Building Your Own Cell Phone: Tips and Resources

[Hyperreality]

I was thinking about making a cell phone on my own, but I don't know where I can find sufficient information and the requied knowledge to start. Can anyone please give me any useful advices and information? All helps are appreciated.

 

[flexifirm]

Very hard

A cell phone is only a part of the cellular network. Most of the electronics has to do with the actual cellular network (tranceivers, MTSO, etc.).

So cell phone manufacturers are always working in CONJUCTION with cell phone operators and use very strict STANDARDS and PROTOCOLS.

And a cell phone is a collaborative design effort, involving many many people. Each person is an expert in a very small portion of the design.

SO for you to match the expertise of all these people, would be very hard and POINTLESS.

On the other hand, you can make your own communcation device for short range use. This would require knowledge of DSP processors, memory, IO to keypads and screen...and a good transceiver chip (research Chipcon's ICs).

You must be very knowledgeable in wireless technologies before u can get your feet wet. Then you can try working with ISM/Bluetooth devices.

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by flexifirm
SO for you to match the expertise of all these people, would be very hard and POINTLESS.

It is likely impossible to build your own working cell phone. And certainly it is pointless.

 

[mmwave]

How about some hard data on this. With a top RF design professor advising us, a friend & I spend 10 weeks building subsystems to make a cell phone. We spent 10 to 20 hours a week studying, building and testing the subsystems. At the end of the 10 weeks, we used our subsystem as the transmitter and a similar one as the receiver (so 4 people * 15 hours/wk * 10 weeks) and we managed to send morse code because we were too exhausted build a circuit to do the voice modulation. In total there were 12 of us trying to do this and only 8 finally got it working. Some of us were already experts at using all the test gear we had at our disposal. (Before you laugh realize that it worked at 2.4 GHz and was all discrete except for the PLL chip.)

Was it practical? not at all, our 'cell phone' still lacked digital encoding and occupied more space than 2 lap top computers. Why did we do it? because we learned a lot, particularly when we tried to build the antenna and match it to the Power Amp. Textbook theory didn't seem to work at all. It was a lot of fun. :)

 

[flexifirm]

are u in graduate school?

mmwave.. are you in graduate school?

 

[mmwave]

Originally posted by flexifirm
mmwave.. are you in graduate school?

Not any more. :) It was a few years ago.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Originally posted by mmwave
How about some hard data on this. With a top RF design professor advising us, a friend & I spend 10 weeks building subsystems to make a cell phone. We spent 10 to 20 hours a week studying, building and testing the subsystems. At the end of the 10 weeks, we used our subsystem as the transmitter and a similar one as the receiver (so 4 people * 15 hours/wk * 10 weeks) and we managed to send morse code because we were too exhausted build a circuit to do the voice modulation. In total there were 12 of us trying to do this and only 8 finally got it working. Some of us were already experts at using all the test gear we had at our disposal. (Before you laugh realize that it worked at 2.4 GHz and was all discrete except for the PLL chip.)

congratulations... way cool

as for the original question... let's say that the GSM standard only has about 5000 pages

 

[russ_watters]

This thread is 6 years old and there is no point in resurrecting it.

Locked.