The reason cell phones drop a lot of calls in Barrhaven – and why changing carriers won’t help
A few post back I wrote about a great service to use when you dropped (and cracked) your smartphone. Today I’m going to attempt a variation on the theme – what can you do when your phone drops you.
I often come across tweets originating from Barrhaven residents complaining of dropped cell phone calls. Turns out, it’s a real problem for our community. Barrhaven does indeed suffer from a specific set of circumstances that result in a higher rate of dropped cellular calls. And today, I reveal the reason behind the dropped calls, and why changing your cell phone provider will probably not solve the problem.
Before I start, I would like to make the following disclosure. While I’m an IT professional, I do not have any formal training or expertise in the area of wireless communication protocols and technologies. The information I will share today was gleamed from personal observations and online research. If some of you have in depth knowledge of cell phone communications, please feel free to share your expertise in the comment section. Your input would be most welcomed.
With that out of the way, back to the topic at hand. There are many reasons why cell phones drop calls, and what I’m about to share is not the only cause, but in Barrhaven, it’s a significant one. It’s a phenomenon referred to as airplane flutter and it affects cell phone performance when devices are used near airports.
In a nutshell, your cell phone communicates with a local antenna (usually mounted on a tower). But when the right geographical and atmospheric conditions are in place, your cell phone can receive both a direct signal from the antenna tower and a reflected signal scattered by a low altitude airplane flying overhead. The combination of these two signals confuses cell phones, which can result in dropped calls.
In more technical terms, the aircraft fuselage acts as a mirror to the RF signals radiating from the mobile telephone transmitter and redirects them to your mobile handset. However, as two signals arrive to your cell phone by differing route lengths (one by the cell tower, the other reflected by a low flying aircraft), there will be a phase difference between the two, and when this is of the order of 180 degrees, they will cancel each other out resulting in no signal. Redial please.
This phenomenon also affects digital TV signals, but unlike cell phones, there are ways to mitigate those effects using a specific foil reflector with your antenna. The wild card here is that cell phones operate using many different frequencies and protocols. GSM, CDMA and the newer LTE communication protocols may all be affected differently by airplane flutter, therefore it’s important to ask your cell phone provider what product they recommend to minimize its impact.
Related Posts
-
Non profit group recognition – The Barrhaven Community Concert Band
No Comments | Aug 26, 2014
-
Canada Day in Barrhaven
No Comments | Jul 1, 2014
-
An innovative, made in Barrhaven gift idea that will literally grow on you!
No Comments | Aug 17, 2014
-
New local bakery specializes in allergy safe treats
No Comments | Jan 21, 2016
Hi there. This is an ongoing issue in Barrhaven and goes a long way in explaining Chapman Mills’ horrible reception issues. I was told another reason is due to the density of homes in certain areas, towers could not be installed and the signals are harder to receive for that reason as well. This would also seem to ring true with Chapman Mills. If you go to older Barrhaven, I’ve found reception to be much better as the houses are further apart and less dense.
Cheers!
This makes sense – Chapman Mills is much closer to the airport than the western edge of Barrhaven. The planes would be closer to ground level, which would probably make the problem even worse.
Does this type of interference also cause calls to not go through properly? i.e. you can’t hear each other very well although you know the other person is on the line. Also the dial tone is very weak when the call is going through.
Probably not – this effect will usually result in a sudden dropped signal. It is very intermittent in nature.
I had been under the impression the poor signal was due to the the cellphone towers not being as high since its situated close to a flight path.
I also have terribly reception especially on my first floor as our house is situated in the shadow of a bit of a hill. Nothing major, but the fact is, going to our second floor helps my voice calls sound and perform better.
Airplane flutter will not cause bad reception – it simply causes your phone to loose temporary connection with the tower, resulting in sudden dropped calls. But from reading the feedback this post has generated, there certainly seems to be signal strength issues on the eastern reaches of Barrhaven.
I think it all depends where in Barrhaven. I live on Claridge and am with Telus, i have fantastic signal and my data network is always in LTE. Probably because i am very close to the cell tower which I believe is situated beside the fire hall on Berrigan and Greenbank.
I will agree though the further east you go and in Chapman Mills the weaker the signal is.
It would be interesting to get further feedback from both LTE and GMS network users – LTE coverage is probably much better.