Philip Thomas Porter (March 18, 1930 - March 30, 2011) was an electrical engineer and one of the guiding pioneers of the invention and development of early cellular telephone networks.
Porter was born in rural Clinton, Kentucky, USA. He received a BA in physics (1952), MA in physics (1953), and a PhD (1955?) from Vanderbilt University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Porter was an engineer at Bell Laboratories during the years of transition from radio telephones to modern cellular mobile communications. Porter was the Bell Labs engineer who proposed that cell towers be at the corners of the hexagon cells rather than the centers and have directional antennas that would transmit/receive in 3 directions into 3 adjacent hexagon cells.
In Porter's design, the cell sites can flexibly assign channels to handheld phones based on signal strength, allowing the same frequency to be re-used in various locations without interference. This allowed a larger number of phones to be supported over a geographical area. His work in preorigination dialing (entering the number, then hitting the Send key), improved efficiency of placing cell phone calls.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Porter was a key partner in the international negotiation of bandwidths and international standards involving systems, signaling, and controlling implications of cellular service. These activities led to cellular service becoming commercial viable.
He was the recipient of several awards for his work, notably from the IEEE (engineering society). As of January 1, 1990, Porter was elected an IEEE Fellow "for contributions to the planning, definition, and design of mobile cellular radio communications and services." [1]
After spending much of his adult life in New Jersey near the Bell Laboratories headquarters where he worked, Porter retired to WellSpring in Greensboro, North Carolina in 2000. [2] Porter was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2016 as a recognition for his role in the cellular industry. [3]
He and his wife Louise (Jett) Porter had a daughter Sara Shelby Taylor, a son Philip C. Porter, and three grandchildren.
Li Fung Chang and Philip T. Porter, "Data Services in a TDMA Digital Portable Radio System", Global Telecommunications Conf., GLOBECOM '90, 1990.
Li Fung Chang and Philip T. Porter, "Performance comparison of antenna diversity and slow frequency hopping for the TDMA portable radio channel", IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, pages 222-229, vol 38, issue 4, 1989.
Philip T. Porter, "Relationships for Three-dimensional Modeling of Co-channel Reuse", IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Pages 6–11, vol 35, 1985.
Verne H. MacDonald, Philip T. Porter, W. Rae Young, "Cellular high capacity mobile radiotelephone system with fleet-calling arrangement for dispatch service", U.S. patent 4,399,555 , filed April 28, 1980, issued August 16, 1983.
Z. C. Fluhr and Philip T. Porter, "AMPS: Control Architecture", Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 58, 1, pages 1–14, January 1979, Advanced Mobile Phone System.
Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engle, and Philip T. Porter, "High Capacity Mobile Telephone System Feasibility Studies and System Plan", proposal filed with the FCC in 1971.
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard originally developed by Bell Labs and later modified in a cooperative effort between Bell Labs and Motorola. It was officially introduced in the Americas on October 13, 1983, and was deployed in many other countries too, including Israel in 1986, Australia in 1987, Singapore in 1988, and Pakistan in 1990. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s. As of February 18, 2008, carriers in the United States were no longer required to support AMPS and companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications have discontinued this service permanently. AMPS was discontinued in Australia in September 2000, in India by October 2004, in Israel by January 2010, and Brazil by 2010.
In telecommunications and computer networks, a channel access method or multiple access method allows more than two terminals connected to the same transmission medium to transmit over it and to share its capacity. Examples of shared physical media are wireless networks, bus networks, ring networks and point-to-point links operating in half-duplex mode.
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter. Radio waves with frequencies above the UHF band fall into the super-high frequency (SHF) or microwave frequency range. Lower frequency signals fall into the VHF or lower bands. UHF radio waves propagate mainly by line of sight; they are blocked by hills and large buildings although the transmission through building walls is strong enough for indoor reception. They are used for television broadcasting, cell phones, satellite communication including GPS, personal radio services including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, walkie-talkies, cordless phones, satellite phones, and numerous other applications.
Wireless communication is the transfer of information (telecommunication) between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most common wireless technologies use radio waves. With radio waves, intended distances can be short, such as a few meters for Bluetooth or as far as millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications. It encompasses various types of fixed, mobile, and portable applications, including two-way radios, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wireless networking. Other examples of applications of radio wireless technology include GPS units, garage door openers, wireless computer mouse, keyboards and headsets, headphones, radio receivers, satellite television, broadcast television and cordless telephones. Somewhat less common methods of achieving wireless communications involve other electromagnetic phenomena, such as light and magnetic or electric fields, or the use of sound.
IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation (2G) mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS (D-AMPS), and most often referred to as TDMA, are a further development of the North American 1G mobile system Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS). It was once prevalent throughout the Americas, particularly in the United States and Canada since the first commercial network was deployed in 1993. D-AMPS is considered end-of-life, and existing networks have mostly been replaced by GSM/GPRS or CDMA2000 technologies.
Base station is – according to the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Radio Regulations (RR) – a "land station in the land mobile service."
A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver. These base stations provide the cell with the network coverage which can be used for transmission of voice, data, and other types of content. A cell typically uses a different set of frequencies from neighboring cells, to avoid interference and provide guaranteed service quality within each cell.
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to mobile phones rather than fixed-location phones. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the line may blur.
The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.
Houston Cellular was a Houston-based cell phone company which provided AMPS and D-AMPS (TDMA) service in the Greater Houston area. It was formed in 1983 and was operated as a partnership between LIN Broadcasting Corp., Mobile Communication Corp. of America and BellSouth Co. Its headquarters were located in Houston, Texas.
The DynaTAC is a series of cellular telephones manufactured by Motorola from 1983 to 1994. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X received approval from the U.S. FCC on September 21, 1983. A full charge took roughly 10 hours, and it offered 30 minutes of talk time. It also offered an LED display for dialing or recall of one of 30 phone numbers. It was priced at $3,995 in 1984, its commercial release year, equivalent to $11,716 in 2023. DynaTAC was an abbreviation of "Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage".
The air interface, or access mode, is the communication link between the two stations in mobile or wireless communication. The air interface involves both the physical and data link layers of the OSI model for a connection.
Ameritech Mobile Communications, LLC was the first company in the United States to provide cellular mobile phone service to the general public. Cell service became publicly available in Chicago on October 13, 1983. The company was a division of Ameritech which, as of January 1, 1984, was the holding company of Illinois Bell, Michigan Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Ohio Bell, and Indiana Bell, which provides landline service to the Great Lakes region. From around 1986, Cincinnati Bell held a 45% stake in the company. Originally named Ameritech Mobile Communications, it later became known as Ameritech Cellular.
Martin Cooper is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field.
Douglas H. Ring was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone. The history of cellular phone technology began on December 11, 1947 with an internal memo written by Douglas H. Ring in which he proposed development of a cellular telephone system by AT&T.
William Rae Young, Jr. was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone.
Joel Stanley Engel is an American electrical engineer who made fundamental contributions to the development of cellular networks.
Richard H. Frenkiel is an American engineer, known for his significant role in the early development of cellular telephone networks.
The first smart antennas were developed for military communications and intelligence gathering. The growth of cellular telephone in the 1980s attracted interest in commercial applications. The upgrade to digital radio technology in the mobile phone, indoor wireless network, and satellite broadcasting industries created new opportunities for smart antennas in the 1990s, culminating in the development of the MIMO technology used in 4G wireless networks.
Bernhard H. Walke is a pioneer of mobile Internet access and professor emeritus at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He is a driver of wireless and mobile 2G to 5G cellular radio networks technologies. In 1985, he proposed a local cellular radio network comprising technologies in use today in 2G, 4G and discussed for 5G systems. For example, self-organization of a radio mesh network, integration of circuit- and packet switching, de-centralized radio resource control, TDMA/spread spectrum data transmission, antenna beam steering, spatial beam multiplexing, interference coordination, S-Aloha based multiple access and demand assigned traffic channels, mobile broadband transmission using mm-waves, and multi-hop communication.