Week 6

Discontinuous Transmission

Timing Advance

• Advanced features of GSM Power Control

Dynamic Channel Allocation

Ciphering & Authentication

 Advanced features of GSM

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 Discontinuous transmission
• It is typically estimated that a person only talks for 40% of the
time.
• When you are not talking, there is little need to transmit
anything.
• A voice activity detector that detects when you are not
speaking
• When you are not speaking, the VAD sends a message to the
network saying that the user is not speaking and stops
transmitting the user’s voice.
• It also sends a sample of background noise.

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 Discontinuous transmission
• The reason is that, the person to whom you were talking
would suddenly hear all the background noise disappear,
which is very disconcerting and tends to lead people to think
that the call has been dropped.
• When you start speaking again, the activity detector takes a
few milliseconds to be sure that you really have started
speaking. The result of this is that the first syllable that you
say is often lost.
• This is known as clipping

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 Discontinuous transmission
• Once voice activity detection is working, GSM cannot use the
frequencies for anything else.
• However, the fact that you are not transmitting means that
there is less interference to other users in nearby cells using
the same frequency.
• As a result, it is sometimes possible to reduce the cluster size
• Voice activity detection also helps reduce the battery drain

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 Discontinuous Transmission

• Discontinuous transmission (DTX) allows for the transmitter to be turned

off 60% of the time.
– Saves power
– Reduces the overall ambient noise in the cell sector.
• DTX requires voice detection, so that the handset knows when to restart
transmission.

• DTX also requires a synch signal, so that the receiver can differentiate
between silence and a dropped connection.
 Timing advance
• The propagation time of the radio signal between the MS and
the BS will be determined by the distance that the radio wave
has to travel.
• In GSM the propagation time can vary from 3 - 30 s
• In order for the data bursts transmitted by each MS fall
exactly into the time slot structure at the BS receiver it is
necessary to advance the timing of the MS transmitter.
• This is done at call set-up by the BS, which measures the
round trip time and sends a timing advance message to the
MS.

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 Power control
• The GSM network is designed so that the MS is instructed to
use only the minimum power level necessary.
• The base station measures the power received from the
mobile and sends it messages such as “talk louder” or “talk
more quietly” depending on what is received.
• Power control, reduces interference to other cells using the
same frequency, allowing a smaller cluster size.
• Power control also reduces battery drain.

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 Dynamic Power Compensation

• The power between the handset and the tower can be dynamically
adjusted in response to the channel BER.
• This allows the channel to start at a minimum power level, and only
increase when the signal requires a greater SNR.

• For CDMA, Dynamic Power Compensation is a necessity

• All transmit on same band at the same time
• Power must be adjusted so that all signals are received at the same
strength
• Otherwise, one channel would overpower all others
 Power control

Power Max. Power Max. Power

Class of a MS / (dBm) of a BS /dBm)
1 20W (43) 320W (55)
2 8W (39) 160W (52)
3 5W (37) 80W (49)
4 2W (33) 40W (46)
5 0.8W (29) 20W (43)
6 10W (40)
7 5W (37)
8 2.5W (34)

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 Dynamic channel allocation
• In GSM, all the frequencies available are divided up between
the different cells.
• So cell A might be assigned frequencies 1,11,21,31.
• This remains fixed more or less for all time.
• A more efficient approach would be whenever a user requests
a channel, the cell makes a quick measurement of the
interference on all the frequencies available to the system and
selects the one with the lowest interference.
• Dynamic channel allocation is used in most cordless systems

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 Ciphering & Authentication
• Security comes in two guises:

1. Making sure that nobody can overhear your

conversation, which is known as ciphering; and

2. Making sure that the mobile is who it claims to be

in order to prevent another mobile’s calls from
appearing on your bill, which is known as mobile
authentication

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 Ciphering & Authentication
• Central to security in the GSM system is a user’s
secret number.
• Each user is given a unique number that is stored in
their SIM card and in the network (in the AuC).
• This number is very carefully guarded and is never
sent by radio.
• Otherwise an imposter could receive the number, put
it in their mobile, and pretend to be someone else’s
mobile.

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 Authentication Algorithm
• When a mobile is turned on. The network asks the AuC for a random
number and a response.
• The AuC then performs a special operation (called a “security
algorithm”) where the random number and the secret number were
the two inputs and the response is the output.
• The network then sends the random number to the mobile.
• The mobile knows the special operation performed by the network
and so can put the random number and its copy of the secret number
into the operation.
• The result of the operation is then sent back to the network.
• If the result received from the mobile is the same as the result
received from the AuC, then the mobile is valid.

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S ec ret S ec ret
N um ber N um ber

S ec urity Com pare S ec urity

Algorithm Res ults Algorithm

T rans m itted to m obile G enerate

Random N o.

S IM Card MSC
Auc

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 Ciphering Algorithm
• Both sides agree on a mask, which is a sequence of 0s and 1s.
• The transmitter then multiplies the data to be sent by the
mask and sends the result.
• The receiver multiplies the received signal by the same mask
to get the original signal.
• This can be best seen by an example.
• Assume that the mask (the “multiplied by” number) is going
to be eight-bits long and that both sides, agree that the mask
will be 11011100.

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 Ciphering Algorithm
Input data 0010110111001010
Mask 1101110011011100
Transmitted data 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0

Mask 1101110011011100
Received data 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0

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 Ciphering Algorithm
• Like the secret number, the mask cannot be transmitted over
the radio because otherwise someone could hear it and use
the same mask to decode the signal.
• Instead, both the mobile and the AuC use the same random
number that was already sent, the secret number, and a
different special operation to generate the mask.
• As long as they use the same secret number and the same
special operation, they will come up with the same mask.
• They can then start to encipher their conversation.

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