Um interface
The Um interface is the air interface for the GSM mobile telephone standard. It is the interface between the mobile station (MS) and the Base transceiver station (BTS). It is called Um because it is the mobile analog to the U interface of ISDN. Um is defined in the GSM 04.xx and 05.xx series of specifications. Um can also support GPRS packet-oriented communication.
Um layers
The layers of GSM are initially defined in GSM 04.01 Section 7 and roughly follow the OSI model. Um is defined in the lower three layers of the model.
Physical Layer (L1)
The Um physical layer is defined in the GSM 05.xx series of specifications, with the introduction and overview in GSM 05.01.
For most channels, Um L1 transmits and receives 184-bit control frames or 260-bit vocoder frames over the radio interface in 148-bit bursts with one burst per timeslot.
There are three sublayers:
Radiomodem. This is the actual radio transceiver, defined largely in GSM 05.04 and 05.05.
Multiplexing and Timing. GSM uses TDMA to subdivide each radio channel into as many as 16 traffic channels or as many as 64 control channels. The multiplexing patterns are defined in GSM 05.02.