6014: Networked Life & Data Science, Textbook: Networked Life 20 Questions and Answers

details

– Short answer with
minimum math
– Long answer with a
more formal
treatment
– Advanced materials
for further study

Network basics

Ch. 1, 18 (Introduction, cellular, and WiFi)

生僻单词

tablet
dongle
antenna
electromagnetic
attenuation
the fourth power
tesselate
non-trivial
scramble
uplink
downlink
coding gain
leverage
the ratio of the received signal power
invert

Ch. 1 What makes CDMA work for my smartphone?

cellular network

phones are used for data applications.These data fly through a cellular network and the Internet. The cellular network in turn consists of the radio air-interface and the core network.

the fundamental concept of cellular architecture
The entire space of deployment is divided into smaller regions called cells

There is one base station (BS) in each cell, connected on the one side to switches in the core network, and on the other side the mobile stations (MS) assigned to this cell.

the deployment of base stations is based on careful radio engineering and tightly controlled by a wireless provider

Why do we divide the space into smaller regions? Because the wireless spectrum is scarce and radio signals weaken over space.

Transmitting signals over the air means emitting energy over parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Certain regions of the spectrum are allocated by different countries to cellular communications

How can the users in the same cell share the same frequency band?

How can the users in the same cell share the same frequency band? There are two main approaches: orthogonal and non-orthogonal allocation of resources.

orthogonal allocation

In orthogonal allocation, each user is given a small band of frequency in Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), or a timeslot in Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). Each user’s allocation is distinct from the others

non-orthogonal allocation

non-orthogonal allocation, allows all users to transmit at the same time over the same frequency band, as in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA).

But how can we tell the users apart if their signals overlap with each other?

The core idea behind the CDMA standards

The core idea behind the CDMA standards is as follows:
the transmitter multiplies the digital signals with a sequence of 1s and -1s, a sequence we call the spreading code. The receiver multiplies the received bits with the same spreading code to recover the original signals. This is straight-forward to see: 1 × 1 is
1, an −1 × −1 is also 1.
What is non-trivial is that a family of spreading codes can be designed such that only one spreading code, the original one used by the transmitter, can recover the signals. If you use any other spreading codes in this family, you will get noise-like, meaningless bits. We call this a family of orthogonal codes.

direct sequence spread spectrum

Users are still separated by orthogonalization, just along the “code
dimension” as opposed to the more intuitive “time dimension” and “frequency dimension.” This procedure is called direct sequence spread spec