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Hand Held Radio

In the early 1970s, the hand held radio came into its own, thanks to months and months of research by engineers at Motorola. It was now only a matter of time.

About a Hand Held Radio

Inspired by the hand held radio, the DynaTAC cellular system required phone calls to be switched from cell to cell as users traveled. Making that happen without a high rate of dropped calls required innovative engineering. Motorola had to create a high-capacity system that worked with both portable phones and mobile car phones.

Additional Information about a Hand Held Radio

In addition to the design of the hand held radio, the Motorola engineering team’s concept involved designing a large number of overlapping cells in a geographic area. Low-powered transmitters in each cell allowed frequencies to be reused in cells farther away. Computerized network equipment tracked the moving caller through the system and automatically switched the call to a new cell and frequency as the caller changed locations (a process known as “hand-off”). The system automatically adjusted the transmitting power of the phone so it would not interfere with neighboring cell sites and linked the call with the wireline telephone network.

More Data about a Hand Held Radio

As more people subscribed to cellular services, the system could be expanded by splitting cells and making many smaller cells within the same geographic area. Because the radio channels used a narrower bandwidth than the older car radio telephone system, hundreds more available channels meant more people could share the same radio spectrum. Now they could use both a hand held radio and a cell phone.