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GSM Channels Onair Interface
GSM Channels Onair Interface
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The GSM radio interface
Logical Channel
Type of information to be transmitted e.g., traffic or control logical channels.
Transport Channel
How and with what format data is transmitted through physical links.
Physical Channel
Unit of radio resource of a radio system e.g., frequency band, time slot, code, etc.
RF Channel
Fixed frequency band of a radio system.
The MAC sub-layer is responsible for mapping logical channels onto transport
channels.
The physical layer is responsible for mapping transport channels onto physical
Channels.
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GSM Physical Channel
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GSM Physical Channel Cntd....
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GSM Logical Channel
• The logical channels consist of the information
carried over the physical channel.
• There are two major categories of GSM
Logical channels
1. Traffic channels
2. Control channels.
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GSM Physical Channel (in detail)
• A single GSM Carrier is divided into eight
timeslots.
• Therefore can support up to eight MS
subscribers simultaneously.
• The timeslots are arranged in sequence and are
conventionally numbered 0 to 7.
• Each repetition of this sequence is called a
“TDMA frame”.
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GSM Physical Channel Cntd....
BURST:
The information carried in one timeslot is called a “burst”.
The timing of the burst transmissions to and from the
mobiles is critical.
Each time slot of a TDMA frame lasts for duration of
156.25 bit periods or
576.9 µsec or 0.576 ms
so a frame takes 4.615 ms
GSM’s data transmission rate is 270.83 kbps per carrier
frequency.
Therefore one bit duration is 3.692 µsec
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Burst structure
• As it has been stated before, the burst is the unit in time of a TDMA
system. Four different types of bursts can be distinguished in GSM:
• The frequency-correction burst is used on the FCCH. It has the same
length as the normal burst but a different structure.
• The synchronization burst is used on the SCH. It has the same length as
the normal burst but a different structure.
• The random access burst is used on the RACH and is shorter than the
normal burst.
• The normal burst is used to carry speech or data information. It lasts
approximately 0.577 ms and has a length of 156.25 bits.
TB Data Training seq. Data TB GP
Normál burst (NB) 000 58 bit 26 bit 58 bit 000 8.25 bit time
TB 000...0 TB GP
Frequency Correction Burst (FB) 000 142 bit 000 8.25 bit time
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GSM Traffic Channels
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Traffic Channels
• A traffic channel (TCH) is used to carry speech and
data traffic.
• TCHs for the uplink and downlink are separated in
time by 3 burst periods.
• Therefore MS does not have to transmit & receive
simultaneously, thus simplifying the electronics.
• In addition to these full-rate TCHs, there are also half-
rate TCHs defined.
• Half-rate TCHs will effectively double the capacity of
a system at the cost of voice quality.
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Traffic Channels Cntd....
• Traffic channels can carry either
1. Speech or
2. Data
• Speech channels are supported by two different
methods of coding known as
1. Full Rate (FR)
2. Enhanced Full Rate (EFR)
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Traffic Channels Cntd....
• Enhanced Full Rate coding provides a speech
service that has improved voice quality from
the original Full Rate speech coding.
• EFR employs a new speech coding algorithm
and additions to the full rate channel coding
algorithm to accomplish this improved speech
service.
• it is only supported by Phase 2+ mobiles
onwards.
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Traffic Channels Cntd....
Full Rate TCH Half Rate
TCH
TCH/FR TRAFFIC TCH/HR
TCH/F 9.6
CHANNELS TCH/H4.8
TCH/F 4.8
TCH/H2.4
TCH/F 2.4
Full Rate Traffic Channels Half Rate Traffic Channels
Name Type Data Rate NAME Type Data Rate
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GSM Control Channels
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GSM CONTROL CHANNELS (CCH)
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GSM CONTROL CHANNELS (CCH)
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Broadcast Channels (BCH)
• The broadcast channel operates on the forward
link of a specific ARFCNs
• It transmits data only in (TS 0) of certain
ARFCNs. Other TSs are available for TCHs.
• The BCH provides synchronization for all
mobiles within the cell.
• It is also monitored by mobiles in neighboring
cells so that the received power and MAHO
decisions can be made by out-of-cell users.
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i) BROADCAST CONTROL CHANNEL (BCCH)
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BROADCAST CONTROL CHANNEL Cntd….
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ii) FREQUENCY CORRECTION CHANNEL
(FCCH)
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iii) SYNCHRONIZATION CHANNEL (SCH)
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COMMON CONTROL CHANNEL (CCCH)
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i) PAGING CHANNEL (PCH)
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iii) ACCESS GRANT CHANNEL (AGCH).
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DEDICATED CONTROL CHANNELS
(DCCH)
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i) STAND-ALONE DEDICATED
COTROL CHANNEL (SDCCH)
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ii) SLOW-ASSOCITED CONTROL CHANNEL
(SACCH)…..
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iii) FAST-ASSOCIATED CONTROL CHANNEL
(FACCH)
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Call Setup Procedure
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Speech coding
The transmission of speech is, at the moment, the most important service of a mobile cellular
system. The GSM speech codec, which will transform the analog signal (voice) into a digital
representation, has to meet the following criterias:
– A good speech quality, at least as good as the one obtained with previous cellular systems.
– To reduce the redundancy in the sounds of the voice. This reduction is essential due to the limited
capacity of transmission of a radio channel.
– The speech codec must not be very complex because complexity is equivalent to high costs.
The final choice for the GSM speech codec is a codec named RPE-LTP (Regular Pulse Excitation
Long-Term Prediction). This codec uses the information from previous samples (this
information does not change very quickly) in order to predict the current sample. The speech
signal is divided into blocks of 20 ms. These blocks are then passed to the speech codec,
which has a rate of 13 kbps, in order to obtain blocks of 260 bits.
Discontinuous transmission (DTX)
• This is another aspect of GSM that could have been included as one of
the requirements of the GSM speech codec. The function of the DTX is
to suspend the radio transmission during the silence periods. This can
become quite interesting if we take into consideration the fact that a
person speaks less than 40 or 50 percent during a conversation. The
DTX helps then to reduce interference between different cells and to
increase the capacity of the system. It also extends the life of a
mobile's battery.
The DTX function is performed thanks to two
main features:
• The Voice Activity Detection (VAD), which has to determine whether the
sound represents speech or noise, even if the background noise is very
important. If the voice signal is considered as noise, the transmitter is
turned off producing then, an unpleasant effect called clipping.
• The comfort noise. An inconvenient of the DTX function is that when the
signal is considered as noise, the transmitter is turned off and therefore, a
total silence is heard at the receiver. This can be very annoying to the user at
the reception because it seems that the connection is dead. In order to
overcome this problem, the receiver creates a minimum of background
noise called comfort noise. The comfort noise eliminates the impression
that the connection is dead.
Timing advance
• The timing of the bursts transmissions is very important. Mobiles are
at different distances from the base stations. Their delay depends,
consequently, on their distance. The aim of the timing advance is that
the signals coming from the different mobile stations arrive to the base
station at the right time. The base station measures the timing delay of
the mobile stations. If the bursts corresponding to a mobile station
arrive too late and overlap with other bursts, the base station tells, this
mobile, to advance the transmission of its bursts.
Power control
• At the same time the base stations perform the timing measurements,
they also perform measurements on the power level of the different
mobile stations. These power levels are adjusted so that the power is
nearly the same for each burst.
• A base station also controls its power level. The mobile station
measures the strength and the quality of the signal between itself and
the base station. If the mobile station does not receive correctly the
signal, the base station changes its power level.
Discontinuous reception
• It is a method used to conserve the mobile
station's power. The paging channel is divided
into subchannels corresponding to single
mobile stations. Each mobile station will then
only 'listen' to its subchannel and will stay in
the sleep mode during the other subchannels
of the paging channel.
Multipath and Equalization
• At the GSM frequency bands, radio waves reflect from buildings, cars, hills,
etc. So not only the 'right' signal (the output signal of the emitter) is received
by an antenna, but also many reflected signals, which corrupt the information,
with different phases.
• An equalizer is in charge of extracting the 'right' signal from the received
signal. It estimates the channel impulse response of the GSM system and then
constructs an inverse filter. The receiver knows which training sequence it
must wait for. The equalizer will then comparing the received training
sequence with the training sequence it was expecting, compute the
coefficients of the channel impulse response. In order to extract the 'right'
signal, the received signal is passed through the inverse filter.