Monday, December 3, 2001		Bits & Bytes

Solar fade: Also referred to as sun fade, sun outage or solar outage. Solar fade is a signal degradation phenomenon that affects the transmission of radio signals in satellite communications. GEO satellites orbit the earth above the equator and rely on microwave signals in the radio frequency spectrum for communications with an earth-bound antenna. The sun also emits large amounts of electromagnetic energy in the microwave portion of the spectrum.

BTS: Short for base transceiver station. In mobile communications, a BTS holds the radio transceivers that define a cell and coordinates the radio-link protocols with the mobile device. The BTS is the networking component of a mobile communications system from which all signals are sent and received. A BTS is controlled by a base station controller.

DMCA: Short for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an act of Congress that was signed into law on October 28, 1998, by President Clinton. DMCA's purpose is to update U.S. copyright laws for the digital age.