International Conference on Computer and Information Application（ICCIA 2010）
The Survey of GSM Wireless Communication System
Guifen Gu#1, Guili Peng#2
#
Dept. of electronic and information engineering, Tianjin institute of urban construction
Xiqing district, Tianjin,Jinjing road 26#, China
1
guguifen8888@126.com
2
dgdz@tjuci.edu.cn
Abstract— In the past decade, wireless communications
experienced an explosive growth period and became an
integral part of modern society. The convenience and flexibility
offered by mobile communications have made it one of the
fastest growing areas of telecommunications. Mobile
communication systems have experienced rapid growth in the
number of users as well as the range of services provided
during the last two decades. The Global System for Mobile
communications, GSM, is a pan-European Mobile
communication system in the 900 MHz band which was first
introduced in the early years of this decade. An increasing
demand for data transmission services over the GSM system
has been driven by the wide use of the internet applications.
In this thesis, we focus on the survey of GSM for wireless
communication, which is one of the most widely deployed
second generation wireless cellular systems in the world. While
voice was the primary service provided early communication
systems, current systems offer other transmission services. One
of the most commonly used cellular systems is based on the
Global System for Mobile communication, GSM, standard. We
briefly introduce the GSM System configuration and major
properties. It included five parts. It is about service and
features, architecture of GSM system, channel and frame
structure of GSM, GSM security features, data in the GSM
System.
Keywords-GSM, wireless communication system, cellular
concept, characters
I. INTRODUCTION
A. An Overview to GSM System
Wireless communication has been one of the fastest
growing industries during the recent years, and wireless
application, such as personal communication services (PCS),
cellular communications, satellite communications,
broadcasting, High-Definition TV (HDTV), Personal Digital
Assistant (PDA), wireless LAN, Bluetooth, and so on.
Global System for Mobile (GSM) is a second-generation
cellular system standard. It is the first cellular system to
specify digital modulation and network level architectures
and services. The first significant set of Radio Frequency
(RF-ICS) for GSM standard started at 1900.GSM was first
introduced in Europe in 1991 and today it is the most
common cellular standard.
At present, GSM system is one of the most popular
digital cellular telecommunications systems in our country,
which is widely used in the whole world. With the increase
of the number and the requirement of GSM subscriber, GSM
978-1-4244-8598-7 /10/$26.00 C 2010 IEEE
wireless communication system has attracted more and more
attention in the field of mobile telecommunication.
B. The Character of GSM System
GSM System utilizes two bands of 25MHz, 890-915MHz
and 935-960MHz for the transmit and receive bands of the
mobile system respectively; It uses FDD (frequency Division
Duplex) and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). The
receive band is divided into 128channels each with 200 KHz
bandwidth. Each channel is shared between as many as eight
users.
GSM system mainly is made of three parts, Network and
Switching Subsystem (NNS), Basic Station Subsystem (BSS)
and Operation Support Subsystem (OSS). Mobile-Services
Switching Center (MSC) is the heart of the NNS. It can
finish the basic change function. The conjunction of other net
can connect with MSC conjunction. BBS is made of basic
system controller (BSC), basic transceiver system (BTS) and
mobile system (MS). OOS can manage and monitor whole
the GSM system. It is made of operation maintenance center
(OMC) and system software.
C. Research Motivation
The growth of the wireless communication market over
the last decade was characterized by the evolution of
different standards and the need of low-cost, low power, and
on-chip integrated third generation (3G) receiver capable of
adapting to these different standards. The base-band and RF
front-end sections are required to accommodate different
wireless standards such as global system for mobile
communication (GSM). So we tell more about the GSM
system because it is very hard to understand and very useful
in our country. The objective of this survey is to investigate
the feature of the GSM system.
II. THE CELLULAR CONCEPT---WIRELESS COMMUNICATION
SYSTEM
A. The cellular concept
The traditional problem faced by mobile radio system
designers has been how to balance the conflicting
requirements of area coverage and user capacity. In 1970’s,
this scenario allowed Bell Mobile systems in New York City
to support just 12 simultaneous calls. Taking into
consideration the limited spectrum allocated by government,
it was a logical evolution step to come up with the cellular
concept. It implies that instead of having a large area covered
by single transmitter, that area can be divided it smaller
coverage areas called cells.
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The cellular concept was a major breakthrough in solving
the problem of spectral congestion and user capacity. It
offered very high capacity in a limited spectrum allocation
without any major technological changer. It is a system level
idea which calls for replacing a single, high power
transmitter much low power transmitters. The cellular is one
of the wireless communication system (WCS).
of services worth paying for. GSM services follow ISDN
guidelines and are classified as either telephone services or
data services. They divided into three main classes.
Telephone services include regular telephony and emergency
calls. Bearer services give the user the capacity required to
transmit signals between certain access points. The GSM
supplementary services ate defined as add-ons, additional
features to both telephone services and bearer services. All of
these services are digital in nature and not available in analog
mobile networks.

TABLE I. THE PROPERTY OF GSM

Property Region Forward Reverse Bandwidth

Band Band
GSM Europe 935- 890- 50MHz
960MHz 915MHz
Property Multiple Channel Frame Cell Radius
Access Spacing Period
Figure 1. Frequency Resue Concept When N=3 GSM TDMA/FD 200KMz 4.6 ms 1-5 miles
MA
Property Duplexing Channel Voice Modulation
B. Wireless Communication System Bit Rate Bit Rate
GSM FDD 271 Kbps 13 Kbps GMSK
WCS have a lot of parts. Base Station is a fixed station in Property Mobile No. of
a mobile radio system used for radio communication with Avg. Pwr channels
mobile stations. Control Channel is a radio channel used for GSM 0.25-2.5 W 124(8user/
transmission of call setup; call request and other beacon or cha.)
control purposes. Mobile Station is a station in the cellular
radio service intended for use while in motion at unspecified One of the most remarkable features of GSM is the
locations Mobile Switching Center which coordinates the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), which is a memory
routing of calls in a large service area. Subscriber is a user device that stores information such as the subscriber;
who pays subscription charges for using a mobile identification number, the networks and countries where the
communications system. Transceiver is a device capable of subscriber is entitled to service, privacy keys, and other user-
simultaneously transmitting and receiving radio signals. specific information. Unlike the case with an analog system,
call privacy can be achieved in digital systems by encrypting
III. GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR MOBILE (GSM) the digital bit stream sent by a transmitter.
Global system for Mobile (GSM) is a second generation B. GSM System Architecture.
cellular system standard that was developed to solve the
fragmentation problems of the first cellular systems. GSM is The three major subsystem of the GSM network
the world’s first cellular system to specify digital modulation Architecture are Base Station Subsystem BSS, Network and
and network lever architectures and services. It is now the Switching Subsystem NNS, and Operation Support
world’s most popular standard for new cellular radio and Subsystem OSS. The Mobile Station (MS) is also a
personal communications equipment throughout the world. subsystem, but is usually considered to be part of the BSS for
The GSM (Group special mobile) committee took up the task architecture purposes.
of specifying a common Mobile communication system for The BSS also know as the radio subsystem provides and
Europe the 900 MHz band. Recently, GSM has changed its manages radio transmission paths between the mobile
name to the Global system for Mobile Communications for stations and Mobile Switching Center (MSC). The BSS also
marketing reasons. GSM was first introduced into the manage the radio interface between the mobile stations and
European market in 1991. By the end of 1993, several won all other subsystems of GSM. It consists of many of Base
European countries in South America, Asia, and Australia Station Controllers BSCs, each of which controls many base
had adopted GSM and the technically equivalent offshoot transceiver Stations BTSs. The BSS is associated with the
DCS 1800, which supports personal communication services channel management, transmission functions, and radio link
(PCS) in the 1.8 GHz to 2.0 GHz radio hands recently control.
created by governments throughout the world.
A. Service and Features
A communication services supported by any system are
defined as a group of communication capabilities that a
service provider offers to the subscriber who sees this group

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Figure 2. GSM system structure
The NSS includes the equipment and functions related to
end-to-end calls, management of subscribers, switching and
communicating with other networks such as ISDN and
PSTN. Units include in the NSS are the Mobile Switching
Center MSC, Home Location Register HLR, Visitor
Location Register VLR, Authentication Unit Center AUC,
and Equipment Identity Register EIR. MSC is the important
central unit of the NSS, which provides call setup, routing,
switching, handoff, and other functions. HLR is a centralized
database that contains subscriber information and location
information of all the users residing in the area of the MSC.
VLR is a database of all roaming mobiles in the area of the
MSC but not residing there. AUC is a database that provides
HLR and VIR with authentication parameters and ciphering
keys required for security purposes. RIR is a database that
includes numbers of all registered mobile units.
The OSS main unit is the Operational and Maintenance
Center OMC. It allows system engineer to monitor, diagnose,
and troubleshoot all aspects of the GSM system. This
subsystem interacts with the other GSM subsystems, and is
provided solely for staff of GSM operating company, which
provides service facilities for the network.
The MS is the equipment used by the subscriber to access
the service offered by the system. It is traditionally
considered to be part of the BBS although it is one end of the
conversational path. The primary function of the MS is to
Transmit and receive voice and data over the air interface of
the GSM system.
C. Channel and Frame Structure
The GSM system operates in two paired band each of 25
MHz: 890-915 MHz for uplink or reverse link where the
mobile transmits to the base station, and 935-960 MHz for
the downlink or forward link where the transmission is from
the base station to the mobile. These two bands are divided
in 200 KHz wide channels. Taking out 200 KHz as a guard
band at the lower end of each band will leave 124 paired
duplex channels with 45 MHz spacing. Each of the 124
channels operates at different carrier frequency. Most of
transmission time of the slot is reserved for two bursts of 58
bits each. A combination of a time slot number and a carrier
frequency number form a physical channel number that will
be assigned to a user during the call. There are two types of
GSM logical channels, Traffic Channels TCH which carry
user speech or data, and Control Channels CCH which carry
signaling commands between the mobile and the base station.
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D. GSM Security features
It is very important on the security features of the GSM
network rather than radio-link aspects, the detailed
architecture, speech coding or channel coding.
Authentication and security is fully described in GSMSEC.
The security mechanisms are only defined for the air
interface. The fixed network is supposed to be secure and its
security is left to network providers.
Figure 3. Security architecture in GSM
Since the radio medium can be accessed by anyone,
authentication of users is very important element of a mobile
network. Authentication involves two functional entitles, the
SIM card in the mobile, and the Authentication Center
(AUC). Each subscriber is given a secret key, one copy of
which is stored in the SIM card and the other in the AUC.
Another lever of security is introduced by on the mobile
equipment itself, as opposed to the mobile subscriber. As
mentioned earlier, each GSM terminal is identified by a
unique International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI)
number. A list of IMEI in the network is stored in the
Equipment Identity Register (EIR).
E. Data in the GSM System
GSM system provides a very good facsimile service, a
two-way paging function or short message service SMS
which allows up to 160 text characters to be sent, and Cell
Broadcast services CBS which can broadcast messages in a
given geographical area. GSM offer data services can be
either transparent or nontransparent. The current GSM
system is capable of providing data service with a throughput
up to 9.6 kbps. Several evolutionary steps are already in the
final stages of standardization to provide services with a
much higher bit rate. The GSM services included five parts.
It is about used in Internet, mobile fax, secure corporate
LAN access, cell broadcast, and short message. A third
generation system UMTS is being standardized in a parallel
process to provide the top of line multimedia services with
higher capacity.
Now data communication services have become popular.
Mobile data applications can be military or civilian. Other
applications might be in the health care field. Using mobile
data applications can reduce the paper flow, save time. And
improve the accessibility and accuracy of information.
 International Conference on Computer and Information Application（ICCIA 2010）

IV. CONCLUSIONS
This paper is mainly show the character of GSM (Global
System for Mobile communications) network. GSM system
is today a worldwide standard for second generation mobile
telephony. GSM system is very popular and important in
whole world. It is have a lot of advantage and conveniences.
As a result, third generation of GSM and other cellular
systems are targeting provide high quality data services with
a higher bit rate for the maximum number of users at low
cost. Mobile telephony in general and in Europe in particular
is on the move from 2G to 3G, i.e., GSM to UMTS networks.
As long as UMTS is not in operation on a large scale, both
GSM and UMTS technologies will coexist and have to
interoperate.
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