Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief

cerberus4696 writes "According to today's Denver Post, Verizon recently premiered one of its new Cells On Light Trucks (COLTs), a complete, self-contained CDMA cell that can be moved to wherever it's needed, such as the scene of a natural disaster or a large public event. Since a standard CDMA cell can only handle a theoretical maximum of 62 calls at a time (usually less in practice), the network of permanent fixtures can quickly become overloaded in high-use situations. Verizon already uses a larger version of the system known as a Cell On Wheels (or COW; gotta love these acronyms), but as it takes three trucks and the better part of a day to deploy, nimbleness of response has apparently been an issue."

Comments

wow, only 62 calls at once?

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems really limited. Hell, I bet my local high school would saturate a cell every time class let out, there were always people making calls or listening to messages. I'm surprised I don't see more towers with the number of cell phones I see daily. Of course, I am from Seattle, so the lousy reception they mention applies to me :(.

Anonymous Coward

Re:wow, only 62 calls at once?

[Phil Karn]

That figure is a little misleading. 61 (not 62) is the number of available traffic channels per sector and per RF channel for the original mid-1990's IS-95 CDMA standard. The number 61 comes from having 64 Walsh code channels, minus three for overhead: pilot, sync and paging.

Sectorization refers to the practice, common with all cellular technologies, of dividing up the area around a cell site into regions, or sectors, each served by its own set of directional antennas. Three sector cells are extremely common; that's why so many towers have triangular platforms with a set of antennas on each side. There are usually three antennas on each side: one for transmit and two for receive, with the extra receive antenna providing spatial diversity.

Most CDMA cell sites in built-up areas have three (or six) sectors, operate on more than one 1.25 MHz RF channel, and use the newer CDMA 2000 1x standard. That can easily provide a total cell capacity of considerably more than 61 calls.

CDMA 2000 1x doubles the number of Walsh code channels (to 128) by adding a second set of traffic channels in quadrature to the original 64. Virtually all CDMA phones sold over the past few years do 1x.

Because of CDMA's inherent robustness, the same RF channel can be reused in adjacent cells and even adjacent sectors, greatly increasing the overall capacity of the spectrum in a given area. Because no careful frequency reuse plan is required, CDMA is also very well suited to the rapid deployment of cells in "hot spots" as described in this article.

Disclaimer: I work for Qualcomm.

Re:wow, only 62 calls at once?

[provolt]

Hey, what do you think you're doing here!?! You're stating facts, and giving real explainations. If I wanted that, I'd go read a book.

I come here for uninformed and incomplete comments from college freshmen who think that they know everything about cell phones because they know how to operate the features on a phone. I don't want someone who understands telecommunications. I would prefer someone who know how to program. Because being able to program a PC is basically the same thing as telecommunications. So why don't you just take your "facts" and "knowledge" and just go home.

COWs?

[daringone]

If you put a cell on a COW, can you tip it?

Because communication IS a good thing...

[YankeeInExile]

Said the troll dripping with sarcasm:

because we all know in the event of a majour natural disaster the first thing we all want is cell phone coverage back :-)

Communication actually is the first service that is needed after a natural disaster. It just turns out that cellular service gives the best bang-for-buck in terms of communication capability.

Natural (or other) disaster

[ffejie]

This could be an incredibly useful technology. Anyone who had someone in New York/DC during 9/11 knows how difficult it was to get a hold of anyone that day. Aside from the fact that cell towers went down with the WTCs, Verizons CO (central office) was right next to Tower 1 and 2, knocking out quite a few landlines. Switching capabilities were compromised, leaving most of us with "All circuits are busy." In the future, deploy a few dozen of these and the cell phone capacity could ramp up rather quickly in an extreme event.

Bad acronym

[hipoppotamus]

I wonder why they didn't call it a Cellular User Node Transport? I think that would be nuch better.

9-11 used something like this

[PenguinRadio]

Near the Pentagon in the first days after the attack they put up some towers and said they were using it to triangulate the location of cell phones that might still be on and inside the rubble. It ended up staying there for about six months or so.

Re:So...

[daringone]

If you're on a network that promises "No Roaming" such as Sprint's Fair and Flexible America or Alltel's Total Freedom, it shouldn't matter what company puts up the tower... you can use it.

Llamas?

[op00to]

Verizon has taken even more dramatic action to cope with disasters in the past. In 2000, during the Hi Meadow fire near Bailey, the company used helicopters and llamas to transport equipment to the rugged terrain, Weaver said.

Did anyone else notice this? Llamas. And helicopters. Sounds elaborate. Makes me glad I'm not with Verizon.

Not just for the disaster workers.

[Libertarian_Geek]

You may have victims trapped under rubble, or stranded in flood waters who can call for help thanks to this. Residents in the area of a disaster could potentially use up all of the capacity in a disaster area calling family members to let them know their ok. This would increase cellphone capacity in that area, just like they do at sporting events.

Re:Traffic

[Crinos]

Yes, and they would call them Portable Instruments to Get Service (PIGS)

Which is why Ham ops are still useful

[MooseByte]

Which is a good reason that Ham radio ops are still useful, particularly in disaster relief scenarios where much of the local infrastructure may have been destroyed.

But first you have to get us to stop talking about the weather and our rigs. :-)

Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief?

[WwWonka]

Remember the good ole days when you went behind a tree for diaster relief?

Those damn kids and their new technology!

News on parade...

[k4_pacific]

This is News... On... Parade...

(Queue trumpets)

Thanks to new advances in radio cullularology, our fearless fighting men in Europe can stay in touch with one another in the field and their commanding officers back at the base. This is accomplished by the US Army's Verizon Corps, who follow our troops across Europe erecting cellular phone towers at key battle sites. This gives our fighting men an advantage over the German oppressors, who are forced to rely on tin cans connected by string. So, when the US Army asks, "Can you hear me now?", America can proudly say, Yes We Can.

This has been News... On... Parade...

Blimps

[Omega1045]

Why not a blimp with CDMA cells tied to an anchor (truck, etc) with power running from the anchor? Seriously, you could probably tow a launch platform (uhaul sized trailer) behind a small pickup, suv, van etc with an He supply and a generator.

You drive to site, inflate, and let her pop-up. Crank up your Honda generator and away you go. And now let the EEs shoot down my idea (not literally).

Making Amature Radio Irrelevant?

[ackthpt]

a complete, self-contained CDMA cell that can be moved to wherever it's needed, such as the scene of a natural disaster or a large public event.

I rather wonder, aside from the hobby aspect, how much longer Amature Radio will remain relevant. Seems disasters where AR would really shine and this sort of thing seems to replace them, as now pretty much anyone can afford a hand held phone, where once transmitters and receivers were the domain of those who actually cared enough to outfit and train themselves to be available for when there was need. Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911.