Assignment – 1

Difference between wire line and wireless

communications

Communication involves a network for its realization. A network in

Electronics Communication is a group of interconnected computers,
communications stations, or other facilities, often organized for simultaneous
operation and data transfer.
A network can operate in two ways- it may be a wire line network or a
wireless network. These are defined as under:
Wire line:- A type of network in which one or more wires or cables are
deployed for conducting currents for communication, control, or measuring
purposes.
Wireless:- A type of network pertaining to data communications and control
systems that operate without wires (e.g. Bluetooth link between a notebook
and a desktop computer).

The above two types of networks are different from each other not only in
terms of the use or disuse of cables but also in terms of nature and scope of
their respective operation, bandwidth , type of device, protocol, time varying
quality of the two-way physical links, type of services and consumer
expectations.
The Distinction between Wire line and Wireless Communications
Some basic aspects which distinguish wire line from wireless communications are as follows.
Limited Spectrum
The radio spectrum, and therefore the capacity available for wireless access service, is generally
limited by regulation. Thus, unlike wire line communications wherein an increasing user
population can easily be served by deploying additional wire (or fiber) facilities to connect those
users to the network (thereby increasing the total capacity available to serve that increasing
population), the available radio spectrum cannot arbitrarily be expanded. The cellular approach
resolves this dilemma by dividing the service area into radio cells, each equipped with a base
station, and reusing the allocated spectrum as often as possible among the radio cells, subject to
constraints imposed by co-channel interference among the cells. Then, as the user population
grows, or users individually demand greater capacity, the cells must be divided such that a
greater number of geographically smaller cells are available to serve the demand; again,
frequency reuse among the greater number of smaller cells is mandatory. Limited spectrum also
drives the need for spectrally efficient modulation and source compression coding to remove
signal information redundancy.
Time-Varying Quality of the Two-Way Physical Links Between Mobile and Base Station
In a wire line network the physical link between a remote user terminal and the end-office switch
or remote concentrator are of time-invariant high quality. In a wireless network the radio link is
subject to several time-varying impairments arising from inherent user mobility and unavoidable
changes caused by motion of the surrounding environment (closing doors and passing trucks are
two examples of the latter). These impairments are manifested in a time-varying bit error rate
(BER) performance of the radio link, with the BER often too low to meet the needs of the
application. Root causes of these time-varying impairments are multipath propagation, shadow
fading, distance-dependent signal power path loss, and co-channel interference arising in
surrounding cells. Multipath propagation, caused by the superposition of radio waves reflected
from surrounding objects, gives rise to frequency-selective fading which, in turn, causes frequent
and deep reduction in received power for narrowband signals and rapidly changing time
dispersion of broadband signals. Shadow fading, caused by the presence of large physical objects
(buildings, walls, etc.) which preclude direct line of sight between a radio transmitter and
receiver, also gives rise to strong signal power attenuation, but varies at a much lower rate than
does multipath fading. Path loss refers to the reduction in the fraction of transmitted power which
is actually received as the distance between transmitter and receiver increases, and also produces
a slowly time-varying effect. These propagation-related phenomena (multipath, shadow fading,
and path loss) reduce immunity to radio receiver noise and, perhaps more important, increase the
susceptibility to co-channel interference arising in other cells which happen to be using the same
frequency. In addition, the level of co-channel interference encountered by a given base-mobile
link is strongly influenced by the time-varying number of currently active users in any other cells
sharing a common frequency.
An Unknown Time-Varying Access Point
Unlike a wire line connection, wherein users attach via fixed network ports, wireless access
implies that the user's point of attachment is unknown at the time of connection establishment
and may change throughout the duration of the connection. Corollaries are as follows. First,
some extraordinary means must be created to allow users to signal connection requests (and/or to
accept a connection) prior to the actual establishment of a connection. In a wire line setting, the
same facilities that will subsequently carry the user's application signals are also used to carry the
user's control signals. In a wireless setting, a user's connection can be used to carry control
signals only after it has been established, and some extraordinary means must be provided to
enable reconnections establishment signaling. Second, to establish a connection to a called
wireless user, the network must locate that user. This can readily be done by paging if the called
wireless user is known to be somewhere within some small cluster of cells. Otherwise, the user-
mobile equipment must advise a database, known as the home location register, of that user's
current location. Then, any calls to that user will prompt a database inquiry to determine the
user's location; calls can then be forwarded to the user. Third, throughout a connection, the
position of the user must continually be tracked so that the connection can be maintained as the
user travels among different cells.