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my father occupationally used to measure RF output from mountaintop cell repeaters. he was always pushing back on operators for pushing just a little outside t
by chillingeffect 7y ago
my father occupationally used to measure RF output from mountaintop cell repeaters. he was always pushing back on operators for pushing just a little outside the limits so they could pick up more calls.
- nomel 7y agoI always assumed the phone to tower path would be the limit, not the tower to phone.
- moftz 7y agoRight, in most cases, whatever side of a comms link that is hooked up to mains power isn't going that much about power usage. But there are limits on broadcasting power from the towers so as not to cause problems with farther away towers that want operate on the same frequencies. It's like how you usually want to not be on the same Wifi channel as your neighbor. It's going to take either more RF power to overcome their signal or take more time getting data through due to a less than perfect signal quality. Cell towers occupy a certain geographic cell so you want some overlap in signal between neighbors but you don't want it to extend much further than what it takes to leave enough time for someone in a car, for example, to have their conversation handed off to the neighboring tower. Cell tower operators might want to boost their signal power if they are bordering an area with low coverage but it's going to begin to interfere with cells outside their intended range. The FCC sets these limits for different applications and frequencies. An FM radio tower is going to have a massive output power as compared to a personal FM transmitter for your car and for good reason, no else one wants to hear your shitty music.