GSM EVOLUTION

Mohamed M.Dief
Prof : Shawky Shaban
Outline
• History Of GSM
• The Goals of GSM
• GSM Cell Structure
• Types of Cells
• Cellular principles
• Generations
• GSM Architectures
• Multiple Access Schemes
• GPRS
• UMTS
• LTE
History Of GSM

• Early 1980s there was analog technologies

• Advanced Mobile Phone Services(AMPS)in North America.

• Total Access Communications System(TACS) in the UK.

• Nordic Mobile Telephone(NMT) in Nordic countries.

• Each country developed its own system, which caused
problems:

• System worked only within the boundaries of each country.

• Mobile equipment manufacturers markets were limited by the

operating system.

• Solution was GSM, which is digital technology and was

developed by CEPT(Conference of European Posts and
Telecommunications).
The Goals of GSM
• Improved spectrum efficiency.

• International roaming.

• Low-cost mobile sets and base stations.

• High-quality speech.

• Compatibility with ISDN and other telephone.

• Company services.

• Support for new services.

GSM facts
• Used in over 170 countries

• Over 400 GSM network operators

• Over 1.5 Billion people were subscribers to GSM

GSM Cell Structure
• The power level of a
transmitter within a
single cell must be
limited to reduce the
interference with the
neighboring cells.
• Neighboring cells
cannot share the same
channels

• Different size of
patterns: 4, 7, 12 or 21
cells in one cluster
Types of Cells
• Macrocells (3 to 35 km)

• Microcells(0,1 to 1 km)

• Picocells (0,01 to 1km)

• Nanocells (1m to 10m)

• Selective cells and tiered
cells(two sectors, two
frequencies)

• Umbrella cells :
- covers several microcells
Cellular principles
• Frequency reuse – same frequency in
many cell sites

• Cellular expansion – easy to add new cells

• Handover – moving between cells

• Roaming between networks

1st Generation
• Analog [routines for sending voice]

• All systems are incompatible

• No international roaming

• Little capacity – cannot accommodate masses of subscribers

2nd Generation
• Digital [voice encoding]

• Increased capacity

• More security

• Compatibility

• Can use TDMA for increasing capacity

2.5 Generation

• Packet-Switching

• Connection to the internet is paid by packets and not by

connection time.

• Connection to internet is cheaper and faster [up to 56KBps]

• The service name is GPRS – General Packet Radio Services

3rd Generation

• Permanent web connection at 2Mbps

• Internet, phone and media: 3 in 1

• The standard based on GSM is called UMTS

• The EDGE standard is the development of GSM towards 3G.

GSM Architectures
• Three broad parts

• 1. Subscribers carries MOBILE STATION

• 2. BSS controls the radio link with the mobile station

• 3. NETWORK SUBSYSTEM, which main part is MSC

 GSM Network Structure
Mobile station
MS SIM PHONE

BTS BTS

Base Station subsystem BSC BSC

BSS

HLR VLR
Network
Switching MSC
Subsystem NSS EIR
AuC

PLMN, PSTN, ...

• Base Station Controller(BSC)

• Translates the 13-Kbps voice to the standard 64-Kbps channel

(used by PSDN or ISDN)

• Frequency hopping

• Time and frequency synchronization

• Power management

• Time delay measurements

• The Transcoder and
adaptation
unit(TRAU)

• (13Kbps speech or data

+ 3Kbps additional
synchronizing data)*4
=64Kbps (TRAU
Standard rate)
• Base Station
Subsystem(BSS)
= BTS + BSC
• Mobile Switching Center(MSC)

• The central component of the Network Subsystem

• (30 + 2)* 64Kbps = 2,048Mbps(E1) or better to the other network

interfaces(PSDN,ISDN)

• Billing

• Location registration

• Gateway to SMS

• Synchronizing BSS

• Handover management
Sharing
• GSM uses TDMA and FDMA to let everybody talk.

• FDMA: 25MHz freq. is divided into 124 carrier frequencies.

Each base station gets few of those.

• TDMA: Each carrier frequency is divided into bursts [0.577

ms]. 8 bursts are a frame.
GSM Network Radio Interface
• Band control: combined TDMA/FDMA

• FDMA divides band into 200 kHz wide channels

• GSM 900 – 124 channels
• GSM 1800 – 374 channels
• Channels grouped and distributed to operators

• Carrier frequency into time frames according to TDMA model

• TDMA frame = eight time intervals (slots)

• Message in one slot = burst

• Logical channel = one slot in one frame

• Frequency hopping

• 216,7 hops/second

• After each burst frequency changed according to predefined pattern

• Spreads disturbances

• Makes eavesdropping more difficult

Establishing Call
• Updating location

• Uses MSC, HLR and VLR

• When MS moves to new location area or to new operator area -> must
register for update

• Location update message to new MSC/VLR –pair that registers new

information and sends it to subscribers HLR. HLR sends the previous
VLR information that subscriber left its area
Incoming call Phone’s home 1
MSC HLR
3

4
2

Phone’s location 5
MSC VLR

BSC

BTS MS
Call Routing
Multiple Access Schemes
FDMA TDMA CDMA

• Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), different frequencies for different users
 example Nordic Mobile Terminal (NMT) systems
• Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), same frequency but different timeslots for
different users,
 example Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM)
 GSM also uses FDMA
• Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), same frequency and time but users are
separated from each other with orthogonal codes
GPRS
• General Packet Radio Serves.
• GPRS is devolved from GSM by introducing two new core
network nodes SGSN and GGSN
• Existing GSM nodes(BSS,MSC/VLR and HLR) are upgraded
• Concept foresees bit rates of nearly 170kb/s
• Several users can use the same channel simultaneously
• Always on line
• Radio resource allocation
• Charging is based on amount of transmitted data
• No need to access HLR for every GPRS packet
GPRS Network Architecture
UMTS
• Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

• Air Interface based on W-CDMA

• High Speed Data Services

• CS domain: up to 384 kbps
• PO domain: up to 2 Mbps

• 2 different Modes: FDD-mode, TDD-mode

• „Common Interface“ for CS and PO between Access NW and Core NW

• Handover between RNC‘s in Access NW

• Enhanced Security Functions

UMTS Network Architecture
AN
Node B
Iub Interface Radio
RadioNetwork
Network Iu Interface
Control
Control
RNC
RNC

Node B
Iur Interface UMSC
UMSC
Iub Interface Radio
RadioNetwork
Network Iu Interface
Control
Control
RNC
RNC
LTE
• Significantly increase peak data rates, scaled linearly according to spectrum
allocation

• improving spectral efficiency

• lowering costs

• improving services

• making use of new spectrum opportunities

• Improved quality of service

• better integration with other open standards

LTE Performance requirements
• Data Rate:
• Instantaneous downlink peak data rate of 100Mbit/s in a 20MHz downlink
spectrum (i.e. 5 bit/s/Hz)
• Instantaneous uplink peak data rate of 50Mbit/s in a 20MHz uplink spectrum (i.e.
2.5 bit/s/Hz)

• Cell range
• 5 km - optimal size
• 30km sizes with reasonable performance
• up to 100 km cell sizes supported with acceptable performance

• Cell capacity
• up to 200 active users per cell(5 MHz) (i.e., 200 active data clients)
• Mobility
• Optimized for low mobility(0-15km/h) but supports high speed

• Latency
• user plane < 5ms
• control plane < 50 ms

• Improved spectrum efficiency

• Cost-effective migration from Release 6 Universal Terrestrial Radio Access

(UTRA) radio interface and architecture

• Improved broadcasting

• IP-optimized

• Scalable bandwidth of 20MHz, 15MHz, 10MHz, 5MHz and <5MHz

 THANK YOU 