What is GSM Page 1

What is GSM? Presented by :

Home
Search Global System for
Mobile Communications
Copyright 2000©
About Pulse
Products
Services

Introduction To GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications)

Contact Us
Email Us
Why “cellular”?

Ordering Radio spectrum is very limited, that’s why we have only 10-25MHz dedicated to wireless communication. Such
narrow bandwidth allows 100-400 channels of reasonable quality, which is not rational and commercially not
profitable to develop network for such small number of mobile subscribers. Genius idea lead to division of the
whole geographical area to relatively small cells, and each cell may reuse the same frequencies by reducing
Manufacturers power of transmission. Each cell has its own antenna (base station), and all base stations are interconnected
using microwave or cable communication.

Learn
Datacomm

History

Datacomm
Training Once upon a time there was analog cellular communication that didn’t support encryption, compression, and
ISDN compatibility; in addition each country (company) developed its own system, which was incompatible with
everyone else’s in equipment and operation.

Mailing List
So, in early 80s Europeans realized that pan-European public mobile system should be developed. The new
system had to meet certain criteria:

Good subjective speech quality

Low terminal and service cost

International roaming

ISDN compatibility

Digital

GSM Network Architecture

http://www.pulsewan.com/data101/gsm_basics.htm 5/15/2010 6:05:18 PM

What is GSM Page 2

Figure 1. Layout of generic GSM network

GSM Network consists of three main parts:

Mobile Station (MS) carried by the subscriber

Base Station Subsystem (BSS) controls radio link with mobile station

Network & Switching Subsystem (NSS) mobility management and switching of calls between mobile
users, and between mobile and fixed network users.

Mobile Station

Consists of:

Mobile Equipment (ME) such as hand portable and vehicle mounted unit

Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), which contains the entire customer related information (identification,
secret key for authentication, etc.)

Base Station Subsystem

Consists of:

Base Transceiver Station (BTS) defines a cell and is responsible for radio link protocols with the Mobile
Station

Base Station Controller (BSC) controls multiple BTSs and manages radio channel setup, and handovers.
The BSC is the connection between the Mobile Station and Mobile Switching Center.

Network and Switching Subsystems

Consists of:

Mobile Switching Center (MSC) is the central component of the NSS. Operates all switching functions for
the mobiles within its jurisdiction. Interface between mobile and other (including fixed) network. Its
functions:

Manages the location of mobiles

Switches calls

Manages Security features

Controls handover between BSCs

Resource management

Interworks with and manages network databases

Collects call billing data and sends to billing system

Collects traffic statistics for performance monitoring

Network Databases – Home Location Register and Visitor Location Register together with MSC provides
the call routing and roaming capabilities of GSM.

Home Location Register (HLR) contains all the subscriber information for the purposes of call
control, and location determination. There is logically one HLR per GSM network,
although it may be implemented as a distributed database.

Visitors Location Register (VLR) is only a temporary storage while the particular subscriber is
VLR
. Contains
onlythe
located in the geographical area controlled by the MSC
%
necessary
information
provision
ofsubscribed
services
.
Authentication Center (AuC) is a protected database that stores the security information for
each subscriber (a copy of the secret key stored in each SIM).

Equipment Identity Register (EIR) is a list of all valid mobile equipment on the network.

Radio Link – Physical Layer

As we have mentioned above radio spectrum is very limited resource shared by all users. The method to divide
up the bandwidth among as many users as possible, chosen by GSM, is a combination of Time- and Frequency-
Division Multiple Access (TDMA/FDMA). FDMA divides frequency bandwidth of the (maximum) 25 MHz into 124
carrier frequencies. Each Base Station (BS) is assigned one or more carrier frequencies. Using a TDMA scheme
each carrier frequency is divided in time, which forms logical channels.

http://www.pulsewan.com/data101/gsm_basics.htm 5/15/2010 6:05:18 PM

What is GSM Page 3

Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) - the users take turns (in a round robin), each one periodically getting the
entire bandwidth for a little burst of time.

Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) - the frequency spectrum is divided among the logical channels, with
each user having exclusives possession of some frequency band.

Mobile unit can be in two modes

Idle - listening

Dedicated – sending/receiving data

There are two kinds of channels:

Traffic channels (TCH) carry speech and data traffic.

Figure 2. Organization of bursts, TDMA frames, and multiframes for speech and data

The fundamental unit of time in TDMA scheme is called a burst period and it lasts 15/
frame (120/26 msec), which forms a
26
msec
. Eightbustperiods
aregrouped
inoneTDMA
basic unit of logical channels. One physical channel is one burst period per TDMA frame.

Traffic channels are defined as 26-frame multiframe. 26-frame multiframe lasts 120 msec (26
* 120/26). Out of 26 frames, 24 are for traffic, 1 is used for Slow Associated Control Channel
(SACCH), and 1 is currently unused.

Control channels used by idle mode mobiles to exchange signaling information, required changing to
dedicated mode. Mobiles in dedicated mode monitor the surrounding Base Stations for handover
and other information. The Control channels include:

Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH) serves for BS identification, broadcasts, and frequency
allocations.

Frequency Correction Channel (FCCH) and Synchronization Channel (SCH) – used for
synchronization, and physical layer definition (time slots, burst time…)

Random Access Channel (RACH) used by mobile to request access to the network.

Paging Channel (PCH) used for locating the mobile user

Access Grant Channel (AGCH) used to obtain a dedicated channel. (Following the request of
RACH)

Speech coding

The speech is analog, so in order to be transmitted over digital communication it should be digitized. The
method used by GSM is Regular Pulse Excited – Linear Predictive Coder (RPE-LPC) with a Long Term Predictor
loop. The main idea behind this smart-looking name is simple. Speech is divided into 20 millisecond samples;
current sample may be predicted from previous samples, that’s due to slow change of voice patterns. Predicted
and real information are compared and the difference is saved. Each 20-millisecond sample is encoded using 260
bits (that requires 13 kbps). Testing let to distinguish three classes of bits out of 260, that are classified by they
sensitivity to errors. The most sensitive class has CRC and together with moderate sensitivity class is encoded
using ½ rate convolutional encoder of length 4 – each input bit is encoded as two bits, based on 4 previous bits.
Thus we have 456 bits per 20 milliseconds sample (that requires 22.8 kbps).

Discontinuous transmission

The idea is based on the fact that a person speaks less than 40% of time in normal conversation, so turning the
transmitter off can save power. In order to distinguish voice and background noise, very accurate Voice Activity

http://www.pulsewan.com/data101/gsm_basics.htm 5/15/2010 6:05:18 PM

What is GSM Page 4

Detector should be used. While transmitter is off, the receiving end will hear a total silence, that’s due to digital
transmission. To avoid this, comfort noise is generated trying to match the characteristics of background noise.

Discontinuous reception

While being in idle mode mobile station has to listen only to Paging Channel, that uses almost no power.

Power Control

To minimize co-channel interference and to conserve power, both the mobile and BTS operate at the lowest
power level that will maintain an acceptable signal quality. Mobile decides that power level is acceptable using
bit errors ratio.

Network Aspects

Figure 3. Signaling protocol structure in GSM

Layer 1 is the physical layer.

Layer 2 is the data link layer.

Layer 3 is the GSM signaling protocol.

We have already seen structure used by physical layer, so we won’t expand it any more. Data layer is modified
version of some protocol used in ISDN and in Signaling System Number 7. So the only interesting thing that is
left for us is Layer 3 - GSM signaling protocol. Layer 3 is itself divided into three sub-layers.

Radio Resource Management

Mobility Management

Connection Management

Radio Resource Management (RR-Layer)

The RR-Layer is concerned with the management of RR-session, which is the time that a mobile is in dedicated
mode, as well as the configuration of radio channels. In addition RR-Layer manages power control, discontinues
transmission and reception, and handovers.

Handover (handoff) is switching of an on-going call to a different channel or cell.

There are four types of handovers

Switching channels in the same cell.

Switching cells under control of the same Base Station Controller (BSC)

Switching cells under the control of different BSCs, but belonging to the same Mobil service Switching
Center (MSC)

Switching cells under control of different MSCs.

http://www.pulsewan.com/data101/gsm_basics.htm 5/15/2010 6:05:18 PM

What is GSM Page 5

The first two types of handover, called internal because they involve only BSC, and MSC is notified only on
completion of the handover.

The last two types of handover, called external because they involve MSC.

Handover may be initiated by MSC (traffic balancing) or by mobile unit. The mobile unit always scans Broadcast
Control Channel of up to 16 neighboring cells, and forms a list of the six best candidates for possible handover.
This information is transmitted to current Base Station at least once per second. BSC and MSC use this
information for handover algorithm.

One of the problems while making handover decision is whether the poor signal quality is due to physical
interference or mobile having moved to another cell. There are two basic algorithms for making handover
decision:

Minimum acceptable performance. If signal degrades beyond some point, then transmission power is
increased. If power increase does not lead to improve then handover is performed. Disadvantages:
increasing transmission power may cause interference with neighbor cell.

Power budget. Uses handover to improve transmission quality in the same or lower power level. This
method avoids neighbor cell interference, but is quite complicated.

Mobility Management (MM-Layer)

Manages problem that arise from mobility of the subscriber. The ideal situation is when system always knows
where the subscriber is located (what cell) in each moment. But this will cause the subscriber to update the
system on every move, and this means a lot of obsolete update messages, wasting bandwidth. Another extreme
situation is when system never knows subscriber’s position, but this will cause the system to look for the user
over the whole geographical area, that means a lot of paging messages on every terminating call. Strategy used
by GSM is as following, group of neighbor cells is grouped in one location area and subscriber updates its
position when moving from one location area to another. Paging is done only in the current location area. The
only question is "what division of cells to location areas is optimal?". There are various algorithm for solving
this problem, they are mostly based statistical data.

Figure 4. Registering to Mobile Switching Center (MSC).

As seen form Figure 4, when a subscriber registers to MSC it sends registration message that contains
subscriber’s information. MSC updates its VLR and sends a message to subscriber’s HLR.

Authentication and security

Since the radio medium may be accessed by anyone, authentication is used to prove that the users are who they
claim to be. Each subscriber is given a secret key that is recorded in subscriber’s SIM and Authentication Center
(AuC), during authentication AuC generates a random number that is sent to mobile. Using the secret key and
this random number mobile produces a response using ciphering algorithm A3. The response number should be
equal to the one calculated by AuC.

The same initial random number in conjunction with secret key is used to generate the ciphering key using A8
algorithm. This ciphering key together with TDMA frame number is used compute a sequence that is XORed with
the sent data.

Connection Management. (CM-Layer)

Figure 5. Paging process.

An incoming mobile termination call is directed to Gateway MSC (GMSC). GMSC is basically a switch, which is
able to interrogate the subscribers HLR to obtain routing information. The routing information that is returned to
GMS is the Mobile Station Roaming Number (MSRN). MSRN are related to the geographical numbering plan, and
not assigned to subscribers. To obtain subscriber’s MSRN, subscriber’s HLR have to query subscriber’s current
VLR.

http://www.pulsewan.com/data101/gsm_basics.htm 5/15/2010 6:05:18 PM

What is GSM Page 6

Home | Search | About | Offices | Manufacturers | Products | Services | Ordering

Data101 | Training | Mailing | Hot Products | Digital HQ | Employment | Email

Copyright© 2010 [Pulse, Inc.]. All rights reserved.

Pulse, Inc.
Tel: (toll free): 888-785-7393 Int'l: 1-951-694-1173 Fax: 1-951-694-1176
Sales: sales

http://www.pulsewan.com/data101/gsm_basics.htm 5/15/2010 6:05:18 PM