CELLULAR TELEPHONE WITH TRANSMITTER POWER LEVEL CONTROL

摘要

A portable cellular radio telephone (1) comprises a transceiver including a voltage controlled variable gain amplifier (11) operable at one of a plurality of predetermined output power levels selected automatically under the control of a microprocessor (4) in response to a signal from a base station indicative of a requirement for a change in level of the output power. A battery save mode can be manually selected which causes the output power at the maximum power level to be reduced to a value below the nominal value of the maximum power level imposed by the system specification. Power consumption is thus reduced when the transceiver is transmitting at maximum power, and battery life is therefore extended. The battery save mode may be selected from a menu which can be viewed on a display (5). The respective menu function can be accessed and enabled/disabled by using the keys (6a, 6b) on the telephone keypad (6). The selection and de-selection of the battery save mode may be accompanied by a legend such as "BATTERY SAVE ON" and "BATTERY SAVE OFF" on the visual display.