1

UNDER SUPERVISION OF: SUBMITTED BY Mr. O.N. Singh (S.D.O.) Prakash Hari Sharma
Final Year (CSE) HRIT, Ghaziabad 2

INDEX

About BSNL

Introduction: The Evolution of Mobile Telephone Systems

GSM

GSM Network

GSM Network Areas

12

GSM Specification

14

Subscribers Identity Module

15

GSM Subscriber Services

16

Supplementary Services

17

Conclusion 19
 3

1. About BSNL

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. F

ormed in oct. 2000, is world’s 7

th largest telecommunications company providing comprehensive range of telecom services in India:

wire line, CDMA mobile, GSM mobile, internet, broadband, carrier services. Within a span it has
become the one of the largest public sector unit in India. BSNL is the only service provider, making
focused efforts and planned initiatives to bridge the rural

urban digital divide ICT sector. In fact there is no telecom operator in the country to beat it reach
with its wide network giving services I every nook & corner of country and operates across India
except Delhi & Mumbai. BSNL cellular service cellone, has more than 20.7 million cellular customers,
garnering 24 % of all mobile users as its subscribers. That means that almost every fourth mobile
user in the country has a BSNL connection. In basic services, BSNL is miles ahead of its rivals, with
35.1 million Basic Phone Subscribers i.e. 85 % share of the subscribers and 92 % share in revenue
terms. BSNL has set up a world class multi-gigabit, multi-protocol convergent IP infrastructure that
provides convergent services like voice, data and video through the same Backbone and broadband
access network. At present there are 0.6 million Data one broadband customers. The turnover,
nationwide coverage, reach, comprehensive range of the telecom services and the desire to excel
has made BSNL the no. 1 telecom company of India.

2. Introduction: The Evolution of Mobile Telephone Systems

Cellular is one of the fastest growing and most demanding telecommunications applications. Today,
it represents a continuously increasing percentage of all new telephone subscriptions around the
world. Currently there are more than 45 million cellular subscribers worldwide, and nearly 50
percent of those subscribers are located in the United States. It is forecasted that cellular systems
using a digital technology will become the universal method of telecommunications. By the year
2005, forecasters predict that there will be more than 100 million cellular subscribers worldwide. It
has even been estimated that some countries may have more mobile phones than fixed phones by
the year 2000 (see

Figure 1

).

Figure 1. Cellular Subscriber Growth Worldwide

The concept of cellular service is the use of low-power transmitters where frequencies can be reused
within a geographic area. The idea of cell-based mobile radio service was formulated in the United
States at Bell Labs in the early 1970s. However, the Nordic countries were the first to introduce
cellular services for commercial use with the introduction of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) in
1981. Cellular systems began in the United States with the release of the advanced mobile phone
service (AMPS) system in 1983. The AMPS standard was adopted by Asia, Latin America, and Oceanic
countries, creating the largest potential market in the world for cellular. 5

In the early 1980s, most mobile telephone systems were analog rather than digital, like today's
newer systems. One challenge facing analog systems was the inability to handle the growing
capacity needs in a cost-efficient manner. As a result, digital technology was welcomed. The
advantages of digital systems over analog systems include ease of signaling, lower levels of
interference, integration of transmission and switching, and

increased ability to

meet capacity demands.

Table 1

charts the worldwide development of mobile telephone systems.

Year Mobile System

1981 Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) 450 1983 American Mobile Phone System (AMPS) 1985
Total Access Communication System (TACS) 1986 Nordic Mobile Telephony (NMT) 900 1991
American Digital Cellular (ADC) 1991 Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) 1992 Digital
Cellular System (DCS) 1800 1994 Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) 1995 PCS 1900

Canada 1996 PCS

United States
Table 1. The Development of Mobile Telephone Systems

Throughout the evolution of cellular telecommunications, various systems have been developed
without the benefit of standardized specifications. This presented many problems directly related to
compatibility, especially with the development of digital radio technology. The GSM standard is
intended to address these problems. From 1982 to 1985 discussions were held to decide between
building an analog or digital system. After multiple field tests, a digital system was adopted for GSM.
The next task was to decide between a narrow or 6

broadband solution. In May 1987, the narrowband time division multiple access (TDMA) solution
was chosen. A summary of GSM milestones is given in

Table 2

3. GSM

The growth of cellular telephone systems started in the early 1980s, particularly in Europe. The lack
of a technological standardization prompted the European Conference of Postal and
Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) to create the Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) in 1982 with
the objective of developing a standard for a mobile telephone system that could be used across
Europe In 1989, GSM responsibility was transferred to the European Telecommunications Standards
Institute (ETSI), and phase I of the GSM

Year Milestone

1982 GSM formed 1986 field test 1987 TDMA chosen as access method 1988 memorandum of
understanding signed 1989 validation of GSM system 1990 Pre operation system 1991
commercial system start-up 1992 coverage of larger cities/airports 1993 coverage of main roads
1995 coverage of rural areas 7

specifications were published in 1990. The first GSM network was launched in 1991 by Radiolinja in
Finland. By the end of 1993, over a million subscribers were using GSM phone networks being
operated by 70 carriers across 48 countries.

The

Global System for Mobile communications

GSM
: originally from

Groupe Spécial Mobile

) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM service is used by over 2 billion
people across more than 212 countries and territories. Its ubiquity makes international roaming very
common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts
of the world. GSM differs significantly from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech
channels are digital call quality, and so is considered a

second generation

(2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication was built into the system
from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

The GSM logo is used to identify compatible handsets and equipment The key advantage of GSM
systems to consumers has been higher digital voice quality and low cost alternatives to making calls,
such as the Short message service (SMS, also called "text messaging"). The advantage for network
operators has been the ease of deploying equipment from any vendors that implements the
standard. Like other cellular standards, GSM allows network operators to offer roaming services so
that subscribers can use their phones on GSM networks all over the world. Newer versions of the
standard were backward-compatible with the original GSM phones. For example, Release '97 of the
standard added packet data capabilities, by means of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Release
'99 introduced higher speed data transmission using Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution About
GSM 8

Radio interface

GSM

is a cellular network, which means that mobile phones connect to it by searching for cells in the
immediate vicinity. GSM networks operate in four different frequency ranges. Most GSM networks
operate in the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz bands. Some countries in the Americas (including Canada and
the United States) use the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands because the 900 and 1800 MHz frequency
bands were already allocated. The rarer 400 and 450 MHz frequency bands are assigned in some
countries, notably Scandinavia, where these frequencies were previously used for first-generation
systems. In the 900 MHz band the uplink frequency band is 890-915 MHz, and the downlink
frequency band is 935-960 MHz. This 25 MHz bandwidth is subdivided into 124 carrier frequency
channels, each spaced 200 kHz apart. Time division multiplexing is used to allow eight full-rate or
sixteen half-rate speech channels per radio frequency channel. There are eight radio timeslots
(giving eight burst periods) grouped into what is called a TDMA frame. Half rate channels use
alternate frames in the same timeslot. The channel data rate is 270.833 kbit/s, and the frame
duration is 4.615 ms. The transmission power in the handset is limited to a maximum of 2 watts in
GSM850/900 and 1 watt in GSM1800/1900. GSM has used a variety of voice codes to squeeze 3.1
kHz audio into between 6 and 13 kbit/s. Originally, two codecs, named after the types of data
channel they were allocated, were used, called "Full Rate" (13 kbit/s) and "Half Rate" (6 kbit/s).
These used a system based upon linear predictive coding (LPC). In addition to being efficient with bit
rates, these codecs also made it easier to identify more important parts of the audio, allowing the air
interface layer to prioritize and better protect these parts of the signal. GSM was further enhanced
in 1997 with the GSM-EFR codec, a 12.2 kbit/s codec that uses a full rate channel. Finally, with the
development of UMTS, EFR was refactored into a variable-rate codec called AMR-Narrowband,
which is high quality and robust against interference when used on full rate channels, and less
robust but still relatively high quality when used in good radio conditions on half-rate channels. 9

There are four different cell sizes in a GSM network - macro, micro, pico and umbrella cells. The
coverage area of each cell varies according to the implementation environment. Macro cells can be
regarded as cells where the base station antenna is installed on a mast or a building above average
roof top level. Micro cells are cells whose antenna height is under average roof top level; they are
typically used in urban areas. Picocells are small cells whose coverage diameter is a few dozen
meters; they are mainly used indoors. Umbrella cells are used to cover shadowed regions of smaller
cells and fill in gaps in coverage between those cells. Cell horizontal radius varies depending on
antenna height, antenna gain and propagation conditions from a couple of hundred meters to
several tens of kilometers. The longest distance the GSM specification supports in practical use is 35
km or 22 miles. There are also several implementations of the concept of an extended cell, where
the cell radius could be double or even more, depending on the antenna system, the type of terrain
and the timing advance. Indoor coverage is also supported by GSM and may be achieved by using an
indoor picocell base station, or an indoor repeater with distributed indoor antennas fed through
power splitters, to deliver the radio signals from an antenna outdoors to the separate indoor
distributed antenna system. These are typically deployed when a lot of call capacity is needed
indoors, for

Multiple Access TDMA/FDMA/FDA Uplink frequency(mobile to base) 890-915 Mhz Downlink

frequency(base to mobile ) 935-960 Mhz Channel Bandwidth 200 Khz Number of channels 124
Channels/carrier 8(full rate),16(half rate) Frame duration 4.6ms Interleaving duration 40ms
Modulation GMSK Speech coding method RPE-LTE convolution Speech coder bit rate 13kb/s (full
rate) Associated control channel Extra frame Handoff scheme Mobile assisted Mobile station power
levels 0.8, 2,58 w 10

example in shopping centers or airports. However, this is not a prerequisite, since indoor coverage is
also provided by in-building penetration of the radio signals from nearby cells. The modulation used
in GSM is Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK), a kind of continuous-phase frequency shift keying.
In GMSK, the signal to be modulated onto the carrier is first smoothed with a Gaussian low-pass
filter prior to being fed to a frequency modulator, which greatly reduces the interference to
neighboring channels (adjacent channel interference). DETAILS: A nearby GSM handset is usually the
source of the "dit dit dit, dit dit dit, dit dit dit" signal that can be heard from time to time on home
stereo systems, televisions, computers, and personal music devices. When these audio devices are in
the near field of the GSM handset, the radio signal is strong enough that the solid state amplifiers in
the audio chain function as a detector. The clicking noise itself represents the power bursts that
carry the TDMA signal. These signals have been known to interfere with other electronic devices,
such as car stereos and portable audio players. This is a form of RFI, and could be mitigated or
eliminated by use of additional shielding and/or bypass capacitors in these audio devices. However,
the increased cost of doing so is difficult for a designer to justify..
 4. The GSM Network

GSM provides recommendations, not requirements. The GSM specifications define the functions and
interface requirements in detail but do not address the hardware. The reason for this is to limit the
designers as little as possible but still to make it possible for the operators to buy equipment from
different suppliers. The GSM network is divided into three major systems: the switching system (SS),
the base station system (BSS), and the operation and 11

support system (OSS). The basic GSM network elements are shown in

Figure 2

Figure 2. GSM Network Elements

The Switching System

The switching system (SS) is responsible for performing call processing and subscriber-related
functions. The switching system includes the following functional units.

Home location registers (HLR)

The HLR is a database used for storage and management of subscriptions. The HLR is considered the
most important database, as it stores permanent data about subscribers, including a subscriber's
service profile, location information, and activity status. When an individual buys a