GSM – Architecture,Protocols and Services

Third Edition

Jörg Eberspächer

Technische Universität München, Germany

Hans-Jörg Vögel

BMW Group Research & Technology, Germany

Christian Bettstetter

University of Klagenfurt, Austria

Christian Hartmann

Technische Universität München, Germany

A John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, Publication

ayyappan9780470741726.jpg

GSM – Architecture, Protocols and ServicesThird Edition

GSM – Architecture,Protocols and Services

Third Edition

Jörg Eberspächer

Technische Universität München, Germany

Hans-Jörg Vögel

BMW Group Research & Technology, Germany

Christian Bettstetter

University of Klagenfurt, Austria

Christian Hartmann

Technische Universität München, Germany

A John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, Publication

This English language edition first published 2009c© 2009 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Originally published in the German language by B.G. Teubner GmbH as “Jörg Eberspächer/Hans-JörgVögel/Christian Bettstetter: GSM Global System for Mobile Communication. 3. Auflage(3rd edition).”c© B.G. Teubner GmbH, Stuttgart/Leipzig/Wisbaden 2001

Registered officeJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ,United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to applyfor permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance withthe Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the priorpermission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in printmay not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. Allbrand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks orregistered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product orvendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritativeinformation in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher isnot engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance isrequired, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eberspaecher, Joerg.GSM, Global System for Mobile Communication. EnglishGSM : architecture, protocols and services / Joerg Eberspaecher . . . [et al.]. – 3rd ed.

p. cm.Prev. ed.: GSM switching, services, and protocols, 2001.ISBN 978-0-470-03070-7 (cloth)

1. Global system for mobile communications. I. Eberspaecher, J. (Joerg) II. Title.TK5103.483.E2413 2008621.3845’6–dc22

2008034404

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-470-03070-7 (H/B)

Set in 10/12pt Times by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Torquay, UK.Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

www.wiley.com

Contents

Preface xi

1 Introduction 11.1 The idea of unbounded communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 The success of GSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.3 Classification of mobile communication systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.4 Some history and statistics of GSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51.5 Overview of the book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 The mobile radio channel and the cellular principle 92.1 Characteristics of the mobile radio channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.2 Separation of directions and duplex transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.2.1 Frequency Division Duplex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132.2.2 Time Division Duplex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.3 Multiple access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132.3.1 Frequency Division Multiple Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142.3.2 Time Division Multiple Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152.3.3 Code Division Multiple Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.3.4 Space Division Multiple Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.4 Cellular principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222.4.1 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232.4.2 Carrier-to-interference ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242.4.3 Formation of clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252.4.4 Traffic capacity and traffic engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262.4.5 Sectorization of cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282.4.6 Spatial filtering for interference reduction (SFIR) . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3 System architecture and addressing 433.1 System architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433.2 The SIM concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453.3 Addressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3.3.1 International mobile station equipment identity . . . . . . . . . . . . 463.3.2 International mobile subscriber identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473.3.3 Mobile subscriber ISDN number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473.3.4 Mobile station roaming number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

vi CONTENTS

3.3.5 Location area identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.3.6 Temporary mobile subscriber identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.3.7 Other identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3.4 Registers and subscriber data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503.4.1 Location registers (HLR and VLR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503.4.2 Security-related registers (AUC and EIR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513.4.3 Subscriber data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

3.5 Network interfaces and configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533.5.1 Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543.5.2 Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

4 Air interface – physical layer 574.1 Logical channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

4.1.1 Traffic channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574.1.2 Signaling channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584.1.3 Example: connection setup for incoming call . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614.1.4 Bit rates, block lengths and block distances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614.1.5 Combinations of logical channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.2 Physical channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624.2.1 Modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634.2.2 Multiple access, duplexing and bursts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654.2.3 Optional frequency hopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

4.3 Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704.3.1 Frequency and clock synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714.3.2 Adaptive frame synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

4.4 Mapping of logical onto physical channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754.4.1 26-frame multiframe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774.4.2 51-frame multiframe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

4.5 Radio subsystem link control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 804.5.1 Channel measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 814.5.2 Transmission power control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864.5.3 Disconnection due to radio channel failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 874.5.4 Cell selection and operation in power conservation mode . . . . . . . 89

4.6 Channel coding, source coding and speech processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 914.7 Source coding and speech processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 924.8 Channel coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

4.8.1 External error protection: block coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984.8.2 Internal error protection: convolutional coding . . . . . . . . . . . . 1034.8.3 Interleaving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1074.8.4 Mapping onto the burst plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1134.8.5 Improved codecs for speech services: half-rate codec, enhanced

full-rate codec and adaptive multi-rate codec . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1154.9 Power-up scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

CONTENTS vii

5 Protocols 1215.1 Protocol architecture planes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215.2 Protocol architecture of the user plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

5.2.1 Speech transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1235.2.2 Transparent data transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1265.2.3 Nontransparent data transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

5.3 Protocol architecture of the signaling plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1305.3.1 Overview of the signaling architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1305.3.2 Transport of user data in the signaling plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

5.4 Signaling at the air interface (Um) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1405.4.1 Layer 1 of the MS-BTS interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1405.4.2 Layer 2 signaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1425.4.3 Radio resource management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1465.4.4 Mobility management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1525.4.5 Connection management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1565.4.6 Structured signaling procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605.4.7 Signaling procedures for supplementary services . . . . . . . . . . . 1615.4.8 Realization of SMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

5.5 Signaling at the A and Abis interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1665.6 Security-related network functions: authentication and encryption . . . . . . 173

5.6.1 Protection of subscriber identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1735.6.2 Verification of subscriber identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1735.6.3 Generating security data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1755.6.4 Encryption of signaling and payload data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

5.7 Signaling at the user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

6 Roaming and handover 1836.1 Mobile application part interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1836.2 Location registration and location update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1846.3 Connection establishment and termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

6.3.1 Routing calls to MSs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1886.3.2 Call establishment and corresponding MAP procedures . . . . . . . . 1916.3.3 Call termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1956.3.4 MAP procedures and routing for short messages . . . . . . . . . . . 195

6.4 Handover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1976.4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1976.4.2 Intra-MSC handover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1996.4.3 Decision algorithm for handover timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1996.4.4 MAP and inter-MSC handover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

7 Services 2117.1 Classical GSM services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

7.1.1 Teleservices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2117.2 Popular GSM services: SMS and MMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

7.2.1 SMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2127.2.2 EMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

viii CONTENTS

7.2.3 MMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2137.3 Overview of GSM services in Phase 2+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2147.4 Bearer and teleservices of GSM Phase 2+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

7.4.1 Advanced speech call items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2157.4.2 New data services and higher data rates: HSCSD, GPRS and EDGE . 220

7.5 Supplementary services in GSM Phase 2+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2217.5.1 Supplementary services for speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2217.5.2 Location service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

7.6 Service platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2227.6.1 CAMEL: GSM and INs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2237.6.2 Service platforms on the terminal side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

7.7 Wireless application protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2267.7.1 Wireless markup language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2267.7.2 Protocol architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2277.7.3 System architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2307.7.4 Services and applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

8 Improved data services in GSM: GPRS, HSCSD and EDGE 2338.1 GPRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

8.1.1 System architecture of GPRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2348.1.2 Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2378.1.3 Session management, mobility management and routing . . . . . . . 2388.1.4 Protocol architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2428.1.5 Signaling plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2478.1.6 Interworking with IP networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2498.1.7 Air interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2508.1.8 Authentication and ciphering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2578.1.9 Summary of GPRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

8.2 HSCSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2608.2.1 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2618.2.2 Air interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2618.2.3 HSCSD resource allocation and capacity issues . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

8.3 EDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2648.3.1 The EDGE concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2648.3.2 EDGE physical layer, modulation and coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2658.3.3 EDGE: effects on the GSM system architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . 2668.3.4 ECSD and EGPRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2678.3.5 EDGE Classic and EDGE Compact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

9 Beyond GSM and UMTS: 4G 269

Appendices 271

A Data communication and networking 273A.1 Reference configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273A.2 Overview of data communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

CONTENTS ix

A.3 Service selection at transitions between networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277A.4 Bit rate adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277A.5 Asynchronous data services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

A.5.1 Transparent transmission in the mobile network . . . . . . . . . . . . 280A.5.2 Nontransparent data transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284A.5.3 PAD access to public packet-switched data networks . . . . . . . . . 286

A.6 Synchronous data services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288A.6.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288A.6.2 Synchronous X.25 packet data network access . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

A.7 Teleservices: fax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

B Aspects of network operation 295B.1 Objectives of GSM NM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295B.2 Telecommunication management network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297B.3 TMN realization in GSM networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

C GSM Addresses 305

D List of Acronyms 307

References 313

Index 317

PrefaceThe GSM family (GSM, GPRS, EDGE) has become one of the most successful technicalinnovations in history. As of June 2008, more than 2.9 billion subscribers were using GSM,corresponding to a market share of more than 81%, and its story continues, even now, despitethe introduction and development of next-generation systems such as IMT-2000 or UMTS(3G) and even systems beyond 3G, dubbed IMT-Advanced.

At the same time, wireless local area networks have substantially expanded the wirelessmarket, sometimes drawing market share from GPRS and 3G (e.g. in public WiFi hotspots),sometimes coexisting (e.g. in UMTS home routers used as a replacement for fixed wireconnections). However, these are used typically for low mobility applications. Mobilecommunication with all of its features and stability has become increasingly important:cellular and GSM technology, plus, of course, lately 3G, GSMs sister technology, so-to-say.

Another impressive trend has emerged since our last edition: the permanent evolutionin the handheld market, producing fancy mobile phones with cameras, large memory, MP3players, Email clients and even satellite navigation. These features enable numerous nonvoiceor multimedia applications, from which, of course, only a subset is or will be successful onthe market.

In this third edition, we concentrate again on the architecture, protocols and operationof the GSM network and outline and explain the innovations introduced in recent years.The main novelties in this book are the presentation of capacity enhancement methods suchas sectorization, the application of adaptive antennas for Spatial Filtering for InterferenceReduction (SFIR) and Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA), a detailed introductionto HSCSD and EDGE for higher data rates, and an update of the available GSM services,specifically introducing the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

We are happy to have received, over the past few years, many constructive comments,and a lot of praise and encouragement. The book has obviously been successfully used byprofessionals (especially people beginning careers in the cellular network business) but alsoby students including our own who use it as a textbook enhancing their course material.

Our author team has been enlarged with the addition of Dr. Christian Hartmann, anassistant professor at Technische Universität München, who took most of the load for thisedition.

We thank all of the involved staff from Wiley who convinced us to prepare this updatedversion of a book that will hopefully be as successful over the next few years as in the past.

Jörg EberspächerHans-Jörg Vögel

Christian BettstetterChristian Hartmann

Munich

1

Introduction

1.1 The idea of unbounded communication

Communication everywhere, with everybody, and at any time – that was the dream and goalof researchers, engineers and users, since the advent of the first wireless communication sys-tems. Today it feels like we have almost reached that goal. Digitalization of communicationsystems, enormous progress in microelectronics, computers and software technology, theinvention of efficient algorithms and procedures for compression, security and processing ofall kinds of signals, as well as the development of flexible communication protocols haveall been important prerequisites for this progress. Today, technologies are available thatenable the realization of high-performance and cost-effective communication systems formany application areas.

Using current wireless communication systems, the most popular of which is GSM(Global System for Mobile Communication), we see that we have the freedom to notonly roam within a network, but also between different networks, and that we can in factcommunicate (almost) everywhere (unless we are in one of the rare spots still without GSMcoverage today), with (almost) everybody (unless our desired communication partner is inone of the rare spots mentioned above or chooses not to be reachable), and at (almost) anytime (unless we forgot to pay our last phone bill and the operator decides to lock us out). Ifthere is one major aspect still missing in order to make our wireless experience flawless, itis the large (albeit diminishing) gap between data rates available through wireless servicesand those available through wired services, such as Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL). This andthe limited capability of data representation at the mobile terminal (mostly due to the limitedsize of mobile phones) is one of the main challenges for future developments in wirelesscommunication.

Let us now briefly take a look at the functionalities, which enable us to move and roam sofreely in GSM systems: terminal mobility and personal mobility.

In the case of terminal mobility, the subscriber is connected to the network in a wirelessway – via radio- or light-waves – and can move with their terminal freely, even during a

GSM – Architecture, Protocols and Services Third Edition J. Eberspächer, H.-J. Vögel, C. Bettstetter and C. Hartmannc© 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd