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This may be a noob question, but I'm having a hard time and confusion finding the answer. How does a mobile phone call work in the mobile phone itself so that analog data (voice) is transmitted out of the mobile phone through the antenna ?

In what form is voice data transmitted through the antenna? is it analog or digital?

From what I understand, isn't the telephone network an analog connection? Is the voice data after being converted into digital form for processing converted back into analog form to be sent over the telephone network?

If necessary, let's limit the case to modern phones, GSM and 4G networks.

Devkil39
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  • In modern mobile phones the voice is digitized in the handset and after it goes out the antenna it is 100% digital. Likewise, incoming audio is digital and is converted to analog in the handset and played into the users ear. – user57037 Jul 06 '21 at 03:26

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TL;DR Almost every phone today is digital for all (Mobile, VOIP) or most of the call path.

We think of phone calls as analog because they were for the first 100 years or so and because the human voice is inherently analog. But digital has tremendous advantages, whether for compressing on wires between central offices (24 voice channels on a T-1, and it goes up from there) or on the airwaves (available radio spectrum is limited).

Wired

In ye olden days, wired phone service, a.k.a. POTS, was strictly analog. Decades ago the vast majority of the internal phone network was digitized but with all analog/digital and digital/analog conversion handled by the telephone company in the central office. Some modern wired phones are often Voice Over IP (VOIP), which has the A/D and D/A conversion in the phone. Some use either fiber or coaxial cable with conversion in a "magic box" provided by the telephone or cable company that handles the A/D and D/A conversion so that you can use traditional analog telephone equipment (phone, answering machine, fax). And some still have a copper pair of wires going back to the central office, where the phone company handles A/D and D/A conversion.

Mobile (Cellular)

The first generation of cellular phones, now called 1G (it wasn't 1G when it was invented - just like Word War I wasn't "I" until there was a "II"), was based on analog transmission of voice, with digital transmission used only for some signaling purposes but not for voice. That required a lot of power and used a lot of spectrum (though there weren't that many phones/users initially, so that wasn't a big deal at first). 2G, which went into use starting in 1991, is entirely digital. 1G has been almost entirely phased out - I found one indication that there is still a 1G network in part of Russia. 2G is still available on many networks, despite the available of 3G and 4G for many years and the recent rollout of 5G, with each new generation providing higher data transmission speed and other advantages.

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Antennas are transducers that convert alternating current into electromagnetic waves and vice-versa at the transmitting and receiving ends respectively. This principle is used in mobile phone communication.