Mobile telephony will break out of today's constraints, but not with today's technology. The story of analog cellular radio will be written in vivid hindsight as one of the classic technological miscues of modern history, on a par with, say, the zeppelin airship. The trend it represents is real, but the instrumentality is fatally flawed.
-G. Calhoun, Digital Cellular Radio, 1988.
In this chapter we introduce cellular technology, the most pervasive mobile communications technology. Although cellular systems have historically been voice-oriented, much of the underlying technology provides a model for mobile data systems such as CDPD. As we shall see, the application (voice) has driven the design of cellular systems in a way which is less than optimal for data applications.
This chapter presents topics such as cellular radio transmission, cellular capacity, the North American Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) voice and data services, digital cellular and the emerging Personal Communications Services (PCS). Other cellular-based systems which are not "common carrier" systems (e.g., two-way paging) are described in Chapter 9. Although it provides an overview of cellular technology and the cellular industry, this chapter is by no means a complete portrayal-several references such as [CALH88], [LEE-89], [LEE-93] and [PAHL95] provide a much more complete presentation of a fascinating technology.