GSM

GSM GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR MOBILE COMMUNICATION

DISCUSSION TOPICS

History What is GSM ? System Architecture of GSM Advantages of GSM Future whats next
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HISTORY

Early 80s Europe was experiencing rapid growth in the analog cellular telephone systems
Developed by Group Special Mobile (founded 1982) which was an initiative of CEPT ( Conference of European Post and Telecommunication ) International demand was so great that the system name was changed from Groupe Special Mobile to Global Systems for Mobile Communications (still GSM) Full set of specifications phase-I became available in 1990 3

HISTORY

Commercial service started in mid-1991 1992 first paying customers were signed up for service By 1993 there were 36 GSM networks in 22 countries Early 1994 there were 1.3 million subscribers worldwide By 1996 there were more than 25 million subscribers worldwide By October 1997 it had grown to more than 55 million subscribers worldwide

Today many providers all over the world use GSM (more than 135 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, America)

HISTORY

GSM criteria
Good speech quality Low terminal and service cost Support for international roaming one system for all of Europe Ability to support handheld terminals Support for range of new services and facilities Enhanced Features ISDN compatibility Enhance privacy 5 Security against fraud

What is GSM ?

GSM originally is a standard set developed by the European Telecommunication standard institute (ETSI) to describe technologies for second generation (2G) digital cellular networks. Developed as a replacement for first generation (1G) analog cellular networks, the GSM standard originally described a digital, circuit switched network optimized for Full duplex voice telephony. The standard was expanded over time to include first circuit switched data transport, then packet data transport via GPRS (General Packet Radio Services). Packet data 6 transmission speeds were later increased via

What is GSM ?

EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) referred as EGPRS. The GSM standard is more improved after the development of third generation (3G) UMTS standard developed by the 3GPP. GSM networks will evolve further as they begin to incorporate fourth generation (4G)LTE Advanced standards. "GSM" is a trademark owned by the GSM Association.

System Architecture

System Architecture

Mobile Station (MS)

Mobile Equipment (ME) Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)

Base Station Subsystem (BBS)

Base Transceiver Station (BTS) Base Station Controller (BSC)

Network Subsystem
Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Home Location Register (HLR) Visitor Location Register (VLR) Authentication Center (AUC) Equipment Identity Register (EIR)

System Architecture Mobile Station (MS)

The Mobile Station is made up of two entities: 1. Mobile Equipment (ME) 2. Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)
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System Architecture Mobile Station (MS)

Mobile Equipment
Produced by many different manufacturers Must obtain approval from the standardization body (company).. Fc certified.. Uniquely identified by an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity)
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System Architecture Mobile Station (MS)

Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Smart card containing the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) Allows user to send and receive calls and receive other subscribed services Encoded network identification details Protected by a password or PIN Can be moved from phone to phone contains key 12 information to activate the phone

System Architecture Base Station Subsystem (BSS)

Base Station Subsystem is composed of two parts that communicate across the standardized Abis interface allowing operation between components made by different suppliers
1. Base Transceiver Station (BTS) 2. Base Station Controller (BSC)
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System Architecture Base Station Subsystem (BSS)

Base Transceiver Station (BTS) Houses the radio transceivers that define a cell Handles radio-link protocols with the Mobile Station Speech and data transmissions from the MS are recoded Requirements for BTS:
ruggedness reliability portability minimum costs

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System Architecture Base Station Subsystem (BSS) contd.

Base Station Controller (BSC) Manages Resources for BTS Handles call set up Location update Handover for each MS
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System Architecture Network Subsystem

Mobile Switching Center (MSC)

Switch speech and data connections between:
Base Station Controllers Mobile Switching Centers GSM-networks Other external networks

Heart of the network Three main jobs:

1) connects calls from sender to receiver 2) collects details of the calls made and received 3) supervises operation of the rest of the network components
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System Architecture Network Subsystem

Home Location Registers (HLR)

- contains administrative information of each subscriber - current location of the mobile

Visitor Location Registers (VLR)

- contains selected administrative information from the HLR - authenticates the user - tracks which customers have the phone on and ready to receive a call - periodically updates the database on which phones are turned on and ready to receive calls

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System Architecture Network Subsystem

Authentication Center (AUC)

- mainly used for security - data storage location and functional part of the network - Ki is the primary element

Equipment Identity Register (EIR)

- Database that is used to track handsets using the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) - Made up of three sub-classes: The White List, The Black List and the Gray List 18 - Optional database

GSM Specifications-1

RF Spectrum GSM 900 Mobile to BTS (uplink): 890-915 MHz BTS to Mobile(downlink):935-960 MHz Bandwidth : 2* 25 MHz GSM 1800 Mobile to BTS (uplink): 1710-1785 MHz BTS to Mobile(downlink) 1805-1880 MHz Bandwidth : 2* 75 MHz

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GSM Specifications-2

Carrier Separation : 200 KHz Duplex Distance : 45 MHz No. of RF carriers : 124 Access Method : TDMA/FDMA Modulation Method : GMSK Modulation data rate : 270.833 Kbps

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Basic Features Provided by GSM

Call Waiting
- Notification of an incoming call while on the handset

Call Hold
- Put a caller on hold to take another call

Call Barring
- All calls, outgoing calls, or incoming calls

Call Forwarding
- Calls can be sent to various numbers defined by the user

Multi Party Call Conferencing

- Link multiple calls together

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Advanced Features Provided by GSM

Calling Line ID
- incoming telephone number displayed

Alternate Line Service

- one for personal calls - one for business calls

Closed User Group

- call by dialing last for numbers

Advice of Charge
- tally of actual costs of phone calls

Fax & Data

- Virtual Office / Professional Office

Roaming
- services and features can follow customer from market to market

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Advantages of GSM

Crisper, cleaner quieter calls Security against fraud and eavesdropping International roaming capability in over 100 countries Improved battery life Efficient network design for less expensive system expansion Efficient use of spectrum Advanced features such as short messaging and caller ID A wide variety of handsets and accessories High stability mobile fax and data at up to 9600 baud Ease of use with over the air activation, and all account information is held in a smart card which can be moved from handset to 23 handset

Applications of GSM

Mobile telephony GSM-R Telemetry System - Fleet management - Automatic meter reading - Toll Collection - Remote control and fault reporting of DG sets Value Added Services
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Future -- UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System

Reasons for innovations

- new service requirements - availability of new radio bands

User demands
seamless Internet-Intranet access wide range of available services compact, lightweight and affordable terminals simple terminal operation open, understandable pricing structures for the whole spectrum of available services

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1g
Our journey begins in the early 1980s with the introduction of several groundbreaking network technologies: AMPS in the US and a combination of TACS and NMT in Europe. The meanings of those acronyms are unimportant -- there won't be a quiz later. All you really need to know is that unlike earlier systems, these new standards were given enough spectrum for reasonably heavy use by subscribers, were fully automated on the carrier's end without requiring any human operator intervention, and used electronics that could be miniaturized enough to fit into smallish packages (think Motorola DynaTAC -- early prototype pictured right). Though there were several generations of mobile telephone services before these that date all the way back to the 1950s, the trifecta of AMPS, TACS, and NMT is commonly considered to be the first generation -- "1G," if you will -- because they made cellphones practical to the masses for the very first time. They were robust, reliable, and would eventually come to blanket the entirety of many industrialized nations around the world.

Thing is, no one was thinking about data services in the 1G days; these were purely analog systems that were conceived and designed for voice calls and very little else. Modems existed that could communicate over these networks -- some handsets even had them built-in -- but because analog cellular connections were susceptible to far more noise than conventional landlines, transfer speeds were ridiculously slow. And even if they'd been fast, it wouldn't have really mattered; per-minute rates on AMPS networks in the 80s made cellphones luxuries and Wall Street powerbroker business necessities, not must-haves for the everyman. Besides, the technology didn't exist for an awesome smartphone that could consume that much data anyhow. Oh, and YouTube had yet to be invented. The stars simply hadn't yet aligned.

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2g
The early nineties saw the rise of the first digital cellular networks, which had a number of obvious benefits over the analog networks they were supplanting: improved sound quality, better security, and higher total capacity, just to name a few biggies. GSM got off to an early start in Europe, while D-AMPS and an early version of Qualcomm's CDMA known as IS95 took hold in the US. (You might remember D-AMPS better as "TDMA," though that's technically not descriptive enough -- GSM also employs the TDMA multiplexing scheme, even though the two standards are incompatible.) No one disputes that these systems collectively represented the second generation of wireless networks -- they were authentically different and revolutionary. Furthermore, a solid decade had gone by at that point since the first 1G networks had gone live. This stuff was definitely borne of a new generation. Still, these nascent 2G standards didn't have intrinsic, tightly-coupled support for data services woven into them. Many such networks supported text messaging, though, so that was a start -- and they also supported something called CSD, circuit-switched data. CSD allowed you to place a dial-up data call digitally, so that the network's switching station was receiving actual ones and zeroes from you rather than the screech of an analog modem. Put simply, it meant that you could transfer data faster -- up to 14.4kbps, in fact, which made it about as fast as an early- to mid-nineties landline modem. At the end of the day, though, CSD was a hack -- a way to repurpose these voice-centric networks for data. You still had to place a "call" to connect, so the service wasn't always available. The experience was very similar to using a dial-up modem at home: either you were online, or you weren't. Services like push email and instant messaging to your phone were basically science fiction. Furthermore, because a CSD connection was a call, you were burning minutes to get connected -- and these technologies were in play at a time when monthly minute buckets on cellular plans were measured in the dozens, not the hundreds or thousands. Unless you had a company writing a check for your wireless bill every month, using CSD for anything more than an occasional novelty wasn't practical. 2.5G: you know you're in trouble when you need a decimal place The 4G identity crisis we're dealing with today really started well over a decade ago, around the time that standards bodies were hard at work finalizing 3G technologies. The General Packet Radio Service -- GPRS -- marked a watershed moment in cellular history when it was hammered out in 1997, because it offered a bolt-on for GSM networks that permitted "always-on" data services. No more dial-up CSD silliness -- as long as your account and phone were appropriately configured, you could seamlessly use data whenever and however you needed it. For all practical purposes, your handset was permanently connected to the internet. It was also much faster than anything CSD could offer: over 100kbps in theory (though we don't recall ever getting anything much above 40kbps in practice during the service's heyday). GPRS also marked one of the first times that operators could effectively bill by the kilobyte, rather than by the minute. Kind of a good news / bad news situation there, we suppose. The 4G identity crisis we're dealing with today really started well over a decade ago, around the time that standards bodies were hard at work finalizing 3G technologies. Needless to say, GPRS was a big deal -- especially since it came right at the time when people started really checking their email accounts incessantly. In fact, it was transformational. AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and VoiceStream (which would later become T-Mobile USA) all deployed the service, as did virtually every GSM operator in the world. It didn't earn the right to add a generational notch, though. You see, by the time GPRS was on the market, the UN's International Telecommunications Union had already put together its IMT-2000 standard, an official list of specifications that a "true" 3G technology would have to meet. Most importantly, IMT-2000 required stationary speeds of 2Mbps and mobile speeds of 384kbps -- benchmarks that GPRS couldn't meet even on its best day. And that's the story of how GPRS got stuck as a tweener: better than 2G, not good enough to be 3G. It was important enough so that it might have earned the right to be called 3G had the ITU not already drawn the line, but that's how the cookie crumbles. Turns out it would just be the first of many, many generational schisms over the next decade.

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Lies, damn lies, and 4G Just as it did with the 3G standard -- IMT-2000 -- the ITU has taken ownership of 4G, bundling it into a specification known as IMT-Advanced. It's no slouch, either: the document calls for 4G technologies to deliver downlink speeds of 1Gbps when stationary and 100Mbps when mobile, roughly 500-fold and 250-fold improvements over IMT-2000, respectively. Those are truly wild speeds that would easily outstrip the average DSL or cable broadband connection, which is why the FCC has been so insistent that wireless technology plays a key role in getting broadband data to rural areas -- it's more cost-effective to plant a single 4G tower that can cover several dozen miles than it is to blanket farmland with fiber optics. Unfortunately, those specs are so aggressive that no commercialized standard in the world currently meets them. Historically, WiMAX and Long-Term Evolution (LTE), the standard generally accepted to succeed both CDMA2000 and GSM, have been thought of as "4G technologies," but that's only partially true: they both make use of a newer, extremely efficient multiplexing scheme called orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA, as opposed to the older CDMA or TDMA we've been using for the past twenty years) and they both lack a dedicated voice network -- 100 percent of their spectrum is used for data services, which means that voice calls would be treated as VoIP (not unlike Skype or Vonage). Considering how heavily data-centric our mobile society has become, that's a good thing. Where WiMAX and LTE fall short, though, is in raw speed. The former tops out at around 40Mbps and the latter around 100Mbps theoretical, while practical, real-world speeds on commercial networks so far have tended to range between around 4Mbps and 30Mbps -- well short of IMT-Advanced's lofty (and, arguably, most important) goal. Updates to these standards -- WiMAX 2 and LTE-Advanced, respectively -- promise to do the job, but neither has been finalized yet... and production networks that make use of them are still years away. That said, you could still easily argue that the original WiMAX and LTE standards are authentically different enough from the classically-defined 3G standards to call them a true generational upgrade -- and indeed, most (if not all) of the carriers around the world that have deployed them have referred to them as "4G." It's an obvious marketing advantage for them, and the ITU -- for all the good it's trying to do -- has no jurisdiction to stop it. Both technologies (LTE in particular) will be deployed to many, many more carriers around the globe over the next several years, and the use of the "4G" moniker is only going to grow. It can't be stopped. Arguably, it was T-Mobile's move that really sparked a fundamental rethinking of what '4G' means to the phone-buying public. The story's not over, though. T-Mobile USA, which has no publicly-announced plans to upgrade its HSPA network to LTE any time soon, decided late last year to start branding its HSPA+ upgrade as "4G," too. In principle, the move makes some sense: the 3G technology path will ultimately scale to speeds well beyond what mere LTE can achieve today, eventually coming within spitting distance of IMT-Advanced. There are many markets where T-Mobile's 21Mbps HSPA+ network is faster than Sprint's WiMAX network. And neither Sprint, Verizon, nor MetroPCS -- the three American carriers with live WiMAX / LTE networks -- are offering VoIP yet; they're still falling back on their 3G airwaves for voice, and will continue to do so for some time. Furthermore, T-Mobile will upgrade to 42Mbps this year, still without touching LTE! Arguably, it was T-Mobile's move that really sparked a fundamental rethinking of what "4G" means to the phone-buying public. AT&T, which is in the process of upgrading to HSPA+ and will start offering LTE in some markets later this year, is calling both of these networks 4G -- and naturally, neither Sprint nor Verizon have even thought about backing down on their end. All four US national carriers seem entrenched at this point, having successfully stolen the 4G label from the ITU -- they've taken it, run with it, and reshaped it.

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3g
3G, 3.5G, 3.75G... oh, and 2.75G, too In addition to the aforementioned speed requirements, the ITU's official 3G specification also called out that compatible technologies should offer smooth migration paths from 2G networks. To that end, a standard called UMTS rose to the top as the 3G choice for GSM operators, and CDMA2000 came about as the backwardcompatible successor to IS-95. Following the precedent set by GPRS, CDMA2000 offered CDMA networks an "always-on" data connection in the form of a technology called 1xRTT. Here's where it gets a little confusing: even though CDMA2000 on the whole is officially a 3G standard, 1xRTT is only slightly faster than GPRS in real-world use -- 100kbps or so -- and therefore is usually lumped in with GPRS as a 2.5G standard. Fortunately, CDMA2000 also defined the more advanced 1xEV-DO protocol, and that's where the real 3G money was at, topping out at around 2.5Mbps. The first CDMA2000 and UMTS networks launched between 2001 and 2003, but that wasn't to say that manufacturers and standards organizations were standing still with the 2G technology path, either. EDGE -- Enhanced Data-rates for GSM Evolution -- was conceived as an easy way for operators of GSM networks to squeeze some extra juice out of their 2.5G rigs without investing serious money on UMTS hardware upgrades and spectrum. With an EDGE-compatible phone, you could get speeds over double what you got on GPRS; not bad at the time. Many European operators didn't bother with EDGE, having already committed to going big with UMTS, but Cingular -- likely looking to buy itself time -- jumped at the opportunity and became the first network to roll it out in 2003. So where would EDGE fit, then? Depends who you ask. It's not as fast as UMTS or EV-DO, so you might say it's not 3G. But it's clearly faster than GPRS, which means it should be better than 2.5G, right? Indeed, many folks would call EDGE a 2.75G technology, eliciting sighs from fraction-haters everywhere. The ITU doesn't help matters, officially referring to EDGE as an ITU-2000 Narrowband technology -- basically, a 2G standard capable of eking 3G-esque speeds. As the decade rolled on, CDMA2000 networks would get a nifty software upgrade to EV-DO Revision A, offering slightly faster downlink speeds and significantly faster uplink speeds -- the original specification (called EV-DO Revision 0) only allowed for uploads of about 150kbps, impractical for the rampant picture and video sharing we're all doing with our phones and laptops these days. Revision A can do about ten times that. Can't very well lump an upgrade that big in with 3G, can you? 3.5G it is, then! Ditto for UMTS: HSDPA would add significantly faster downlink speeds, and HSUPA would do the same for the uplink. Further refinements to UMTS would produce HSPA+, dual-carrier HSPA+, and HSPA+ Evolution, ranging in theoretical speeds from 14Mbps all the way past a mind-boggling 600Mbps. So, what's the deal? Is it safe to say we've hit a new generation yet, or is this just 3.75G the same way that EDGE was 2.75G?

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Thanks !
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