Physical,

Logical Channels,
Call flow and Traffic
Manager
Physical Channels

GSM-900……..124 channels
GSM-1800……374 channels
Each Channel bandwidth
200Khz
Physical channel
Logical Channels
Traffic Channels
Full rate TCH
Half rate TCH
Signaling or Control Channels
Broadcast Control Channel
Common Control Channel
Dedicated Control Channel
Broadcast Control
Channels
Frequency Correction Channel FCCH
• To able the Mobile to synchronize to the frequency
• (Downlink only)

Synchronisation Channel SCH

• Used for sending BSIC (Base station Identity Code)
• Give TDMA frame number to the Mobile.
• (Downlink only)

Broadcast Control Channel

• Cell Global Identity CGI
• Location Area Identity LAI
Common Control
Channel
Paging Channel PCH
• Used for paging the mobile
• Reason could be an incoming call or an incoming short
message
• Downlink only

Random Access Channel RACH

• Used for responding to the paging, to originate a call
• To acknowledge a page from PCH

Access Grant Channel

• Used to allocate SDCCH to the mobile(downlink only)
Dedicated Control
Channels
Stand-alone Dedicated Control Channel
• Used for allocating voice channel(TCH) to the mobile
• Send short messages to idle mobile

Slow Associated Control Channel SACCH

• Carries information about received signal strength and
quality
• For sending signal strength & BER measurement of the
serving cell and signal strength of BCCHs of neighboring cells

Fast Associated Control Channel FACCH

• Used for handover
GSM Frame Structure
Example of a GSM Call
Switching on(BCH,BCCH,FCCH,SCH)
Originate a Call(RACH,AGCH)
Allocating SDCCH
SACCH frame
Assigning TCH
What is the BIT-RATE at which the
GSM phone transmits data?
270 kbps shared by 8 users.
When you receive a mobile call, the base
station transmits at 270 kbps by combining the
speech data of 8 telephone calls and signaling
data.
Actually there are 8 time-slots defined, where
each time-slot carries the speech data for one
speech call (13 kbps data) plus some over-head
bits.
What is the BIT-RATE of Speech in
GSM mobile Phone?

 13 kbps. [full rate]

 6.5 kbps [half rate]
• Compare the above figures with that of 64 kbps
used in a fixed phone case.
• In cellphone, we do not have sufficient bandwidth
capacity of the radio freq carrier and therefore we
had done some tech of reducing the speech rate of
speech used(by degrading the quality of speech to
some extent).
Numbers we may remember

The digital bit rate of speech in the MSC=64kbps.

The digital bit rate used in mobile phone=13 kbps.
The digital bit rate used in mobile phone=6.5kbps.
Bit rate of signal carried by one GSM
carrier=270.8kbps.
Bandwidth of one RF carrier required to carry
270.8kbps=200 kHz.
One RF carrier carries speech from BTS for 8
mobile together.
SPEECH PROCESSING
SPEECH IS DIVIDED INTO 20MS SAMPLES, EACH OF
WHICH IS ENCODED AS 260 BITS GIVING A TOTAL
BIT RATE OF 13 kbps.
STEPS:
A to D conversion
PCM sample blocks
LPC=linear prediction coding
LTP=long term prediction
RPE=regular phase excited
Speech Encoding

We shall start with a raw voice signal

fed
into the microphone, travel through
the
various stages involving vocoding,
channel
coding etc till it reaches the final burst
format on the Air Interface.
Speech Encoding ckt

Raw
Voice
signal
Channel coding

Channel Coding is done to protect the

logical channels from transmission errors
introduced by the radio path.
• The coding schemes depend on the type
of
the logical channels, hence the coding
can
differ from speech, control and data .
Channel Coding for speech
Channel coding for Speech

The 260 bits of speech info from the vocoder is

broken down into three parts.
• Class 1a- 50 bits , these represent the filter
coefficients of the speech and are the most
important for proper detection of the speech at the
receiver and hence are given maximum protection.
3 additional parity bits are derived from the class
1a bits for cyclic redundancy check (CRC).
 Channel coding for Speech
cont’d
Class 1b - 132 bits are not parity checked
but are fed into the convolutional coder
along with 4 tail bits which are used to set
the registers in the receiver to a known state
for decoding purpose.
• Class 1b- 78 bits, these are not so
important
and are not protected but are combined with
the output of the convolution coder.
 Convolution coder CC
• The Convolution coder is a series of shift
registers implemented using logic gates,
where for
every one input bit we get 2 output bits.
Hence it
is called ½ coder.
• Here k=5 is the constraint length, it means
there
are 5 shift register and each bit has memory
depth
of 4 , meaning it can influence the output of
up to
four next successive bits. This is useful during
reception as bits can be derived even if a few
Convolutional coder cont’d

• The output of the CC* is now 378 bits.

(50+3+132+4)*2=378
The total number of bits now is 378+78=456
bits.
*Note : The bit rate from the vocoder was
13Kbps for the 20 msec speech block, but
after CC the bit rate increases to 22.8Kbps.
456 bits /20msecs=22.8Kbps
* CC = Convolutional Coder.
Control Channel Coding
Control Channel Coding

The control information is received in blocks of

184 bits.
These bits are first protected with a cyclic code
called as Fire code, which is useful in correction
and detection of burst errors.
• 40 Parity bits are added, along with 4 tail bits.
• These 228 bits are given to the CC whose output
is
again 456 bits at a bitrate of 22.8Kbps.
• The control channels include the RACH, PCH,
AGCH etc.
Data Channel Coding
Data Channel Coding

• The data bits are received in blocks of

240 bits.
These are directly convolution coded after
adding
4 tail bits.
• The output of the CC is now 488 bits,
which
actually increases the bitrate to 24.4 Kbps.
• To keep the bitrate constant on the air
Interleaving
• Having encoded the logical channel information,
the next step is to build its bit stream into bursts
that can be transmitted within the TDMA frame
structure. This is the stage where the
interleaving
process is carried out.
• Interleaving spreads the content of one
information block across several TDMA timeslots
or bursts.
Interleaving cont’d

• The following interleaving depths are used :

• Speech – 8 blocks
• Control – 4 blocks
• Data – 22 blocks
• The interleaving process for a speech block is
shown wherein which a 456 bit speech block is
divided into 8 blocks of 57 bits each and each of
these odd and even 57 bit blocks are
interleaved
diagonally on to alternate bursts on the TDMA
frame.
 GSM SPEECH CHANNEL INTERLEAVING ( Diagram )
Full rate encoded speech blocks
from a single conversation 1 2 3 4 5 6

4 5 6
456 bits 456 bits 456 bits

Bursts

TDMA
Frames Frame 1 Frame 2 Frame 3 Frame 4
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Control Data Interleaving
 CONTROL CHANNEL INTERLEAVING
A burst in GSM transmits two blocks of 57 data bits each.
Therefore the 456 bits corresponding to the output of the
channel coder fit into four bursts (4*114 = 456).
The 456 bits are divided into eight blocks of 57 bits. The first
block of 57 bits contains the bit numbers (0, 8, 16, .....448), the
second one the bit numbers (1, 9, 17, .....449), etc. The last block
of 57 bits will then contain the bit numbers (7, 15, .....455).
The first four blocks of 57 bits are placed in the even-numbered
bits of four bursts.
The other four blocks of 57 bits are placed in the odd-numbered
bits of the same four bursts.
Therefore the interleaving depth of the GSM interleaving for
control channels is four and a new data block starts every four
bursts.
The interleave for control channels is called a block rectangular
interleave.
Data Interleaving
 DATA INTERLEAVING
A particular interleaving scheme, with an interleaving depth equal
to 22, is applied to the block of 456 bits obtained after the
channel coding.
The block is divided into 16 blocks of 24 bits each, 2 blocks of 18
bits each, 2 blocks of 12 bits each and 2 blocks of 6 bits each.
It is spread over 22 bursts in the following way :
 the first and the twenty-second bursts carry one block of 6 bits each
 the second and the twenty-first bursts carry one block of 12 bits each
 the third and the twentieth bursts carry one block of 18 bits each
 from the fourth to the nineteenth burst, a block of 24 bits is placed in
each burst
A burst will then carry information from five or six consecutive
data blocks. The data blocks are said to be interleaved diagonally.

A new data block starts every four bursts.

Data Interleaving cont’d
• The reason why data is spread over such along
period of time is that if data burst is corrupted or
lost, only a small part of it is lost which can be
reproduced at the receiver.
• This wide interleaving depth does produce a time
delay during transmission but that is acceptable
since it does not affect the data signal quality at
the receiver, unlike speech where delay could
result in bad quality of signal to the subscriber.
• *Note – The interleaving used in data is diagonal
interleaving.
Air Interface Bitrate

• The information which is now coded and

interleaved at 22.8 Kbps now has to be
transmitted
over the Air interface to the BTS.
• The information burst is not sent
directly , but is sent in ciphered form
within a burst envelope.This ciphering is
done using ciphering keys and algorithms
known both by the mobile and the BSS.
Air Interface Bitrate cont’d
at
the Receiver

• At the receiver the reverse process of

De interleaving and decoding have to take place
respectively, so as to recover the information from
the signal.
• After De interleaving the signal will be decoded
which is the reverse process of the Convolution
coding, using Viterbi decoders.
• The decoder can recover lost or corrupted data up
to 4 successive bits, because the memory depth
of
the CC is 4(for k=5).
NORMAL BURST
DESCRIPTION
SYNCHRONIZATION
BURST
FREQ. CORRECTION
BURST
ACCESS BURST
(RACH)
NEED FOR TIMESLOT
OFFSET
 AUTHENTICATION
ALGORITHM
HLR Ki SRES
AUTH.
NSS ALGORITHMS
AUC A3 COMPARE
RAND

AIR INTERFACE
RAND SRES

SIM Ki AUTH.
MS
ALGORITHMS
MS A3