Mobile Computing

Aqeel Shaker Mahmoud

The Computer Network Systems Department-

College of computer science and information technology
University of Anbar

2023-2024
 . .
Introduction
. .

What is Mobile Computing

Mobile Computing System mean Wireless communication and its applications are
generic technology that refers to numerous devices that are supportable to access
transmitted data like voice, video, and text any time and any where over the wireless
network infrastructure and in which to include mobile communication, mobile
hardware, and mobile software and this react as human-computer interaction. Cause
of these has improved the quality of our lives.
elements of mobile computing:
The major elements of mobile computing are mobile hardware, mobile software and
mobile communication.

Mobile Hardware: The hardware is the mobile computing devices and supporting
devices, with the capabilities required to perform their required operations and
connect to networks.

Mobile Software: The most important software component is the operating system,
which is the brain of any computing system. For a laptop, this may be Windows, Linux
or macOS, and for a smartphone, it may be Android or iOS. The different applications
running on a device are also part of the mobile software.

Mobile Communication: This refers to the communication infrastructure set in place,

including wireless network infrastructure, protocols, data formats, bandwidths, and
portals necessary to ensure seamless connectivity and communication.
Mobile Computing Devices

Usually, a mobile computing device would have a body- made of metal or plastic, a RAM, a CPU, a
hard drive, a video card, an operating system, software applications, and finally, a network
connection.
But mobile devices may have other components too, to make them portable, and certain
characteristics that make them different:

Size: The portability of mobile devices demand a smaller size. Reduction in size without reducing
capabilities have also always been a challenge when developing mobile devices.

Power Source: Mobile devices are usually powered by rechargeable batteries. Improving the
battery life of mobile devices is another significant area of research.

Operating System: Laptops run on more or less the same OS as PCs, but for smartphones and
other devices, the OS is significantly different. They are powerful but scaled-down and made
specifically for particular devices.

Connectivity: Mobile computing devices have capabilities that allow access to the internet. Also,
mobile devices like smartphones have access to mobile broadband networks that allow you to
make and receive phone calls.

Applications: Applications meant for mobile devices are specifically designed for running on a
particular OS. These applications are what extends the capabilities of devices beyond just
connecting to the internet or making calls.
We live now in the age of the smartphone, but there are several other
categories of mobile computing devices -

Laptop: Laptop computers are portable personal computers. It is meant to

offer the same functionality as a PC, so the same OS, applications, and files
can run on this.

Smartphone: A smartphone is a mobile phone with powerful capabilities.

They typically have a touchscreen interface, have internet access, can run
various applications, and include features like a camera and GPS.

Tablet computer: Tablets have touchscreens and virtual keyboards, and are
often thought of as an intermediary between a laptop and a smartphone. They
have better processing power, functionality, and screen resolution than
smartphones. Some models may also have a stylus meant for navigating the
touch screen better.

Wearable: A more recent addition, wearable computers like smartwatches

offer limited features similar to a smartphone within a watch.
What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth has several meanings depending on the context in which it is used.
Analog signal bandwidth :
In signal processing, bandwidth is a measure of the range of frequencies
within a signal. It is often expressed in hertz (Hz) and indicates the range of
frequencies over which a signal or system can operate effectively. For example,
an audio system might have a specified bandwidth of 20Hz to 20,000Hz,
indicating that it can reproduce audio frequencies within that range.

Also note that bandwidth of signal is different from bandwidth of the

channel.
A channel is the medium through which the input signal passes. In terms of
analog signal, bandwidth of the channel is the range of frequencies that the
channel can carry.

Analog signal bandwidth is measured in terms of its frequency (Hz) but digital
signal bandwidth is measured in terms of bit rate (bits per second, bps).
Digital signal bandwidth:
In the context of computer networks and telecommunications, bandwidth refers to the
data transfer rate or capacity of a communication channel. It is typically measured in
bits per second (bps) and represents how much data can be transmitted over a network
connection in a given time period. Higher bandwidth allows for faster data transfer and
is crucial for activities like streaming videos, downloading files, and online gaming.
Different types of channels have different bandwidth. Ex. Twisted pair, coaxial cable,
fiber optics, Microwave etc.

Type of the channel Frequency range

Twisted pair 1MHz – 100 MHz)

Coaxial cable 0 – 750 MHz

Microwave 1 GHz-30 GHz

Satellite 1 GHz – 40 GHz

Fibre optics 180 THz – 330 THz

Bw= bandwidth (data transfer rate) (bit per second bps)
T = The time of sending or receiving data (second)
S= size of data (bit)

T = S/Bw
The time to send or receive data decreases as the bandwidth increases.

For example, What is the time required to download a file of 100 Mb through
a transmission medium with a bandwidth of 50 Mbps?

T = S/Bw

T = 100 Mb/50 Mbps

T=2s
cellular networks
Cellular networks enable devices such as smartphones and internet of things (IoT) devices
to communicate wirelessly. Cellular technologies have advanced from first generation(1G)
analog technology to advanced high-performance fourth generation (4G) and fifth
generation (5G) systems in just about four decades . While 1G cellular technologies have
disappeared, 2G technologies are gradually being replaced by newer generations of
technologies. 3G and 4G cellular technologies are widely deployed around the world. And
5G technologies have begun to appear in 2018.
1. cellular network architecture
Though the exact network architecture differs from one generation to another, a typical
cellular network consists of a radio access network (RAN), a core network (CN) and a
services network as shown in Fig. 1 . The RAN contains base stations (BS) that communicate
with the wireless devices using radio frequency (RF) signals, and it is this interface between
the base station and the devices that is the primary subject of this Lecture. The RAN
allocates radio resources to the devices to make wireless communications a reality. The CN
performs functions such as user authentication, service authorization, security activation,
IP address allocation and setup of suitable links to facilitate the transfer of user traffic such
as voice and video. The services network includes operator-specific servers and IP
multimedia subsystem (IMS) to offer a variety of services to the wireless subscriber,
including voice calls, text messages (SMS) and video calls.
2. Making communications wireless
Let us discuss communications between the device and the radio access network. A
technique called duplexing allows the device or the base station to simultaneously
transmit and receive information. Fig. 3 illustrates duplexing techniques.
The communications link from the device to the base station is called the uplink or
the reverse link, and the communications link from the base station to the device
is called the downlink or the forward link. Duplexing allows the device and the
base station to simultaneously send information on the one link while receiving
information on the other link. Duplexing facilitates bidirectional and realtime
transfer of information. Two basic duplexing methods are frequency division
duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD). A special case of FDD is half-duplex
FDD (H-FDD).

In FDD, one part of the frequency spectrum is used for the uplink and a different
part of the frequency spectrum for the downlink. From the device perspective,
uplink transmission and downlink reception can occur at exactly the same time.
From the base station perspective, downlink transmission and uplink reception
can occur at exactly the same time.
In TDD, the same unpaired frequency spectrum is used for the uplink and the
downlink.
The uplink exists at one instant, and the downlink exists at a different instant. Since
the switching between the uplink and the downlink is carried out rapidly (e.g. on the
order of milliseconds before 5G or even tens of microseconds in 5G), the uplink and
the downlink are considered “simultaneous” for all practical purposes.

TDD is simpler and less expensive than FDD from the device design perspective.
However, interference is easier to manage with FDD due to the separation of the
uplink and the downlink in the frequency domain.

Half-duplex FDD (H-FDD) can be viewed as a special case of FDD. Like FDD, H-FDD
uses different chunks of spectrum for the uplink and downlink. However, at the
device, only one link is active at an instant in time. Therefore, with H-FDD, the device
either transmits in the uplink using the uplink spectrum or receives in the downlink
using the downlink spectrum at a given instant.
multiple access techniques
multiple access techniques allows multiple devices to access and use the network at the
same time through suitable sharing of radio resources. Fig. 4 depicts a simplified view of
multiple access techniques commonly used in cellular networks.
Frequency division multiple access (FDMA) allows multiple devices to access the
network using different frequency channels.
• In FDMA, the allocated frequency band is divided into a number of sub-buns, called
channels and one channel is allocated by the BS to each user.
• FDMA is used in all first generation Cellular Systems
Time division multiple access (TDMA) allows multiple devices to access the network using
different timeslots of a given frequency channel.
• TDMA has been widely used in 2G digital cellular networks.
• TDMA in GSM(2G) splits time up into eight timeslots for the uplink and downlink.
Therefore, one 200 kHz channel of GSM can support eight users, each user in a 577 ms
slot that comprises a 4.615 ms TDMA frame. An uplink frame is shown in Fig. 5. A similar
allocation is made in the downlink frame.

Frequency

Timeslot-1 Timeslot-2 ……………………………………………………………………………………… Timeslot-8

Time

Frame
Code division multiple access (CDMA): involves the use of a wideband frequency channel
with different users using different orthogonal codes. Using different orthogonal codes,
interference between the signals is minimal.
• CDMA uses a Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) property where the transmitter
and the receiver must use the same spreading code to transmit data.
• 3G networks such as the universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) use
CDMA.

U1*C1
F= Frequency
U2*C2 U= User
(U1*C1+ U2*C2+U3*C3) F C= Code
U3*C3
Characteristics of CDMA

• It allows more users to connect at a given time and

thus provides improved data and voice
communication capacity.
• A full spectrum is used by all the channels in CDMA.
• CDMA systems make the use of power control to
eliminate the interference and noise and to thus
improve the network quality.
• CDMA encodes the user transmissions into distinct
and unique codes in order to secure its signals.
• In CDMA systems all the cells can thus use the same
frequency.
• CDMA systems have a soft capacity. Thus there is no
particular limit to the number of users in a CDMA
system but with increase in the number of users the
performance degrades.
OFDM:
In OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) systems the original
bandwidth is subdivided into multiple subcarriers. Each of this subcarriers can them be
individually modulated. Typically in OFDM systems we can have hundreds of subcarriers
with a content spacing between them (15KHz on the LTE case). Since the multiple
subcarriers in OFDM are transmitted in parallel, it’s possible for each one to transmit
with a lower symbol rate.

FDMA
Time

OFDM
Time
With OFDM , many different signals can be sent over the same medium, at the
same time. Each signal uses a different basis function. By using the basis
function given, the sender and recipient will then see their signal better, the
other signals will be clearly separated.
OFDM is a very popular multiplexing method used for many of the latest
Wireless and telecommunication standards such as 4G and 5G cellular phone
Technologies and many others.

OFDM

Time

An example of OFDM, with 3different signals