How does my tiny phone communicate with a cell tower so far away? How does it transmit my data to the cell tower?
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It’s a combination of sensitive receivers on the cell towers and the nature of radio waves.
To begin, radio waves travel at the speed of light and will technically travel for infinity until they hit something that can disrupt their path. Air can slow them down and disrupt them a little, but not a whole lot.
So you don’t need a lot of power to send an RF signal blasting off in every direction for infinity. You just need enough power to ensure the signal is recognizable data and not just noise on that frequency and not have too much stuff between you and the destination. This is how we are able to communicate with the Voyager probes that aren’t even in our solar system anymore.
All you need is just a really good listener to pick up the signal. You can do this by eliminating the noise and focusing on a very specific band of frequencies to listen for.
Where the signal will finally become too weak is when there’s too much crap between you and the tower, OR, your far enough away that the signal is getting so spread or weak that the tower can’t distinguish the data from the noise floor on that frequency. Your phone may try to boost it’s power to compensate or look for more towers, but then say goodbye to your battery.
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