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Spider-Man, Mobile phones and dropped calls


Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler - Albert Einstein


My friends have often asked me why do we have dropped calls in mobile networks. I have used Spider man's analogy to explain this: most have found it interesting and sufficient to satiate their curiosity. For your perusal.



The technology behind the mobile phones is a bit complicated for a non-technical person to comprehend -  Hence this analogy.

How does the Spider-man navigate the city? 

1. He makes a link with a tall building ahead of him, swings down and past the building.

2. At the farthest end of the swing, he makes a link with the building ahead, shedding the previous link and swings past this building.

3. This goes on and on till he gets to the 'scene of the crime'  - the cycle ends there.

Mobile phones move around the networks in a similar fashion

Here the buildings are Towers (or Base Stations / Radio Base Stations / Node B ...), the Spider-man the mobile and spider web is the radio connection between Tower and the mobile.

When travelling, the mobile proverbially swings (actually is moved by its owner) away from a Tower, just as Spider-Man does. When farthest from the first Tower (building) and closer to the other Tower (building), makes a new connection with the new Tower (Building).

This way the mobile phone connects from tower to tower just as spider man goes from building to building.

What happens when things do not work according to the plan? Congestion...

Imagine a city with hundreds of Spider-Men and being a crime-full day, all of them decide to travel to multiple 'scenes of crime'. 

In this process if a large number of Spider-men try to stick to one building simultaneously, the building, being a modestly sized one, may not be able to take so many connections. 

The last few, of the Spider-men will not get a place to stick their web on the building. Some of them would have been swinging for some time and when they tried to connect to this building they got unlucky and had a proverbially 'drop' - since they did not get a free slot. Also, a Spider-man wanting to start a flight will not be able to do so. The nearest building is already chock-a-block full with other Spider-men!


This will help you appreciate not being able to make call in the daytime in a crowded market. Higher traffic leads to congestion and connection issues.

Whenever, there is a congestion at any place, there are not enough connections for all the mobiles to make calls or the available capacity is not enough to serve the demands of all the mobile phones. This results in -  No, Slow or Bad connections. This happens in office districts, markets - during their peak business hours (10 am -12 Noon and 5 pm -9 pm). You can also experience this at Busy crossings or spontaneous Traffic Jams.

Why, we do not have as many mobile towers as needed so that there is no congestion? 

Yes, it is possible, but is prohibitively expensive. 

Just as having a Metro service running every 30 seconds can relieve the traffic, but it is prohibitively expensive and logistically impossible to deploy, control and run so many trains. That too for just 2 hours in day!

Just as you may not be able to board the first few Bus or Metro in the rush hour, you may not get connection or a fast connection at peak hours in busy places. 

Sometimes people say - well we pay for the services, so we should get a connection or full speed of data at all times. Yes, you do - but you also pay for the train and Metro - yet they do not guarantee a seat or immediate availability at all times. 

Congestion in the case of Buses or Trains is visible to our eyes - not in mobile networks. This causes a lot of heartburn and frustration.

Hope that this blog gives you an understanding of how mobiles work and  why do we have dropped calls. Next time you experience dropped call, congestion or slow speed you will not get upset at the people who run the mobile networks. They have the same issues as the Metro or the Bus operators.



P.S

1. My apologies to my purist technical friends if I have crossed the line and possibly made some things 'simpler'. This was necessitated for brevity. 

2. If this blog would be for 3-5 years old, explaining them how do the babies come, then it would have said - "we went to the hospital, the doctor gave us your sister and we brought her here". 

Almost true, but not the whole story....

Comments

  1. Very well explained so simple manner !

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  2. Great share! Very useful post to explain to an amateur :)

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  3. good Sir, nice simple explanation

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  4. Excellent simplification for layman understanding on call handover from tower to tower and practical Wow incase of capacity constraints .

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  5. Enjoyed reading this simple
    Analogy... wonderful way to make all age people understand complex technology which is used by them on daily basis...the Sir !!

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  6. It is beautifully written with an excellent example. People with non technical backgrounds won't find a simpler and better explaination to a problem all of us face.

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  7. Amazed to see how simply we can explain whole call setup and handover. Great post :-)

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  8. Nice sir well explained....

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  9. Excellent story Sir...multi-dimension story which is truly hard to understand in a simple words as explained mobility with spider Man..awaiting your next release 1.1 :)

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  10. Great post, very nicely articulated.

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  11. Excellent and simple explanation sir

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  12. Best analogy ever read explaning HO & call drops in telecom industry ..It was fun reading the entire blog. Wonderfully articulated!!

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  13. Great. Explained in a very lucid and practical way. Thanks.

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  14. Very nicely explained in a simple way...

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  15. OMG. What an analogy. Superb !!
    Sir, you are a role model of how to make things simple and easy for anyone to understand. Blessed are those, who got or will get a chance to interact, learn and be mentored by you.

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  16. Interesting and convincing way of explaining a complex issue.

    ReplyDelete

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