GSM infrastructure

MSC, BSC, BTS, VLR, HLR, GSGN, GSSN

Johan Montelius
jm@sics.se

Compared to a fixed network

Transit exchang

Gateway MSC

Local switches

MSC
Subscriber stage

BSC

Fixed phone

MS

Whats new?
Radio access network Encryption Voice coding Locate a mobile station Identify and authenticate Handle mobility during a call

A bird eyes view

Access Network MSC

GMSC

databases

BTS

BSC
BSC

MS

BTS

BSC BTS

Typical Mobile operator

One to ten MSC per 1 M subscribers Ten to one hundred BSC per MSC Thousands of BTS per 1 M subscribers

Base Transceiver Station

Controls the radio link
encryption error control signal strength

1 - 6 duplex carriers, for example:

two layers 120o sectors (6+8)*3 = 42 voice calls

Cost ~ 100 200 k$

Base Station Controller

communication with the mobile terminal
local hand-over voice codecs carrier allocation paging to terminals

talks to the MSC serves up to 40 BTSs could be co-located with MSC

Mobile Swicthing Center

Mobility management
identifies and authenticates locates switches between BSCs Handover to other MSCs

64 kbps regular voice channels

Radio Access network

A carrier is divided into logical channels control channels CCH

traffic channels TCH The first carrier holds 2 controll channels and 6 traffic channels. Additional carriers holds only traffic channels.

Control Channels
Broadcast
Frequency correction: to synchronize (FCCH) Broadcast control: this is me, these are my neighbours (BCCH)

Common control
Paging: to notify a mobile station (PCH) Random access: for the mobile to request service (RACH) Access grant: reply with assigned dedicated control channel (AGCH)

Dedicated control
Standalone dedicated control: used during call set-up, SMS etc (SDCCH) Slow associated control: power, time etc (SACCH) Fast associated control: handover etc, uses the TCH (FACCH) Cell broadcast: cell broadcast

Traffic Channels
Duplex Error control
Forward Error Correction (FEC) retransmission (ARQ)

Full rate (TCH/F)

13 Kbps speech 9,6 or 14,4 Kpbs data

Half rate (TCH/H)

6,5 Kbps speech 7,2 or 4,8 Kbps data

Logical channels
Hyperframe: 2048 superframes
3h28m

Superframe: 26 or 51 multiframes
CCH CCH

6.12 s

Multiframe: 26 or 51 TDMA frames

CCH TCH

8 time-slot TDMA frame

4.143 ms

One TDMA frame

148 b 0.577 ms tail training 57 b user data 26 b 57 b user data tail 3 guard 8.25

Normal burst

stealing flags

Frequency correction burst

Synchronization burst
Dummy burst Access burst

Keeping track of a mobile station

Location area VLR visiting location register

Location area update the VLR with new location area

Moving to a new MSC

VLR which LA which MSC ? Location area Location area update the VLR with new location area and new MSC

but also.
HLR home location register

VLR update the home location register!

Home Location Register

PSTN
incomming call

where is the mobile?

GMSC MSC VLR

HLR

How do we reach him?

Mobile station numbers

PSTN
mobile subscriber ISDN number (MSISDN) i.e. the phone number

GMSC MSC VLR

International Mobile Subscriber Identity Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity

Mobile Station Roaming Number (MSRN).

HLR

GPRS
Access Network

Internet

Gateway GPRS Support Node GGSN

Packet Control Unit

BTS
BSC
UDP/TCP tunnel Serving GPRS Support Node SGSN

MS

BTS

BTS