When I have full bars vs only one or two bars i say the signal is stronger. Is that literally just a higher amplitude wave? Why does service slow dawn as opposed to just stop when my phone can no longer read it?
In: Physics
The wave attenuates (lower amplitude) with distance just like sounds are quieter when you’re further from them or there are obstacles.
The speed reduction is largely because as the signal is reduced, your device will have trouble understanding the transmission and will detect errors and request re-transmission. Or vice-versa in the other direction.
When you have fewer bars of service or weak WiFi, it means your phone is getting a weaker signal from the tower or router. This isn’t just about a higher amplitude wave; it also involves factors like distance, obstacles (walls), and interference from other devices.
With a weak signal, your phone and the network have to work harder to communicate. They spend more time correcting errors, lower the data rate to keep the connection stable, and resend lost data, all of which slow down your service instead of it just stopping completely.
Think of it like talking to someone far away: when you’re close, you hear each other clearly and talk quickly (full bars). When you’re far away, you need to shout or repeat yourself, and it takes longer to understand each other (few bars).
Imagine you’re at a loud party. If you want to talk to someone on the other side of the room, you have to yell at them, and they still might not hear you at all. It’s not because you aren’t being very loud, but there are lots of other loud sounds around too. Even when you get close to them, they might have trouble understanding you clearly because of all the other noise around. You have to repeat yourself often so it takes longer.
The bars are reporting the signal to noise ratio, or SNR, from the source to the receiver. The higher the SNR, the more data can be successfuly transmitted and received per second, all else being equal. Being close makes the signal stronger, and being farther away makes it weaker, because the signal spreads out with distance. But there is also noise to consider. Noise can be coming from other users on the same service, other services on the same frequency, other devices accidentally leaking RF on that frequency, or even natural sources like solar storms and cosmic rays.
As for why it slows down, when there is interference and a packet doesn’t get through, the devices will keep retrying until the data eventually does get through, but that makes each packet take longer to get through, so everything slows down.
More bars means your phone can talk to the station or tower faster and still be understood. It’s like how you can communicate a lot faster if you are in a quiet room with someone than if you are in a loud bar where you have to shout ever word and repeat yourself constantly.
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