MOBILE NETWORK PLANNING AND DESIGN

Mobile Network Planning and Design

Mobile Network Planning and Design

Introduction

Mobile technology provides essential tools for physically mobile employees and groups. Mobile tools are not only devices but also applications and services. A physically mobile employee also benefits from wired technologies in the places he or she visits and works in. Mobile and wireless technologies, however, are not equivalent, as Hayes and Kuchinskas (2003) noted. Mobile is the ability to carry a computing or connectivity device easily from location to location (Cupito, 2002). Wireless is the ability to connect to remote servers to access information and applications via a wireless network. Not all wireless devices are mobile—for example, stationary devices in the office that are connected by Bluetooth or infrared—and not all mobile devices are wireless; sometimes a worker just needs to carry information or applications with him or her on the job but does not need to connect remotely to servers.

Mobile Network Planning and Design

Mobile business models aim to provide new ways to benefit from wireless connections and mobile devices and services by redefining standard work processes and by increasing the ability to transfer information quickly to employees, wherever and whenever (Cupito, 2002). In principle, physical and virtual mobility provides employees with the opportunity to be near customers and, at the same time, to be able to access joint enterprise resources, for example, data, guidelines, and work orders, from afar and while moving. In order to work, employees need a wireless network, devices, applications, and support. In mobile business models, mobility uses the capabilities of wireless networks to connect computers, smart phones, cars, and household appliances. Some like to talk about real-time enterprise—a business that eliminates the time lag in receiving critical information and acting on it.

Traditional communication and computer-data networks rely upon extensive connections of wires. The wires support the flow of information through networks as a backbone, similar to the way that nerves relay sensations in the body. However, advances in networking technology have enabled the option of building wireless networks. Wireless networks can help overcome some of the physical limitations that conventional-network users must endure (Harbaugh, 1999).

Conventional networks differ from wireless in several ways. While regular networks require the computer attached to them to be located within designated spaces that house outlets and connections, wireless networks transmit data through the open air, freeing the user from confined places. Wireless networks are a solution of convenience. By using them, laptop computers can be mobile, users in older buildings can get Internet access, and office Intranets can become rearrangeable (Harbaugh, 1999). Whether it allows nurses to record patient information from portable devices or students to check email from the grass in front of their next class, a wireless network boasts a novel level of computing freedom.

A network free of wires utilizes several different components in order to operate. Since the connection between computers does not employ wires, radio frequencies function as the method for transmitting data. In order for a computer to relay information via radio waves, ...