Weather Related troubles with wireless

[HandymanLLD]

Hello, new to the wireless scene. What sort of issues should I expect if I normally have a very good connection and a thunderstorm rolls in? Regular heavy shower,just overcast skys, snow or ice? I'm not to concerned about thunderstorms, I tend to unplug anyways during those times, curious to know what I'm getting into. Any and all responses will be appreciated.

Thanks much.
Michael

[HandymanLLD]

Oops. Forgot to say that I'm using a laptop with Sprint as the provider.

[Fire14]

Sometimes weather will effect the signal & cause it to be lower then normal, just like leaves on the trees will cause the same issue.

If your in a strong reception area, you shouldn't notice it too much (unless the tower or power goes down from the storm) but the more your in a fringe area it can be noticed quite a bit.

There are numerous factors that effect signals, including Sun spots, but for the most part as the carriers build out more & more towers, these issues become less & less.

[GBPhoenix]

I tend to notice that in areas that I normally had issues with get better in the winter time. The lack of leaves do make a difference if you are in a weak area. Storms can sometimes cause an issue, but more caused by cell sites going down, but with most carriers the build-out is so great that you probably won't notice a great difference.

[storkus]

Well, this calls for a bit of Microwave Radio 101. But only a little!

Using Sprint PCS, you're exclusively on the PCS band around 1,900
MHz. This is well into the microwave region, and is only about
500-600 MHz below what your microwave oven runs at (2,450 MHz).
I bring this up because this has everything to do with your your
microwave oven heats food: the water inside it easily absorbs
the microwaves and turns them into heat. This effect increases
with increasing frequency, which is why those satellite TV
services frequently go out during cloud bursts (which is, I suspect,
what prompted you to ask this question in the first place).

As the others here have commented, leaves will absorb the
microwave radio frequencies between your phone and the
tower; this gets worse as the water content increases. Since you
live in Arkansas, this can be a serious problem. The problem
will get worse as more growth lies between your phone and
the tower; however, if you're in a town or city, or along an
interstate, there should be enough signal to compensate. You
should only worry if you go into the boonies, but even then your
phone will probably roam on Verizon, Alltel, or some other
provider on the old 800 MHz band, which doesn't suffer from
this problem (but also can't carry as many calls).

As for the thunderstorm problem, you may see some signal
decrease at the peak of the cloud burst, but unless you're
already in a fringe area, the signal should never drop out.
Remember, you're connecting with a tower no more than a few
miles away, not a satellite at a quarter of the distance to the
moon! You have much more signal to work with (the "link
budget", in shop talk) with your cell phone.

But that doesn't mean you won't have problems, just that
they're very unlikely to be caused by weather. Since you
said you're new, I'll run down the 2 most common ones so you
know what to expect (and don't panic and try to return the phone
to the store):

1. The connection starts getting really bad during a storm, but
your phone shows plenty of signal strength: I've had this
happen to me once during a t-storm in Las Cruces, NM when I
was driving truck. There wasn't a lot of water coming down,
but the wind and lightning were insane. I finally figured it out
when I noticed *ALL* the cell towers were using microwave
backhauls (i.e., to get the signal back to the central switch).
The audio and connection would go in and out. So my
conclusion was (and still is) that either network sync (timing)
was lost due to lost GPS connectivity or the backhaul dying, or
the connection itself was simply lost. The former (lost or
corrupt GPS reception leading to site or network timing desync)
is also the underlying reason for sunspots (or, more precisely,
solar flares) causing digital cell phones to have troubles, as
the sun can't affect microwaves on the surface of the earth.

2. Your call drops, perhaps repeatedly, in the same area,
especially the same time of day (usually rush hour): the cell
is overloaded. Sprint in particular is well-known, especially in
some areas of the country like Atlanta, of over-subscribing
their network. This means there are too many users competing
to use the cell or area at the same time. CDMA systems like
Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, and others in particular are subject
to a unique problem known as "cell breathing", where the
apparent "size" or "service area" of the cell shrinks with
increasing usage. It's an easy concept to understand,
actually: at a bar or other large event, the more people are
talking the louder the "noise floor" gets and to be heard farther
you either have to shout or you need to get closer to your
intended target. With cell phones, this means the physical
distance between you and the tower: during peak use, your
phone may drop a call where it would work during less busy
usage times. There's no cure: you just have to wait until you're
in range of another tower or the system traffic subsides a bit.
And anyway, unless you happen to be in a VERY busy area
where seemingly everyone is on their phones, you won't see it.

There's also the problem of bad hand-offs, but this usually
occurs in mountainous areas (like where I am) and shouldn't be
a problem in a mostly flat place like Arkansas. It also affects
TDMA systems like Cingular and T-Mobile more than CDMA ones.

The bottom line is that you can't expect a wireless phone to be as
reliable as a wired one. But the limitations are few and as long
as you understand it, you shouldn't have much (if any) trouble.

Oh, and one more thing: one ADVANTAGE of a wireless phone is
that you CAN use it in a thunderstorm without being in danger of
being electrocuted! The cell tower might get hit and you lose
your connection, but at least YOU are SAFE!

Mike

[RadioFoneGuy]

Originally Posted by storkus

phone will probably roam on Verizon, Alltel, or some other
provider on the old 800 MHz band, which doesn't suffer from
this problem (but also can't carry as many calls).

What do you mean by that. CDMA 1x is available in 1900 and 850 why would the freq range change the subscriber count. The only major difference is RF propagation.

[storkus]

I mean bandwidth: the cellular band has less room than the PCS
band, when you lump the various allocations together. In other
words, you would need more cells to cover the same number of
subscribers or, conversely, use the same number of cells but
increase the amount of competition (which is what they did in the
PCS band when it was created).

However, the incumbent carriers (around here, that would be
old Blue aka AT&T Wireless aka McCraw Cellular aka Cellular One
on the "A/Wireless" side and Verizon Wireless aka Pac-Tel Cellular
aka AirTouch Wireless on the "B/Wireline" side) all got a slice of
the PCS band during the auctions, which up to doubled their
capacity. This is why, where they could do it, when Cingular
bought AT&T Wireless, if they were serving the same market (as
they were here), they chose to keep the one with the cellular
allocation (AT&T Wireless here) and sell off the PCS-only one
(to T-Mobile, in this case, turning them from a MVNO into a real
carrier in this market for the first time) even though the PCS-only
network was better built out: they were thinking of the future,
and the combined bandwidth of both bands along with the unique
physical properties of both.

Hopefully that explains it better.

Mike