Wireless Systems and Standards: GSM Architecture & Interfaces
Wireless Systems and Standards: GSM Architecture & Interfaces
Wireless Systems and Standards: GSM Architecture & Interfaces
Chapter 11
GSM Architecture & Interfaces
BTS: Base Transceiver Station It contains the equipment required to communicate with all the MSs in the same cell. It is located at the centre of the cell it contains 1 to 16 transceivers each of which represents a separate RF channel. It contains the transcoder rate adapter unit, TRAU, in which the GSM speech encoding and decoding is carried out.
BSC: Base Station Controller It monitors and controls 10-100 BTSs. Its function is frequency administration, control BTS and exchange function. It is located at BTS or MSC sites.
EIR: Equipment Identity Register It is the register that contains the serial no. of all MSs, so that in case of being stolen, the service is unprovided. HLR: Home Location Register It is the data base that contains the user data and identity for all the subscribers existing in the same GMSC
VLR: Visitor Location Register If an MS moved from its home MSC to another one, it became a visitor to the new one. So the VLR will take the wanted information about this MS from the HLR to let this MS be able to initiate or receive calls. AUC: Authentication Center It contains the algorithm that determines the input and output parameters. The SIM contains the same algorithm for authentication. It gives the VLR or HLR the wanted input and output parameters to verify an MS.
Specifications
TDMA/FDMA 890-915 MHz 935-960 MHz
RF Channel BW No of RF Channels
200 KHz 125 (actually 124) because of 2(100KHz) guard band 45 MHz
Types of Bursts
1. Normal Burst: It is the most common burst in the GSM system. It is mostly used for traffic. It could be uplink or down link.
T Coded Data S Training Sequence S Coded data T GP
3 57
26
57
8.25
T: tail bit, it is used as guard time Coded data: 114 bits for the data and the channel coding bits.
S: stealing flag, if it is equal to 0 the burst is used for traffic. If it is equal to 1 the burst is used for control Training Sequence: it is agreed upon by the MS and the BS in order to auto correlate the incoming frame with these bites to extract the coded data at the receiver again GP: guard period, it is a period of time to avoid overlap between two users sending on successive time slots.
2.
Random Access Burst: It is the burst used to send the call initiation (request to access the network). It is uplink (reverse)only.
T Synchronization 8 41 Coded data 36 T 3 GP 68.25
3.
Frequency Correction Burst: It is transmitted by the BS to all the MSs within the cell in a certain interval of time in order to synchronize with the master frequency. It is only downlink (forward).
T 3 Fixed zero bit Sequence 142 T 3 GP 8.25
4. Synchronization Burst: it is transmitted by the BS and it is used to synchronize the timing of the mobile (to know which frame and which time slot ones mobile should be in ). It is only downlink (forward)
T Encrypted Data Training Sequence 3 39 64 Encrypted data 39 T 3 GP 8.25
Compute the longest time over which a mobile station would have to wait in order to determine the frame number being transmitted by a GSM base station. The frame number is sent with the base station identity code during the SCH burst. From the previous figure it is clear that the interval between two consecutive SCH burst is 10 TDMA frames. Therefore
235 ms / control multiframe Tmax 10 frames 51 TDMA frames / control multiframe 46.08ms
Example
Assume that each base station uses 60 channels, regardless of cell size. If each original cell has a radius of 1 km and each microcell has a radius of 0.5 km, find the number of channels contained in a 3km by 3 km square centered around A under the following conditions: a) Without the use of microcells b) When the lettered microcells in the Fig. are used. c) When all the original base stations are replaced by microcells.
Solution:
a) Without the use of microcells: A cell radius of 1 km implies that the sides of the larger hexagons are also 1 km in length. To cover the 3x3 km square centered around base station A, we need to cover 1.5 km (1.5 times the hexagon radius) toward the right, left, top, and bottom of base station A. This area contains 5 base stations. Since each base station has 60 channels, the total number of channels without cell splitting is equal to 5 * 60 = 300 channels.
(b) With the use of the microcells : The base station A is surrounded by 6 microcells. Therefore, the total number of base stations in the square area under study is equal to 5 + 6 = 11. Since each base station has 60 channels, the total number of channels will be equal to 11 * 60 = 660 channels.
(c) If all the base stations are replaced by microcells: There are a total of 5 + 12 = 17 base stations in the square region under study. Since each base station has 60 channels, the total number of channels will be equal to 17 * 60 = 1020 channels. This is a 3.4 times increase in capacity compared to case (a). Theoretically, if all cells were microcells having half the radius of the original cell, the capacity increase would approach 4.
Example 2
Consider a cellular system in which an average call lasts 2 minutes, and the probability of blocking is to be no more than 1%. Assume that every subscriber makes one call per hour, on average. If there are a total of 395 traffic channels for a seven-cell reuse system. Employing 120o sectoring, how will this affect the trunking efficiency of the system, keeping other parameters constant. Does 60o sectoring has a different effect?
Solution:
=1call/hour H=2/60=0.033 hour Au= H=0.033Erlang No. of channels/cell=395/7 about 56 traffic channels per cell. From the Erlang B distribution the traffic intensity of this system = 44.2 Erlangs Number of calls per hour=44.2/0.033=1326 calls per hour.
For 60 sectors:
No. of channels per sector = 57/6 = 10 channels per sector Traffic intensity (A)= 4.46 Erlangs Number of calls per hour=4.46/0.033=134 calls per hour. Cell capacity=sector capacity x number of sectors= 6 * 134= 804 calls per hour = 39% degradation in trunking efficiency when compared to the unsectored case. Thus, using 6 sectors per cell reduces the trunking efficiency and increases the number of necessary handoffs even more.