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  1. #31
    Thomas T. Veldhouse
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    "TCS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    news:[email protected]...

    > Nonsense. It depends on background noise.
    >


    Background noise will limit the distance, but the lack of it does not extend
    it to infinity. Like I said, the *effective* limit of our little 200mW
    Digital phones is about 2 miles. I don't know how far it will go in AMPS
    mode. This is a PHONE limitation, not a tower limitation. The old bag
    phones had a much farther range than our little phones that we use on
    Sprint.

    Tom Veldhouse





    See More: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?




  2. #32
    larry
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    Tom,

    I disagree because I have pulled in signal from a tower as much as
    10-15 miles away when traveling out in the desert. There's a site about
    Flagstaff, AZ that covers a huge distance like that.

    --
    Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
    Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap




  3. #33
    SumYungGuy
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    Three words for ya Tom: LOW NOISE AMPLIFIER
    That's how 200mW gets picked up 15 miles away. That's really pushing it
    though. Typical rural sites cover 5-8 miles.

    --
    Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
    Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap




  4. #34
    SumYungGuy
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    Oh, also, I've seen bag phones go as far as 60 miles. In Australia in
    the outback they have CDMA 800 boomer sites that go over 50 miles with
    tower mounted radios and LNAs.

    --
    Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
    Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap




  5. #35
    Gavin Scott
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    Thomas T. Veldhouse <[email protected]> wrote:
    > This is a PHONE limitation, not a tower limitation.


    Not entirely true. There's this effect that one might call the magic
    of a repeater station. The repeater/relay (in this case the cell tower)
    can have much higher power output and higher "gain" transmitting
    antennas so that the mobile station (the phone) can get away with
    smaller and smaller antennas (note that European phones and many US
    phones no longer have any externally visible antenna) and they
    can also have much higher "gain" receiving antennas and more exotic
    (i.e. better signal to noise ratio) electronics, allowing them to
    "hear" mobile units with lower effective radiated power due to low
    power phones and the previously mentioned dinky internal antennas.

    So if you put enough money into your towers, you can improve both
    transmit *and* receive performance, allowing you to continue to
    make smaller and more power-frugal mobile units.

    Background noise is a problem, but you can use more exotic modulation
    techniques to greatly improve the effective S/N ratio (which everyone
    does).

    G.



  6. #36
    SumYungGuy
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    Thanks Gavin, I meant to talk about the antennas too. 20dBi directional
    gives you a lot of gain.

    --
    Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
    Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap




  7. #37
    TCS
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    On Thu, 6 Nov 2003 14:40:52 -0600, Thomas T. Veldhouse <[email protected]> wrote:
    >
    > "TCS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected]...
    >
    >> Nonsense. It depends on background noise.
    >>

    >
    > Background noise will limit the distance, but the lack of it does not extend
    > it to infinity. Like I said, the *effective* limit of our little 200mW

    actually it does.
    Of course, there's no such thing as zero background noise.



    > Digital phones is about 2 miles. I don't know how far it will go in AMPS
    > mode. This is a PHONE limitation, not a tower limitation. The old bag
    > phones had a much farther range than our little phones that we use on
    > Sprint.
    >
    > Tom Veldhouse
    >
    >




  8. #38
    Thomas T. Veldhouse
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    "larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    news:[email protected]...
    >
    > Tom,
    >
    > I disagree because I have pulled in signal from a tower as much as
    > 10-15 miles away when traveling out in the desert. There's a site about
    > Flagstaff, AZ that covers a huge distance like that.
    >


    You might receive a signal ... but you can't talk on it. Your phone is
    unable to communicate BACK to the tower. Do some googling around and you
    will find no references to any 200mW transmitters going more than 2 miles
    (actually, I found no references going further than 1.75 miles). There are
    plenty of references to 10 square miles which means a distance of 1.78 miles
    from the tower.

    Tom Veldhouse





  9. #39
    TCS
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    On Fri, 7 Nov 2003 08:27:34 -0600, Thomas T. Veldhouse <[email protected]> wrote:

    >"larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >news:[email protected]...
    >>
    >> Tom,
    >>
    >> I disagree because I have pulled in signal from a tower as much as
    >> 10-15 miles away when traveling out in the desert. There's a site about
    >> Flagstaff, AZ that covers a huge distance like that.
    >>


    >You might receive a signal ... but you can't talk on it. Your phone is
    >unable to communicate BACK to the tower. Do some googling around and you


    BULL****. If you can hear during a call, you can talk. You can't even
    connect to a tower unless you have working TWO way communications.

    Newsflash: towers have higher quality antennas than cell phone's. By
    your logic, a cell phone can't possibly receive a call either since it's
    antenna is so small, just like it can't possibly send due to it's small
    transmitting power.




  10. #40
    Gavin Scott
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    Thomas T. Veldhouse <[email protected]> wrote:
    > You might receive a signal ... but you can't talk on it. Your phone is
    > unable to communicate BACK to the tower. Do some googling around and you
    > will find no references to any 200mW transmitters going more than 2 miles
    > (actually, I found no references going further than 1.75 miles).


    Well, how about 1,650 miles on one microwatt?

    http://www.geocities.com/qrpaward/

    While there are many things that affect the typical effective range
    over which communication can be accomplished given a particular set
    of hardware, frequency, and terrain, and you're very probably right
    that a couple miles might very well be a reasonable limit to plan
    for with today's low-power PCS phones, there's no law of physics
    that says it can't be made to work over much larger distances, or
    even that you won't see it in some cases with today's phones.

    G.



  11. #41
    Gavin Scott
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    TCS <[email protected]> wrote:
    > On Fri, 7 Nov 2003 08:27:34 -0600, Thomas T. Veldhouse <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>You might receive a signal ... but you can't talk on it. Your phone is
    >>unable to communicate BACK to the tower. Do some googling around and you


    > BULL****. If you can hear during a call, you can talk. You can't even
    > connect to a tower unless you have working TWO way communications.


    In this case I believe Thomas is saying that the phone can hear the
    tower, not that the user can hear one end of a phone call. You're
    correct that there can be no call if the two ends can't hear each other
    in order to do the connection setup.

    It's perfectly reasonable for the phone to be able to hear a tower
    but for the tower to be unable to hear the phone. Depending on the
    protocols in use, the phone may indicate that it is "in range" yet
    when you try to make a call it can't be established because the
    tower can't hear the phone.

    The paths to and from the phone are completely independent issues,
    though much RF engineering goes into balancing power levels and
    antenna gain and coverage patterns to try to achieve the appearance
    that A can hear B only when B can hear A. Anything else means
    you're being inefficient (and users get grumpy when the phone says
    it has coverage but can't make a call).

    G.



  12. #42
    Craig
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    This is not accurate, I have also connected to a tower from a large distance



    "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
    > "larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected]...
    > >
    > > Tom,
    > >
    > > I disagree because I have pulled in signal from a tower as much as
    > > 10-15 miles away when traveling out in the desert. There's a site about
    > > Flagstaff, AZ that covers a huge distance like that.
    > >

    >
    > You might receive a signal ... but you can't talk on it. Your phone is
    > unable to communicate BACK to the tower. Do some googling around and you
    > will find no references to any 200mW transmitters going more than 2 miles
    > (actually, I found no references going further than 1.75 miles). There are
    > plenty of references to 10 square miles which means a distance of 1.78 miles
    > from the tower.
    >
    > Tom Veldhouse




  13. #43
    DSL GURU
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    EVERYONE but Veldaus agrees that there is no single answer, and it depends on
    power, equipment, geography, useage etc.

    And since there can be no single number Tower Maps are useless as coverage maps
    without a lot mor einformation than SprintPCS has provided



  14. #44
    Bob Smith
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?


    "DSL GURU" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    news:[email protected]...
    > EVERYONE but Veldaus agrees that there is no single answer, and it depends

    on
    > power, equipment, geography, useage etc.
    >
    > And since there can be no single number Tower Maps are useless as coverage

    maps
    > without a lot mor einformation than SprintPCS has provided


    Once again, you silly little boy, who said these tower maps were coverage
    maps?

    Bob





  15. #45
    Larry Thomas
    Guest

    Re: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

    "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
    > "larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:[email protected]...
    > >
    > > Tom,
    > >
    > > I disagree because I have pulled in signal from a tower as much as
    > > 10-15 miles away when traveling out in the desert. There's a site about
    > > Flagstaff, AZ that covers a huge distance like that.
    > >

    >
    > You might receive a signal ... but you can't talk on it. Your phone is
    > unable to communicate BACK to the tower. Do some googling around and you
    > will find no references to any 200mW transmitters going more than 2 miles
    > (actually, I found no references going further than 1.75 miles). There are
    > plenty of references to 10 square miles which means a distance of 1.78 miles
    > from the tower.
    >
    > Tom Veldhouse


    Once again not true. There's a tower along 1-10 in the CA desert on
    the way to Phoenix that I was able to see and hold conversations on
    while 10-15 miles away from it. Sprint provides complete useable
    coverage along this stretch and has only 5 towers between Indio and
    the AZ state line.



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