GSMGlobal System for Mobile

How does GSM handle multiple users

The 1G cellular systems used FDMA.
The first cellular standard adopting TDMA
was GSM, a 2G system using digital
technology.
First deployment in 1992.

GSM is a TDMA/FDMA/FDD System

A total of 124 carrier frequencies are available in
the 25 MHz band in each direction (forward or
reverse). This is FDMA.
Each carrier frequency, occupying a frequency
band of 200 kHz, has 8 time slots for 8 users.
This is TDMA (TDMA overlaid on FDMA).
The forward (downlink) and reverse (uplink)
uses two different frequency bands: 935-960
MHz for downlink and 890-915 for uplink. This is
FDD (Frequency Division Duplex).
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Mobile station
Mobile Equipment (ME): the phone including
transmitter, receiver, etc.
Subscriber Identity Module (SIM): a smart card that
stores the subscribers ID number, the networks the
subscriber is authorized to use, encryption keys, etc.
Thus a subscriber needs only carry his or her SIM to
use a wide variety of subscriber devices in many
countries. The SIMs roam, not the phones. (The US
is different from most other countries. In the US,
service providers lock the phones because they
subsidize them.)
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Base Station Subsystem (BSS)

Base Transceiver Station (BTS) for a single cell:
an antenna, a transceiver (transmitter &
receiver), and a link to a base station controller
A GSM cell can have a radius of 100m-35km.
Base Station Controller (BSC) may control
multiple BTS units and hence multiple cells. It
reserves frequencies, manages the handoff of a
mobile unit from one cell to another within the
BSS.
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Network Subsystem (NS)

Provides the link between the cellular network and the
public switched telecommunications networks (PSTN).
The central element of the NS is the Mobile Switching
Center (MSC), which
Determines whether the subscriber is associated with the
switching center
Stores locations of the subscribers currently in the region
covered by the switching center
Stores authentication and encryption keys for all the
subscribers in both the home and visitor location registers
Keeps track of the type of equipment that exists at the mobile
stations
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GSM Frames and Data Rate

Each time slot has 114 bits of data
Each frame has 8 time slots, one for a user
Each multiframe (duration=120ms) has 24 data
frames
Data rate:

114 bits/slot 24 slots/multiframe

22.8kbps
120 ms/multiframe
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Speech Coding
Speech coding is used to compress the data
(reduce the data sent). This will increase the
speed of transmission.
It uses previous data samples to predict current
sample.
Analog voice is transformed into 13 kbps digital
signal.
Adding error-detection and error-correction
coding brings the transmission rate to 22.8 kbps.
Data rate: 9.6, 4.8 or 2.4 kbps.
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Frequency Hopping
A slow frequency hopping: 216 hop/s
To compensate multipath (frequency
selective) fading
To reduce the cochannel interference