ELi5: why mobile phone antena is cocncealed and represented as lines in motherboard board while mobile tower antena installed at hight?
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Mobile phones have tight size requirements so their antennas have to be well designed to fit into a small form factor. Large broadcasting antennas do not have the same contraints. But generally two antennas that transmit at the same frequencies are of similar sizes.
Mobile phones have tight size requirements so their antennas have to be well designed to fit into a small form factor. Large broadcasting antennas do not have the same contraints. But generally two antennas that transmit at the same frequencies are of similar sizes.
Phones, going into pockets, need compact and durable designs. They can’t reach three hundred feet into the air.
This really limits their ability to communicate. Fortunately cell towers do not need to fit into anybody’s pocket, so they can be huge. This also helps to make up for the less than ideal size and shape of the cellular antenna.
Phones, going into pockets, need compact and durable designs. They can’t reach three hundred feet into the air.
This really limits their ability to communicate. Fortunately cell towers do not need to fit into anybody’s pocket, so they can be huge. This also helps to make up for the less than ideal size and shape of the cellular antenna.
Mobile phones have tight size requirements so their antennas have to be well designed to fit into a small form factor. Large broadcasting antennas do not have the same contraints. But generally two antennas that transmit at the same frequencies are of similar sizes.
Phones, going into pockets, need compact and durable designs. They can’t reach three hundred feet into the air.
This really limits their ability to communicate. Fortunately cell towers do not need to fit into anybody’s pocket, so they can be huge. This also helps to make up for the less than ideal size and shape of the cellular antenna.
Physics and requirements.
A mobile phone has the requirement to be, well, mobile. As such there’s not a lot of space for large antennae. If you look back at the earlier mobiles they had (extendable) external antennae (eg. the [Nokia 3110](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3110)). But if you want to be mobile you also can’t use a directional antenna since these have to be pretty finely aligned. Now combine the small form factor with an omnidirectional antenna and you get very low transmission and reception power.
On the mobile towers you don’t have that issue. On those you can install big antennae that can capture very tiny signals from all the noise around it (and modern setups can even do tunable directionality through [MIMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO) configuration, improving on that even more) _and_ you can push a lot more power into those for transmission.
Physics and requirements.
A mobile phone has the requirement to be, well, mobile. As such there’s not a lot of space for large antennae. If you look back at the earlier mobiles they had (extendable) external antennae (eg. the [Nokia 3110](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3110)). But if you want to be mobile you also can’t use a directional antenna since these have to be pretty finely aligned. Now combine the small form factor with an omnidirectional antenna and you get very low transmission and reception power.
On the mobile towers you don’t have that issue. On those you can install big antennae that can capture very tiny signals from all the noise around it (and modern setups can even do tunable directionality through [MIMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO) configuration, improving on that even more) _and_ you can push a lot more power into those for transmission.
Physics and requirements.
A mobile phone has the requirement to be, well, mobile. As such there’s not a lot of space for large antennae. If you look back at the earlier mobiles they had (extendable) external antennae (eg. the [Nokia 3110](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3110)). But if you want to be mobile you also can’t use a directional antenna since these have to be pretty finely aligned. Now combine the small form factor with an omnidirectional antenna and you get very low transmission and reception power.
On the mobile towers you don’t have that issue. On those you can install big antennae that can capture very tiny signals from all the noise around it (and modern setups can even do tunable directionality through [MIMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO) configuration, improving on that even more) _and_ you can push a lot more power into those for transmission.
Mobile phone antennas are NOT concealed and represented as lines in the board, quite the contrary, the antennas are very visible, it’s just built as the frame of the phone.
You are holding the antennas all the time without realizing it.
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