7.

1 General Concept for GSM SystemDevelopment

Development of the fundamental technology for GSM started in the Nordic countries

in the 1980s, led by Ericsson and then transferred to a working group of standardization

body ‘Groupe SpecialMobile’ (GSM) within the Conference Europeenne des Postes

et Telecommunications (CEPT) standard committees. Since the standardization of the

basic GSM900, the GSM system has experienced extensive modifications in order to

address increasing end-user requirements presented by mobile operators participating

in standardization bodies. The main part of further standardization of the GSM system

was conducted in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Special

Mobile Group (SMG) until 2000 and since then by the 3rd Generation Partnership

Project (3GPP).

One of the major objectives of theGSMstandardwas to create a digital system suitable

for low-cost mass production. The criteria stipulated that the GSM system should provide

at least the same or better speech quality and better spectrum efficiency compared

to existing (to date) analogue mobile systems.

That system, named GSM-Global System Mobile, should provide ISDN services on

the fixed side in addition to a number of specific services, named GSM specific services,

including:

• Global roaming (initially Pan-European)

• Authentication (fraud control)

• Ciphering (speech, data, signalling)

• User confidentiality (ciphered subscriber number on-air-interface).

GSM achieved global acceptance by end of the 1990s.While the share of GSM in the

modern mobile network is decreasing giving way to new generations, GSM still signifies

a considerable source of revenue for mobile operators. 7.3 Radio Specifications

GSM is a combination of FDMA and TDMA.The ‘primary band’ of GSM includes two

subbands of 25 MHz each:

• 890–915 MHz uplink

• 935–960 MHz downlink

TheprimaryGSM900 frequency band comprises 2 × 25 MHzin a duplex arrangement

with 124 duplex channels with 200 kHz channel spacing. This channel spacing allows

a system data rate of about 270 kbps with GMSK modulation and a modest adjacent

channel selectivity requirement (9 dB).The rate of 270 kbps corresponds to a bit (symbol)

length of 4.6928 μs. Each RF carrier frequency pair is assigned an Absolute Radio

Frequency Channel Number (ARFCN). The modulation spectrum for GMSK is wider

than 200 kHz, resulting in some level of interference on adjacent channels.

The intra-cell interference is normally avoided by means of frequency planning.

Therefore, adjacent channel interference to services other than GSM could be important

mainly near the band borders. The border frequencies are therefore usually

avoided. If there is no special agreement with the users of the adjacent bands, the

normal practice is not to use channels 0 and 124. As a consequence, the number

of carriers could be limited to 122. The specific frequency plan may be different in

different areas and controlled by relevant spectrum management agencies. The GSM

spectrum allocation is given in Table 7.2 and the summary of GSM RF characteristics

is given in Table 7.3.