g Concepts," defines the fundamentals of radio, including frequency, amplitude and power, and modulation. It also includes explanations of multiple access and modulation, a description of how a radio signal is altered by an antenna and by the space between the transmitter and receiver, and how we calculate signal power through those changes. In Chapter 2, "Radio Signal Quality," we discuss impairments to the radio signal, such as noise, interference, distortion, and multipath. Chapter 2 also covers the measurement of radio signals, errors in those measurements, and the measurement of both analog and digital radio signals. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the components at the two sides of the radio-air interface, the user terminal and the base station. Chapter 3, "The User Terminal," describes the components of a user terminal, commonly known as a cell phone. Chapter 4, "The Base Station," describes the cellular base station: the antennas that receive the signal through the tower and cable, the power amplifier, the receiver, the components that transmit cellular signals, those which send telephone calls through the link to the mobile switching center, and the base-station controller that manages the operations of the base station. There is also a discussion of component reliability modeling. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Key Radio Concepts Key Radio Concepts Chapter 5, "Basic Wireless Telephony," provides a picture of how all the parts of a cellular network work together to create the wireless signal path and how the whole cellular system is laid out, i.e., its architecture. In Chapters 6 and 7 we describe the early analog and digital cellular radio technologies. In Chapter 6, "Analog Wireless Telephony (AMPS)," we describe the original Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) analog cellular technology that pioneered the cellular arc