical infrastructure. Besides replacing the physical infrastructure, the software is highly viable in that it can be installed on an PC.

Sim Cards

To an average person without programming knowledge, acquiring a reprogrammable GSM card is perhaps the most daunting task for this project. However, given that Deon Advertisements has 103 employees who work in different departments, there are a handful of employees working in the IT department with the basic knowledge required to reprogram a GSM card. Reprogramming the sim cards is done using the OpenBTS software which rewrites the GSM framework used by many cellphones globally. The are no compatibility issues using this tool because a normal GSM phone perceives the OpenBTS network as a standard network which enables reprogramming. The co-creator of OpenBTS says that the program enables communication even in remote parts where it is conventionally difficult to transmit signals.

Programming the Hardware

Acquiring all the required tools is the easy part. The next step involves application of complex IT skills to program and assemble all the parts to function like a cellular tower as per the objectives. For this task, a software called Raspberry Pi and laptop (preferably intel quad core i7 and 8GB RAM) using Linux operating are used. These tools are used to program the software defined radio and the GSM cards (Rhee, Lee, & Kim, 2009; Taufique et al., 2017). For an individual without the programming skills, the software is installed onto the Pi which is publicly available for free online. However, for IT technicians at Deon, they can write a code that will enable all the components communicate.

IP Connection

In an OpenBTS network, mobile phone users can easily communicate with each other even when there is no internet connection. However, communicating with someone outside the OpenBTS requires internet. Therefore, IP radios are used to connect the BTS system to a internet provider miles away. It is common to find the response time to be sluggish when the internet connection is poor. To increase the bandwidth and signal strength, antennas are used (Taufique et al., 2017).

GSM Phone

In order for OpenBTS to rewrite the GSM card, it must be put in a GSM handset. The handset then interprets the BTS system as a standard network which allows manipulation in a manner that facilitates communication with other components.

Power Supply

Currently, Deon Advertisements relies on electricity to supply power to all the functions in the company. Some of the functions like the IT department, printing, and lighting heavily use electricity. The deployment of the cellular network will have negligible effects on the power bill compared to these functions because the entire connection draws very minimal power. On average, the whole connection can be powered by a 60watts power source (Pauli, 2010). Therefore, the additional power bill will be negligible especially when the benefits of the system are considered.

Conclusion

The viability of this report is dependent on the ultimate decision why Deon Advertisements should build m cellular network. While considering the pros and cons of that decision, it is important to evaluate the conditions of the market in which the company operates. The advertising industry has undergone radical changes in the past two decades thanks to the rise of the internet and social media. Unlike ten years when the first option or channel to advertise a new product was TV or print media, many businesses are now opting for online marketing particularly social media and Google ads. According to Amazeen and Muddiman (2018), 40% of the world's adverts were published online in 2017. The scholars also project that the global spending on digital advertisement will increase by 19.1% in 2019 while traditional advertisements (print and TV) will fall by 19%.