Principles of Cellular Telecommunications

A cellular telephone system links mobile station (MS) subscribers into the public

Telephone system or to another cellular system’s MS subscriber.

Information sent between the MS subscriber and the cellular network uses radio

Communication. This removes the necessity for the fixed wiring used in a traditional

telephone installation. Due to this, the MS subscriber is able to move around and become fully mobile, perhaps traveling  in a vehicle or on foot.

Cellular networks have many advantages over the existing “land” telephone networks.There are advantages for the network provider as well as the mobile subscriber.

Network Components :

GSM networks are made up of Mobile services Switching Centres (MSC), Base Station Systems (BSS)and Mobile Stations (MS). These three entities can be broken down further into smaller entities; such as, within the BSS we have Base Station Controllers, Base Transceiver Stations and Transcoders. These smaller network elements, as they are referred to, will be discussed later in the course. For now we will use the three major

entities. With the MSC, BSS and MS we can make calls, receive calls, perform billing etc, as any normal PSTN network would be able to do. The only problem for the MS is that all the calls made or received are from other MSs. Therefore, it is also necessary to connect the GSM network to the PSTN. Mobile Stations within the cellular network are located in “cells”, these cells are provided by the BSSs. Each BSS can provide one or more cells, dependent on the manufacturers equipment.The cells are normally drawn as hexagonal, but in practice they are irregularly shaped, this is as a result of the influence of the surrounding terrain, or of design by the network

planners.

Frequency Spectrum :

The frequency spectrum is very congested, with only narrow slots of bandwidth allocated for cellular communications. The list opposite shows the number of frequencies and spectrum allocated for GSM, Extended GSM 900 (EGSM), GSM 1800 (DCS1800) and PCS1900. A single Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number (ARFCN) or RF carrier is actually a pair of frequencies, one used in each direction (transmit and receive). This allows information to be passed in both directions. For GSM900 and EGSM900 the paired frequencies are separated by 45 MHz, for DCS1800 the separation is 95 MHz and for PCS1900 separation is 80 MHz. For each cell in a GSM network at least one ARFCN must be allocated, and more may be allocated to provide greater capacity. The RF carrier in GSM can support up to eight Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) timeslots. That is, in theory, each RF carrier is capable of supporting up to eight simultaneous telephone calls, but as we will see later in this course although this is possible, network signalling and messaging may reduce the overall number  from eight timeslots per RF carrier to six or seven timeslots per RF carrier, therefore reducing the number of mobiles that can be supported. Unlike a PSTN network, where every telephone is linked to the land network by a air of fixed wires, each MS only connects to the network over the radio interface when required. Therefore, it is possible for a single RF carrier to support many more mobile stations than its eight TDMA timeslots would lead us to believe. Using statistics, it has been found that a typical RF carrier can support up to 15, 20 or even 25 MSs. Obviously, not all of these MS subscribers could make a call at the same time, but it is also unlikely that all the MS subscribers would want to make a call at the same time. Therefore, without knowing it, MSs share the same physical resources, but at different times.