Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On May 24, 4:55 pm, wrote in
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...b6bd964?hl=en& : On May 24, 7:28 pm, Radium wrote: Hi: Why do analog cell phones use FM? Why not AM? Do you even know if they do? Yes. I read about it. Microwave-frequencies can be done in AM just as well as FM? Why not use AM? Why not use FM? FM is limited to line of sight. AM provides the ability to converse over significantly longer distances than FM. At the receiving end, the carrier signal should be amplified prior to demodulation. The purpose of this is to "DX". This allows communications over even longer distances than without the DX. For best results, longwave frequencies [around 150 KHz] should be used along with DX. |
#2
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
Radium wrote in news:1180056431.463704.325710
@q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com: Why do analog cell phones use FM? Why not AM? Do you even know if they do? Yes. I read about it. Noise. Electrical impulse noise, such as spark plug noise and computer radiation and leaky insulators from overhead powerlines is amplitude modulated. Being AM, this noise is detected by the AM detector in your AM radio. It has nothing to do with frequency or range. Airplanes from 108 to 138 Mhz in the VHF band, is one of the oldest users of VHF. All airplane radios in this VHF band are AM, not FM. It's just that way because it, at one time, would have cost aviation too much to convert to the newfangled FM system Mr Armstrong invented. It's still AM. It's also line-of-sight, because it's on VHF which isn't reflected by the ionosphere like frequencies below 30 Mhz are. This phenomenon has nothing to do with how it's modulated. Analog cellphones, like the IMTS and MTS "Carphones" before them, use FM because FM is more immune to AM noise. Certain FM detectors, by their very nature, cancel out all the AM noise fed to them by the receiver IF strip. Since WW2, mobile radios always used FM for this reason. Using it on Carphones was simply good sense. It still is. Your CDMA, TDMA, PCS or whatever cellphone you carry is STILL an FM radio, at heart, but this FM radio is now modulated with modem tones, similar to what you hear if you pick up a landline telephone when a dialup modem is using its line...except your phone shares the system and channel with many other users so its transmitter is only on in tiny pulses of data. Data, 1s and 0s, is a DC pulse and cannot be transmitted over the air, directly, so it is converted by a "modem" to a wide band of tones that modulate an FM transmitter...for the same reason AMPS used FM....noise immunity on weak signals. Microwave-frequencies can be done in AM just as well as FM? Why not use AM? Why not use FM? See above....It's all about noise immunity. FM is limited to line of sight. AM provides the ability to converse over significantly longer distances than FM. Simply not true. If FM is used at 10 Mhz, it propagates just as far as AM...but without the noise. But, alas, FM has another problem...bandwidth. If you modulate an AM transmitter with a single tone, 3 signals come out of it. The carrier frequency the transmitter is tuned to is always transmitted, continuously. The tone mixes, in a non-linear RF stage. RF mixing always produces two "products"...the sum of the carrier + the frequency of the modulated tone...and the difference of the carrier - the modulated tone. If we are transmitting on 1.000 Mhz, with a 1000 Hz audio tone modulating the transmitter, you get a Lower Sideband of ..999Mhz, 1.000Mhz and 1.001 Mhz. The bandwidth occupied is only 2 Khz of the RF spectrum. The bandwidth of an AM transmitter is twice the frequency of the highest modulating tone. AM radio broadcasting LIMITS the audio frequencies fed to the transmitters to 5 Khz. AM broadcast's bandwidth (and channel spacing in the USA) is 10 Khz... 800 Khz, 810 Khz, 820 Khz etc. Europe and Asia use 9 Khz channel spacing to get more channels. The audio bandwidth is limited to around 4.5 Khz, lower fidelity, to accomplish this without undue interference. AM transmitters used only for voice transmissions usually have an audio bandwidth from 300 to 3000 Hz, making their bandwidth only 6 Khz. CB radio is a good example. Due to how cheap CB is manufactured, their transmitter's carrier frequency isn't very accurate. When detected, this results in a beat note you can hear, that howling when hundreds of skip CB station are all received at once, rendering it pretty useless. At night, when the atmosphere reflects the AM broadcast band, AM stations also have a beat note you can "hear". They're accurate to +/- 20 Hz, but are much more accurate than that to reduce channel interference. You hear a very low warbling like a Leslie speaker on a Hammond Organ makes as the signals aid then cancel each other due to this difference note. The sunspot cycle is at a very low point, right now, so Ham Radio in the HF band is pretty poor. But, when the 10 meter band is open (28-29.7 Mhz) you can hear very long range FM stations near the upper end of the band. Hams have "repeater" stations on just a few "channels", by gentlemen's agreement, between 29.5 and 29.7 Mhz output (They listen 100 Khz below their output where we talk to them.) I've use 10 Meter FM repeaters in Europe, Africa, Japan and Australia on the other side of the planet from South Carolina, my home, since around 1970. Great fun HF FM. How far a signal can be heard is very dependent on the frequency of the signal and time-of-day because of the layers of supercharged ions in the ionosphere over your heads, right now. That's what makes the signals reflect off these very high layers at the lower end of the RF spectrum....as the Earth turns under these variable layers that depend solely on the ions streaming off the sun for their existence. Many more layers trail the Earth in the shadow the Earth creates to the solar wind, than on the sunny side. These layers do not rotate with the planet. We turn under them. Generally speaking, in the day, frequencies that reflect off the sun-side layers are from about 7 Mhz to about 25 to 40 Mhz, depending on how thick the layers are and the solar activity, which varies nearly like a sine wave in 11 year sunspot cycles. At night, different layers AT DIFFERENT ALTITUDES create different reflectors, many of them, that reflect different frequency bands. Your AM broadcast radio has no reflectors in the daytime when you only hear local stations. At night, special stations on "clear channels", reserved for them alone to provide long range AM radio to the countryside, pumping 50,000 watts into massive antenna arrays, some with 3 to 16 towers, can be heard a thousand miles away. Good examples are WSM, 650 Khz, in Nashville, WLW, 700 Khz in Ohio, WWL, 870 in New Orleans. If they were on FM, you'd hear them just fine, but we'd only have a few stations...why? FM's spectrum is much more complex and WIDER than AM's. Notice on your FM radio the stations are a whopping 200 Khz apart! There are two reasons for this, one economic and one fidelity. FM broadcasting has an audio bandwidth of 50 to 15000 Hz. It is transmitted in a very wideband way with the carrier swinging very far from its resting frequency so you can go buy a really cheap FM radio, with really cheap electronics in it, and listen to the constant blather of commercials that broadcasting in America has become. Two things effect the spectrum bandwidth of FM....The highest audio frequency, 15Khz, and how hard you drive the transmitter away from its carrier frequency (or change its phase, which looks just like FM, too.) 15 Khz is the audio freq allowed on FM broadcasting. 75 Khz is its "deviation". This produces a huge load of detectable sidebands by even the cheapest detectors for high fidelity sound, as wide as human ears can hear actually, no matter what the stereo industry advertises...(c; Can you hear your picture tube analog TV screaming? It's screaming all the time its running at 15,575 Hz and you don't even hear it. So, why buy a stereo that can reproduce 25,000 Hz? It's crazy!...(c; 15 Khz audio at 75 Khz deviation needs around 200 Khz of bandwidth, a crazy amount. If we used that on the old AM band, we'd get 1650-550 khz = 1100 Khz for the whole band...divided by 200 = only 5 channels! As much as Clear Channel Communications would love to own all 5, FCC has other ideas...(c; That's why FM isn't on the lower frequencies...bandwidth. At the receiving end, the carrier signal should be amplified prior to demodulation. The purpose of this is to "DX". This allows communications over even longer distances than without the DX. For best results, longwave frequencies [around 150 KHz] should be used along with DX. The signal received by any "radio" receiver is miniscule and too small to power germanium diode or tube diode "detectors". That's the only reason radios have amplifiers, to make the lowest signals big enough to drive detector diodes. It's that simple. Hazeltine Research Corp, NYC, solved another problem related to how wide a bandwidth a cheap receiver listened to, to stop the radios from listening to 5 stations at once, after quite a few stations got on the air in the 1920's/30's. It was called the "superheterodyne" to impress the stupid public fascinated with Flash Gordon....on the radio, of course! If we "convert" the high frequency signal from the station to a lower frequency signal the industry, at first, decided would be 260 Khz, but was later changed to today's 455 Khz "IF Frequency", you could narrow the bandwidth of the signal to just ONE station at a time, fed to the detector diodes. Because FM is a wider bandwidth service, 10.7 Mhz is the IF frequency of your FM radio, netting us an easy-to-achieve 200 Khz receiver bandwidth. (FM mobile radios, including cellphones use two conversions....10.7 then 455 Khz to get narrow band FM channels...one at a time. These fixed frequency amplifiers can be made VERY high gain because you don't have to tune them to any other frequency...so these "Superheterodyne" receivers are very sensitive...way down into the natural noise level. That hasn't changed since the 1930's when they were produced. Your cellphone's IF amp has a special type of ceramic filters which is very cheap to produce in the Chinese slave factories. FM is all about the NOISE.....or rather, the lack of it. Larry -- Grade School Physics Factoid: A building cannot freefall into its own footprint without skilled demolition. |
#3
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
Nice writeup, but I do have to take exception to one thing:
AM broadcast audio bandwidth is *not* limited to 5 KHz. It is limited to 10 KHz by the NRSC AM Bandwidth and pre-emphasis standard. Prior to NRSC, it used to be unlimited, with a *minimum* audio bandwidth of 5 KHz. Some stations are voluntarily reducing their bandwidth to 6 - 8 KHz in an attempt to reduce interference in congested markets. AM channels are separated by 10 KHz, but the FCC tries to allocate AM broadcast stations locally on alternate or second alternate channels to avoid interference. The interference is more noticeable at night, when local signals skip long distances. Then, you hear the 10 KHz whistle due to carriers 10 KHz up or down the dial, as well as "monkey chatter" due to the inverted sidebands of adjacent stations. |
#4
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
"Larry" wrote ...
[long and excelent treatise on FM vs. AM and other topics] Larry, you've been trolled by "Radium". Many of us have dramatically increased the SNR of these newsgroups by simply plonking him/her/it. |
#5
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
"Radium" wrote in message oups.com... On May 24, 4:55 pm, wrote in http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...b6bd964?hl=en& Radium has got to be a "Troll" no one is this ****ing stupid..... |
#6
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On Fri, 25 May 2007 07:56:11 -0700, "Bob's Backfire Burrito"
wrote: "Radium" wrote in message roups.com... On May 24, 4:55 pm, wrote in http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...b6bd964?hl=en& Radium has got to be a "Troll" no one is this ****ing stupid..... Are there seriously still people here who don't have him killfiled? I'm staggered. d -- Pearce Consulting http://www.pearce.uk.com |
#7
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
Larry,
I agree with your general point that FM doesn't propagate any differently than AM and that the key difference is noise immunity. However, I think: Your CDMA, TDMA, PCS or whatever cellphone you carry is STILL an FM radio, at heart, is inaccurate. I wouldn't consider the underlying modulation type of CDMA FM. CDMA2000 uses QPSK as its modulation. That's not FM. However, I would agree that the old US TDMA standard (IS-54/IS-136), which uses pi/4 DQPSK is a type of FM. Standard GSM uses GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying), which is also a type of "digital" FM, but the new high-speed GSM channels, the so-called EDGE signals, are 3pi/8-shifted 8PSK and thus again are not really FM. The exceptions I've noted are phase-modulated signals, and since phase and frequency modulation share the constant modulus property, they both have noise immunity against impulsive, AM noise. So the idea that they all resist noise is correct, but calling them FM is not accurate, in my opinion. I'm coming from [rappaport] and [proakiscomm]. --Randy @book{rappaport, title = "Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice", author = "Theodore S. Rappaport", publisher = "Prentice Hall", edition = "second", year = "2002"} @BOOK{proakiscomm, title = "{Digital Communications}", author = "John~G.~Proakis", publisher = "McGraw-Hill", edition = "fourth", year = "2001"} -- % Randy Yates % "Bird, on the wing, %% Fuquay-Varina, NC % goes floating by %%% 919-577-9882 % but there's a teardrop in his eye..." %%%% % 'One Summer Dream', *Face The Music*, ELO http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr |
#8
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
Don Pearce wrote: Are there seriously still people here who don't have him killfiled? I'm staggered. It's worth seeing some of his posts for the general amusement. Graham |
#9
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
"Richard Crowley" wrote in news:135dsro7vv2bvb5
@corp.supernews.com: Larry, you've been trolled by "Radium". Many of us have dramatically increased the SNR of these newsgroups by simply plonking him/her/it. Done...(c; I've been attacked by better... Larry -- Grade School Physics Factoid: A building cannot freefall into its own footprint without skilled demolition. |
#10
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On May 24, 9:36 pm, Larry wrote:
Radium wrote in news:1180056431.463704.325710 @q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com: Why do analog cell phones use FM? Why not AM? Do you even know if they do? Yes. I read about it. Noise. Electrical impulse noise, such as spark plug noise and computer radiation and leaky insulators from overhead powerlines is amplitude modulated. Being AM, this noise is detected by the AM detector in your AM radio. It has nothing to do with frequency or range. Airplanes from 108 to 138 Mhz in the VHF band, is one of the oldest users of VHF. All airplane radios in this VHF band are AM, not FM. It's just that way because it, at one time, would have cost aviation too much to convert to the newfangled FM system Mr Armstrong invented. It's still AM. It's also line-of-sight, because it's on VHF which isn't reflected by the ionosphere like frequencies below 30 Mhz are. This phenomenon has nothing to do with how it's modulated. Analog cellphones, like the IMTS and MTS "Carphones" before them, use FM because FM is more immune to AM noise. Certain FM detectors, by their very nature, cancel out all the AM noise fed to them by the receiver IF strip. Since WW2, mobile radios always used FM for this reason. Using it on Carphones was simply good sense. It still is. Your CDMA, TDMA, PCS or whatever cellphone you carry is STILL an FM radio, at heart, but this FM radio is now modulated with modem tones, similar to what you hear if you pick up a landline telephone when a dialup modem is using its line...except your phone shares the system and channel with many other users so its transmitter is only on in tiny pulses of data. Data, 1s and 0s, is a DC pulse and cannot be transmitted over the air, directly, so it is converted by a "modem" to a wide band of tones that modulate an FM transmitter...for the same reason AMPS used FM....noise immunity on weak signals. Microwave-frequencies can be done in AM just as well as FM? Why not use AM? Why not use FM? See above....It's all about noise immunity. FM is limited to line of sight. AM provides the ability to converse over significantly longer distances than FM. Simply not true. If FM is used at 10 Mhz, it propagates just as far as AM...but without the noise. But, alas, FM has another problem...bandwidth. If you modulate an AM transmitter with a single tone, 3 signals come out of it. The carrier frequency the transmitter is tuned to is always transmitted, continuously. The tone mixes, in a non-linear RF stage. RF mixing always produces two "products"...the sum of the carrier + the frequency of the modulated tone...and the difference of the carrier - the modulated tone. If we are transmitting on 1.000 Mhz, with a 1000 Hz audio tone modulating the transmitter, you get a Lower Sideband of .999Mhz, 1.000Mhz and 1.001 Mhz. The bandwidth occupied is only 2 Khz of the RF spectrum. The bandwidth of an AM transmitter is twice the frequency of the highest modulating tone. AM radio broadcasting LIMITS the audio frequencies fed to the transmitters to 5 Khz. AM broadcast's bandwidth (and channel spacing in the USA) is 10 Khz... 800 Khz, 810 Khz, 820 Khz etc. Europe and Asia use 9 Khz channel spacing to get more channels. The audio bandwidth is limited to around 4.5 Khz, lower fidelity, to accomplish this without undue interference. AM transmitters used only for voice transmissions usually have an audio bandwidth from 300 to 3000 Hz, making their bandwidth only 6 Khz. CB radio is a good example. Due to how cheap CB is manufactured, their transmitter's carrier frequency isn't very accurate. When detected, this results in a beat note you can hear, that howling when hundreds of skip CB station are all received at once, rendering it pretty useless. At night, when the atmosphere reflects the AM broadcast band, AM stations also have a beat note you can "hear". They're accurate to +/- 20 Hz, but are much more accurate than that to reduce channel interference. You hear a very low warbling like a Leslie speaker on a Hammond Organ makes as the signals aid then cancel each other due to this difference note. The sunspot cycle is at a very low point, right now, so Ham Radio in the HF band is pretty poor. But, when the 10 meter band is open (28-29.7 Mhz) you can hear very long range FM stations near the upper end of the band. Hams have "repeater" stations on just a few "channels", by gentlemen's agreement, between 29.5 and 29.7 Mhz output (They listen 100 Khz below their output where we talk to them.) I've use 10 Meter FM repeaters in Europe, Africa, Japan and Australia on the other side of the planet from South Carolina, my home, since around 1970. Great fun HF FM. How far a signal can be heard is very dependent on the frequency of the signal and time-of-day because of the layers of supercharged ions in the ionosphere over your heads, right now. That's what makes the signals reflect off these very high layers at the lower end of the RF spectrum....as the Earth turns under these variable layers that depend solely on the ions streaming off the sun for their existence. Many more layers trail the Earth in the shadow the Earth creates to the solar wind, than on the sunny side. These layers do not rotate with the planet. We turn under them. Generally speaking, in the day, frequencies that reflect off the sun-side layers are from about 7 Mhz to about 25 to 40 Mhz, depending on how thick the layers are and the solar activity, which varies nearly like a sine wave in 11 year sunspot cycles. At night, different layers AT DIFFERENT ALTITUDES create different reflectors, many of them, that reflect different frequency bands. Your AM broadcast radio has no reflectors in the daytime when you only hear local stations. At night, special stations on "clear channels", reserved for them alone to provide long range AM radio to the countryside, pumping 50,000 watts into massive antenna arrays, some with 3 to 16 towers, can be heard a thousand miles away. Good examples are WSM, 650 Khz, in Nashville, WLW, 700 Khz in Ohio, WWL, 870 in New Orleans. If they were on FM, you'd hear them just fine, but we'd only have a few stations...why? FM's spectrum is much more complex and WIDER than AM's. Notice on your FM radio the stations are a whopping 200 Khz apart! There are two reasons for this, one economic and one fidelity. FM broadcasting has an audio bandwidth of 50 to 15000 Hz. It is transmitted in a very wideband way with the carrier swinging very far from its resting frequency so you can go buy a really cheap FM radio, with really cheap electronics in it, and listen to the constant blather of commercials that broadcasting in America has become. Two things effect the spectrum bandwidth of FM....The highest audio frequency, 15Khz, and how hard you drive the transmitter away from its carrier frequency (or change its phase, which looks just like FM, too.) 15 Khz is the audio freq allowed on FM broadcasting. 75 Khz is its "deviation". This produces a huge load of detectable sidebands by even the cheapest detectors for high fidelity sound, as wide as human ears can hear actually, no matter what the stereo industry advertises...(c; Can you hear your picture tube analog TV screaming? It's screaming all the time its running at 15,575 Hz and you don't even hear it. So, why buy a stereo that can reproduce 25,000 Hz? It's crazy!...(c; 15 Khz audio at 75 Khz deviation needs around 200 Khz of bandwidth, a crazy amount. If we used that on the old AM band, we'd get 1650-550 khz = 1100 Khz for the whole band...divided by 200 = only 5 channels! As much as Clear Channel Communications would love to own all 5, FCC has other ideas...(c; That's why FM isn't on the lower frequencies...bandwidth. At the receiving end, the carrier signal should be amplified prior to demodulation. The purpose of this is to "DX". This allows communications over even longer distances than without the DX. For best results, longwave frequencies [around 150 KHz] should be used along with DX. The signal received by any "radio" receiver is miniscule and too small to power germanium diode or tube diode "detectors". That's the only reason radios have amplifiers, to make the lowest signals big enough to drive detector diodes. It's that simple. Hazeltine Research Corp, NYC, solved another problem related to how wide a bandwidth a cheap receiver listened to, to stop the radios from listening to 5 stations at once, after quite a few stations got on the air in the 1920's/30's. It was called the "superheterodyne" to impress the stupid public fascinated with Flash Gordon....on the radio, of course! If we "convert" the high frequency signal from the station to a lower frequency signal the industry, at first, decided would be 260 Khz, but was later changed to today's 455 Khz "IF Frequency", you could narrow the bandwidth of the signal to just ONE station at a time, fed to the detector diodes. Because FM is a wider bandwidth service, 10.7 Mhz is the IF frequency of your FM radio, netting us an easy-to-achieve 200 Khz receiver bandwidth. (FM mobile radios, including cellphones use two conversions....10.7 then 455 Khz to get narrow band FM channels...one at a time. These fixed frequency amplifiers can be made VERY high gain because you don't have to tune them to any other frequency...so these "Superheterodyne" receivers are very sensitive...way down into the natural noise level. That hasn't changed since the 1930's when they were produced. Your cellphone's IF amp has a special type of ceramic filters which is very cheap to produce in the Chinese slave factories. FM is all about the NOISE.....or rather, the lack of it. Just out of personal preference, I'd much rather have more interference than less bandwidth. |
#11
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
Just out of personal preference, I'd much rather have more
interference than less bandwidth. Similarly, out of personal preference, I'd much rather have more cats than less toothpaste. |
#12
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
"Radium" wrote in message ups.com... Just out of personal preference, I'd much rather have more interference than less bandwidth. Bandwidth being more important for mobile phone conversations than lower noise/interference in your opinion? :-) MrT. |
#13
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM - it is not (generally speaking)
In article .com,
Radium wrote: Why do analog cell phones use FM? Why not AM? Do you even know if they do? Yes. I read about it. Microwave-frequencies can be done in AM just as well as FM? Why not use AM? Why not use FM? FM is limited to line of sight. No, this is only related to the frequency range, not the modulation method. Microwaves (mobile phones etc) are rather similar to light, short wave transmission bends around buildings, and if you are lucky, even gets reflected by certain layers of the atmosphere. AM provides the ability to converse over significantly longer distances than FM. FM has less noise, as long as the signal is strong vs noise. You can even improve on that with digital coding (can be used both with AM and FM), and this is what is typically used with mobile phones. The advantages with good digital coding are so big, most of our current transmissions either are already digitally coded or will soon be (eg analog tv being switched off by the end of the year in Switzerland, radio to follow in a few years, mobile phones, CD's instead of vinyl, digital cameras, the internet, etc). As soon as the signal to noise ratio gets low, FM detoriates rapidly. If you use digital coding (adding redundant bits to be able to recover from transmission errors), this effect is even more pronounced. These are the conditions where AM is better - because of the superior filtering capabilities of our ear and brain. This is typically the case on the border of the reception range. Also bear in mind that receivers differ markedly in their sensitivity, also in mobile phones (brands, models). Shop around and compare - for reception quality, range and battery life. HTH Marc -- Switzerland/Europe http://www.heusser.com remove CHEERS and from MERCIAL to get valid e-mail |
#14
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On May 27, 10:03 pm, "Mr.T" MrT@home wrote:
Bandwidth being more important for mobile phone conversations than lower noise/interference in your opinion? Bandwidth is more important for any/everything than lower noise/ interference in my opinion. I like listening to long distance magnetic disruptions originating from the objects in outer space significantly further than our solar system. Which brings up another question. Let's say I am in a space station which has a supercooled 150 KHz DX analog receiver that receives the magnetic fields [while ignoring the electric fields] of extremely weak 150 KHz AM analog carrier signals. In addition, this receiver is so sensitive and powerful that it can clearly pick up AM carrier waves as weak as 10^-10,000 watt [i.e. 10- to-the-power-NEGATIVE-10,000 watt]. Also, this receiver has an astronomically-powerful amplifier which amplifies the extremely-soft carrier waves until the resulting modulation signals will be just loud enough for the human ear to detect. Following this amplification, the carrier waves are demodulation to modulation waves - the stuff we "hear" - and then sent to loudspeaker so those onboard can hear those sounds. In addition, the audio devices filter out modulation signals that are below 20 Hz or above 20 KHz, as the human ear only responds to 20-20,000 Hz. If I am on this spaceship, what will I hear on the radio? My guess is that I would hear long-distance magnetic disruptions. |
#15
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On May 27, 10:03 pm, "Mr.T" MrT@home wrote:
Bandwidth being more important for mobile phone conversations than lower noise/interference in your opinion? Bandwidth is more important for any/everything than lower noise/ interference in my opinion. I like listening to long distance magnetic disruptions originating from the objects in outer space significantly further than our solar system. Which brings up another question. Let's say I am in a space station which has a supercooled 150 KHz DX analog receiver that receives the magnetic fields [while ignoring the electric fields] of extremely weak 150 KHz AM analog carrier signals. In addition, this receiver is so sensitive and powerful that it can clearly pick up AM carrier waves as weak as 10^-10,000 watt [i.e. 10- to-the-power-NEGATIVE-10,000 watt]. Also, this receiver has an astronomically-powerful amplifier which amplifies the extremely-soft carrier waves until the resulting modulation signals will be just loud enough for the human ear to detect. Following this amplification, the carrier waves are demodulation to modulation waves - the stuff we "hear" - and then sent to loudspeaker so those onboard can hear those sounds. In addition, the audio devices filter out modulation signals that are below 20 Hz or above 20 KHz, as the human ear only responds to 20-20,000 Hz. If I am on this spaceship, what will I hear on the radio? My guess is that I would hear long-distance magnetic disruptions. |
#16
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On May 28, 12:31 pm, Radium wrote:
I like listening to long distance magnetic disruptions originating from the objects in outer space significantly further than our solar system. So the result is the rest of us have to listen to your short- range magnetic disruption. Let's say I am in a space station You ARE on a space station. Now, fly off home. If I am on this spaceship, what will I hear on the radio? The rest of the universe laughing. My guess is that I would hear long-distance magnetic disruptions. No, you'd hear the unmistakable sound of the rest of your vital organs trying to gnaw off the remaining connections to your brain in a desperate attempt to escape. Even for a troll, you're an idiot, but you're the most entertaining seen in these parts in a while. Now, go home before the mother ship find out you're missing. |
#17
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On May 28, 9:31 am, Radium wrote:
On May 27, 10:03 pm, "Mr.T" MrT@home wrote: Bandwidth being more important for mobile phone conversations than lower noise/interference in your opinion? Bandwidth is more important for any/everything than lower noise/ interference in my opinion. Actually, I don't like noise but I do like magnetic interference. Noise is dirty and covers up meaningful info. Noise is like the stinky foam that covers the back of the human tongue every morning. I hate noise and clipping [from excess amplitude]. However, I really enjoy magnetic disruptions from 10^10,000 [10-to-the-power-10,000] miles away. Sadly, such beautiful magnetic signals are covered with noise long before they reach earth. Lord please let me listen to magnetic sine-waves tones [resembling high-pitched, terrifying, heterodynes] that originate from 10^10,000 miles away without having to leave Earth. |
#18
Posted to alt.cellular,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.audio.misc,rec.audio.tech,alt.cellular.verizon
|
|||
|
|||
Analog Cell Phones: Why AM is better than FM
On Mon, 28 May 2007 09:21:37 -0700, Radium wrote:
On May 27, 10:03 pm, "Mr.T" MrT@home wrote: Bandwidth being more important for mobile phone conversations than lower noise/interference in your opinion? Bandwidth is more important for any/everything than lower noise/ interference in my opinion. I like listening to long distance magnetic disruptions originating from the objects in outer space significantly further than our solar system. Which brings up another question. Let's say I am in a space station which has a supercooled 150 KHz DX analog receiver that receives the magnetic fields [while ignoring the electric fields] of extremely weak 150 KHz AM analog carrier signals. In addition, this receiver is so sensitive and powerful that it can clearly pick up AM carrier waves as weak as 10^-10,000 watt [i.e. 10- to-the-power-NEGATIVE-10,000 watt]. Also, this receiver has an astronomically-powerful amplifier which amplifies the extremely-soft carrier waves until the resulting modulation signals will be just loud enough for the human ear to detect. Following this amplification, the carrier waves are demodulation to modulation waves - the stuff we "hear" - and then sent to loudspeaker so those onboard can hear those sounds. In addition, the audio devices filter out modulation signals that are below 20 Hz or above 20 KHz, as the human ear only responds to 20-20,000 Hz. If I am on this spaceship, what will I hear on the radio? My guess is that I would hear long-distance magnetic disruptions. Most likely you would hear interference from nearby (in cosmic terms) powerline systems. This noise will be attenuated by the ionosphere but some will get through, and there's plenty of it where it came from. As to tropospheric bending ("skip"), this is a function of the weather and frequency but not modulation. I received FM and TV stations 800+ miles away one summer morning in the 60s, and this is nowhere near a record. Not counting exotic modes, the most efficient voice modulation is suppressed carrier single sideband, a form of AM. -- /u/caf/signature.txt |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Question about analog cell phones | General | |||
Question about analog cell phones | Tech | |||
Speaking of GSM Cell Phones | Pro Audio | |||
AFFILIATE #28-/ MADE $1750 YESTERDAY GIVING AWAY 35 FREE CELL PHONES~~READ MORE... | Pro Audio | |||
GET FREE CELL PHONES and CAMERA PHONES! | Pro Audio |