CHAPTER SIX

Mobile (cellular) network

 6.1. Mobile Network

 A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the

last link is wireless.
 A cell is a geographical area that defines the cellular coverage zone created by
the base station of a mobile network. The base station, also known as a cell
tower,
 These cells together provide radio coverage over larger geographical areas.
 User equipment (UE), such as mobile phones, is therefore able to
communicate even if the equipment is moving through cells during
transmission.
 Cellular networks give subscribers
 able to move across one cell to an other

 Cover larger geographical coverage area and

 Cells in a Network
 A cell is a geographical area covered by the frequency emitted by a base station
in a cellular network.
 the terms “cellular network” and “cellular phone.” means that a mobile phone
network is divided into thousands of overlapping geographic areas, known as
cells.
 A typical cellular network can be designed as a hexagonal cells, as shown in
Figure 6.1, each with its own base station at the center.
 The cells slightly overlap at the edges to ensure that users always remain within
range of a base station.
 (You don’t want a dropped call when you’re driving between base stations.)

Figure 6.1. Cells in a cellular network.

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 Cont

 The cells in a cellular network vary in size, depending on how many calls are
conducted within that geographic area.
 The smallest cells, which might cover only a few city blocks, are those where
there’s the heaviest population density, and thus the largest demand for service.
 The largest cells are most often in rural areas with a smaller population per
square mile.

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 Types Of Cells

 The different types of cells are given different names according to their size and
function:
 Macro cells: Macro cells are large cells that are usually used for remote or sparsely
populated areas. These may be 10 km or possibly more in diameter.
 Micro cells: Micro cells are those that are normally found in densely populated areas
which may have a diameter of around 1 km.
 Pico cells: Pico cells are generally used for covering very small areas such as
particular areas of buildings, or possibly tunnels where coverage from a larger cell in
the cellular system is not possible.
 Obviously for the small cells, the power levels used by the base stations are much

lower and the antennas are not position to cover wide areas.
 In this way the coverage is minimized and the interference to adjacent cells is

reduced.
 Selective cells: Sometimes cells termed selective cells may be used where full 360
degree coverage is not required. They may be used to fill in a hole in the coverage in
the cellular system, or to address a problem such as the entrance to a tunnel etc.
 Umbrella cells: umbrella cell is sometimes used where a heavily used road crosses an
area where there are microcells.
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 Frequency reuse
 The key characteristic of a cellular network is the ability to re-
use frequencies to increase both coverage and capacity.
 As shown above, adjacent cells must use different frequencies;
however there is no problem with two cells sufficiently far apart
operating on the same frequency.
 The elements that determine frequency reuse are the reuse
distance and the reuse factor.
 The reuse distance, D is calculated as:
 Where R is the cell radius and N is the number of cells per
cluster. Cells may vary in radius from 1 to 30 kilometers. The
boundaries of the cells can also overlap between adjacent cells
and large cells can be divided into smaller cells

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 6.2. Cellular network Structure

 Cellular network contains a number of different elements from the base

transceiver station (BTS) itself with its antenna back through a base station
controller (BSC), and a mobile switching centre (MSC) to the location
registers (HLR and VLR) and the link to the public switched telephone
network (PSTN).

Figure 6.2.Basic mobile communication structure

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 Components of Cellular Network

 Mobile Station (MS)

 A Mobile Station is a device used by a mobile user to access the mobile
network.
 The MS typically consists of the mobile telephone equipment and a
Subscriber Identity Module (SIM).

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 Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)

 The Subscriber Identity Module is a smartcard that is necessary to make use

of a mobile phone.
 The SIM is the key used to identify and authenticate the mobile
subscriber.
 On the SIM is also contain memory available for personalized data, such as
a telephone book and messages.
 The subscriber is identified with an IMSI, International Mobile Subscriber
Identity, and a telephone number.
 The SIM made a clear separation between a mobile phone and a subscriber
possible.
 The subscriber can make use of any mobile phone under his own account if
the SIM card is put in the phone.
 There are two different sizes available, a credit card size and a small size
that is of the size of the chip that is on most credit cards. Nearly all phones
use the small version.

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 Base Station (BS) or Base Transceiver Station (BTS)

 The Base Transceiver Station (BTS) is a term used to denote a

base station in GSM terminology.
 A BTS is a radio transmitter/receiver which consists of an antenna
and the radio equipment necessary to communicate by radio with a
Mobile Station (MS).
 Each BTS covers a defined area, known as a cell.
 The BTS enables cellular devices to make direct communication with
mobile phones.
 A BTS is under control of a BSC, which is in turn under control of a
MSC (Mobile Switching Centre).
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 … Base station
 The base station at the center of each group of cells functions as
the hub for those cells.
 RF signals are transmitted by an individual phone and received
by the base station, then re-transmitted from the base station to
another mobile phone.
 Transmitting and receiving are done over two slightly different
frequencies.
 Base stations are connected to one another via central switching
centers which track calls and transfer them from one base
station to another as callers move between cells;
 the handoff is (ideally) is used in adjacent base station.

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 Base Station Control (BSC)

 The Base Station Controller (BSC) is in control of and

supervises a number of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS).
 The BSC is responsible for the allocation of radio resources to a
mobile call and for the handovers that are made between base
stations under its control.
 Other handovers are under control of the MSC.
 The base station controller (BSC) coordinates with the MSC to
interface with the landline-based PSTN, visitor location register
(VLR), and home location register (HLR) to route the calls
toward different base center controllers.

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 Mobile Switching Center (MSC)

 The Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) is a telephone exchange

that makes the connection between mobile users within the
network,
 Connect mobile users to the public switched telephone network
and from mobile users to other mobile networks.
 The MSC also administers handovers to neighboring base
stations, keeps a record of the location of the mobile
subscribers, is responsible for subscriber services and billing.

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 Roaming
 Roaming is the ability for a customer of mobile
communications to automatically make and receive telephone
calls,
 send and receive data, or

 access other services while travelling outside the

geographical coverage area of the home network, by means

of using a network of another operator.
 Roaming can be either national roaming or international
roaming.
 National roaming means that mobile subscribers make use of another
network in geographical areas where their own operator does not have
coverage.
 International roaming is used when mobile subscribers travel abroad and
make use of the network of an operator in the foreign country
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 Home Location Register (HLR)

 The Home Location Register is a database from a mobile

network in which information from all mobile subscribers is
stored.
 The HLR contains information about the subscriber’s identity,
his/her telephone number, the associated services and general
information about the location of the subscriber.
 The exact location of the subscriber is kept in a
Visitor Location Register.

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 Visitor Location Register (VLR)

 VLR is a database which contains the exact location of all

mobile subscribers currently present in the service area of MSC
 Visitor Location Register (VLR) is a database that contains
information about the subscribers roaming within a mobile
Switching Center (MSC) location area.
 The primary role of VLR is to minimize the number of queries
that MSCs have to make to the home location register, which
holds permanent data regarding the cellular networks
subscriber.

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 Public Switched Telephone Network

 The public switched telephone network (PSTN) refers to the

international telephone system that uses copper wires to carry
analog voice data.
 It consists of a collection of individual telephones that are
hardwired to a public exchange.

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 6.3.1. Creating a Secure Environment

 For end-to-end security you have to consider the entire

environment, including enterprise access, middle-tier
components, and client applications.
 End-to-end security means that the transmission of data is
secure along the entire path from the sender to the receiver—
usually the client application to the enterprise server.
 In this section we examine five objectives involved in creating a
secure mobile or cellular environment.
 Understanding these objectives and the impact they have on
mobile application development is crucial for creating secure
applications.

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 Authorization

 Authorization is the process of determining the user's level of

access
 whether a user has the right to perform certain actions.
 Once a user is authenticated, the system can determine what that
party is permitted to do.
 Access control lists (ACLs) are often used to help determine this.
 For example, all users may have read-only access to a set of data,
while the administrator, or another trusted source, may also have
write access to the data.
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 The three pillar of security of a system

 Confidentiality, integrity and availability, also known as the

CIA triad, is a model designed to guide policies for
information security within an organization.
 Confidentiality, integrity, availability is not only cellular system
but also it is the pillar of every functional system
 Confidentiality is about maintaining data privacy, making sure
it cannot be viewed by unwanted parties.
 Confidentiality measures are designed to prevent sensitive
information from unauthorized access attempts.
 Most often, when people are worried about the security of a
system.
 The most common way of preventing this intrusion is by
encrypting the data.
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 Cont
 Data Integrity involves maintaining the consistency, accuracy and
trustworthiness of data over its entire lifecycle.
 Data integrity is assurance that the data in question has not been altered or
corrupted in any way during the transmission from the sender to the
receiver.
 Data must not be changed in transit, and steps must be taken to ensure data
cannot be altered by unauthorized people.
 This can be accomplished by using data encryption in combination with a
cryptographic checksum
 Which prevents data deletion and modification or ensure that the original
data rich in to its destination.
 Availability means information should be consistently and readily
accessible for authorized parties.
 This involves properly maintaining hardware and technical infrastructure 21
 Non-repudiation

 Nonrepudiation is about making parties accountable for

transactions in which they have participated.
 It involves identifying the parties in such a way that they cannot
deny their involvement in the transaction.
 To accomplish this, each transaction has to be signed with a
digital signature that can be verified and time-stamped by a
trusted third party.

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 6.3.3. Security Technologies

 Companies need to understand the technologies that are

available to help them minimize security risks.
Cryptography
 The term is derived from the Greek word kryptos, which means
hidden.
 the art of writing or solving codes.
 Cryptography is the study of secure communications
techniques that allow only the sender and intended recipient
of a message to view its contents.
 Cryptography provides for secure communication in the
presence of malicious third-parties—known as adversaries.
Encryption uses an algorithm and a key to transform an input
(i.e., plaintext) into an encrypted output (i.e., ciphertext).
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 Data Encryption

 The one application of any cryptographic system is encryption,

 It is the process of taking a regular set of data, called plaintext,
and converting it into an unreadable form, called ciphertext.
 Encryption allows you to maintain the privacy of sensitive data,
even when accessed by unauthorized users.
 The only way the data can be read is by transforming it back to
its original form using a process called decryption.
 The method of encryption and decryption is called an algorithm
or cipher.

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 Digital certificate

 Digital certificate are electronic credentials that are used to

assure the online identities of individual, computers or other
entities in the network.
 the certificate itself also has to be verified to ensure that it
represents the claimed entity (a person or organization).
 This is accomplished using a trusted third party called a
certificate authority (CA).
 Example of CA is IEEE
 One common example is when creating email, require
third part checker may be phone no

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 Biometrics
 Biometrics provides a wide range of techniques for authenticating an
individual based on his or her unique physical characteristics.
 Such techniques include fingerprint identification, face recognition, voice
recognition, or iris and retina scanning.
 Using biometric techniques, you can ensure that the identification token is
definitely unique.
 biometric systems are growing in popularity due to increased security
concerns among all users.
 While this use of biometrics does improve security, this type of
authentication does have some drawbacks.
 Many of these systems are somewhat intrusive and therefore not widely
accepted by users.
 Some biometric technique can control personal activity without individual
interest.

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 digital signature

 a digital code (generated and authenticated by public key

encryption) which is attached to an electronically transmitted
document to verify its contents and the sender's identity.
 Example sign with your name in bank with draw

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Other Security Measures

Firewall
 Firewalls are the most common form of security implemented
within organizations.
 A firewall is a security device in the form of computer hardware
or software.
 It can help protect your network by acting as an intermediary
between your internal network and outside traffic.
 A Firewall is a network security device that monitors and filters
incoming and outgoing network traffic based on an
organization's previously established security policies.

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 Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

 A VPN allows a company to turn a public network (most

commonly the Internet) into a private network.
 VPN technology is currently being used to help overcome the
wireless LAN security problems by providing a direct link
through a WLAN past the corporate firewall.

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