Cellular technology

We are aware of the different types of mobile handsets used that are coming with completely different features and high-end specifications and is very helpful in every field for getting the productive and excellent results. Mobile handsets have brought a revolution in the telecommunication industry.
It is with the help of this drastic change in the telecommunication, everybody is getting the perfect benefits in terms of communication and computation. By deploying cellular technology in an organization, it will help the employees to access databases, order products and retrieving technical specifications or off site sales staff responding to customer inquiries.

There are six basic components found in most of the cellular systems which tells us the inside features of the cellular system design. Let us have an understanding of the cellular system.

1. Mobile station
A mobile station is basically a mobile or wireless device that contains a control unit, a transceiver and an antenna for data and voice transmission. The very example is in GSM networks where mobile stations have mobile equipment (ME) and the SIM card.

2. Air Interface Standard
There are three main air interface standards such as time division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA) and frequency division multiple access (FDMA). These air interface standards allow many mobile users to share simultaneously the fixed amount of radio channels. These standards are basically the medium access control (MAC) protocols that define the rules for units to access the communication medium.

3. Base Station
It is the fixed station in the mobile cellular systems used for radio communications with mobile units. Base station consists of radio channels and transmitter and receiver antenna mounted on a tower.

4. Gateway
This gateway is the communication link between two wireless systems or one wireless and other wired system. The logical components in gateway are Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and interworking function (IWF).
MSC helps in connecting the cellular base stations and the mobile stations to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or other MSC.
IWF helps in connecting the cellular base stations and the mobile stations to Internet and perform protocol translation if needed.

5. Databases
They are also the most important feature of cellular technology. Home Location Register (HLR) and Visitor Location Register (VLR) are the two main databases used.
HLR is the database that contains the data of those subscribers that reside in the same city as MSC. The VLR provisionally stores the information for each visiting subscriber in the coverage area of a MSC.
The VLR is actually the database that supports roaming capability.

6. Security mechanism
This mechanism helps the subscriber to access the particular network and also to validate the billing for him.
The databases used for security mechanism are the Equipment Identify Register (EIR) and Authentication Center (AuC).
The EIR is the register that identifies stolen or fraudulently altered phones that convey identity data that does not match with information contained in either the HLR or VLR.
The AuC administers the actual encryption and confirmation of each subscriber.

Thus we learn about the major components and help us in knowing the cellular architecture.