Cell tower

What is cell tower?
A cell tower houses the electronic communication equipment along with an antenna to support cellular communication in a network. A cell tower is usually an elevated structure with the antenna, transmitters, and receivers located on top.

A cell tower, also known as a cell tower or cell site.

Cell towers are usually placed so that they can cover a large area. The working range of a cell tower depends on many factors, such as:

- Rated power of the transmitter
- frequency of the signal
- Height of the antenna above its surroundings
- Required uplink / downlink data rate of the customer device
- Reflection or absorption of radio energy by nearby buildings or vegetation
- weather conditions
- Geographical or regulatory factors

Cell towers are grouped in geographic locations where the population density is high and there are likely to be large numbers of cell phone users. This helps avoid saturation of the available capacity, which could lead to busy signals and unhappy consumers. Cell phones are designed to recognize the nearest tower. This is displayed to the user in the form of a signal strength, which represents the connection strength between the user's location and the nearest tower providing the service. When a user makes a call, the broadcast radio signal searches for the nearest tower. The receiving antenna of the cell tower then picks up the radio signal and begins to find the caller. Once found, the radio signals are sent back to the user and communication is established by relaying the radio signals back and forth.

The primary function of a cell tower is to maintain an appropriate height for antennas that receive and transmit radio frequency signals from cell phones and other devices. To accommodate the community's aesthetic concerns, the towers are sometimes camouflaged to resemble trees or flagpoles. For basic operation, cell towers are expected to be adjacent to a road for physical access with the availability of telecommunications network connections and electrical power. Mobile service providers usually configure neighboring cell towers to use different frequencies. This helps to avoid any 'confusion' among handheld devices as to which tower antenna to use for the connection.