Introduction:

Short for Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM is a digital cellular communications system. It was developed in order to create a common European mobile telephone standard but it has been rapidly accepted worldwide. GSM is designed to provide a comprehensive range of services and features to the users not available on analogue cellular networks and in many cases very much in advance of the old public switched telephone network (PSTN). In addition to digital transmission, GSM incorporates many advanced services and features like worldwide roaming in other GSM networks.

History of GSM and cellular mobile Radio:

The idea of cell-based mobile radio systems appeared at Bell Laboratories (in USA) in the early 1970s. However, mobile cellular systems were not introduced for commercial use until the 1980s. During the early 1980s, analog cellular telephone systems experienced a very rapid growth in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, but also in France and Germany. Each country developed its own system, which was incompatible with everyone else's in equipment and operation. But in the beginnings of cellular systems, each country developed its own system, which was an undesirable situation for the following reasons: The equipment was limited to operate only within the boundaries of each country, which in a unified Europe were increasingly unimportant. The market for each mobile equipment was limited, so economies of scale, and the subsequent savings, could not be realized. In order to overcome these problems, the Conference of European Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT) formed, in 1982, the Groupe Spcial Mobile (GSM) in order to develop a pan-European mobile cellular radio system (the GSM acronym became later the acronym for Global System for Mobile communications). The standardized system had to meet certain criterias: Good subjective speech quality Support for international roaming Ability to support handheld terminals Support for range of new services and facilities Spectral efficiency Low mobile and base stations costs Compatibility with other systems such as Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) In 1989 the responsibility for the GSM specifications passed from the CEPT to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The commercial use of GSM started around mid-1991. By the beginning of 1994, there were 1.3 million subscribers worldwide. By the beginning of 1995, there were 60 countries with operational or planned GSM networks in

Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, Australia, Africa, and South America, with a total of over 5.4 million subscribers. As of the end of 1997, GSM service was available in more than 100 countries and has become the de facto standard in Europe and Asia. Presently, GSM networks are operational or planned in over 80 countries around the world.

Architecture of the GSM Network:

The GSM mobile telephony service is based on a series of contiguous radio cells which provide complete coverage of the service area and allow the subscriber operation anywhere within it. Prior to this cellular concept, radiophones were limited to just the one transmitter covering the whole service area. Cellular telephony differs from the radiophone service because instead of one large transmitter, many small ones are used to cover the same area. The basic problem is to handle the situation where a person using the phone in one cell moves out of range of that cell. In the radiophone service there was no solution and the call was lost, which is why the service area was so large. In cellular telephony, handing the call over to the next cell solves the problem. This process is totally automatic and requires no special intervention by the user, but it is a complex technical function requiring significant processing power to achieve a quick reaction. The functional architecture of a GSM system can be broadly divided into the Mobile Station, the Base Station Subsystem, and the Network Subsystem. Each subsystem is comprised of functional entities that communicate through the various interfaces using specified protocols. The subscriber carries the mobile station; the base station subsystem controls the radio link with the Mobile Station. The network subsystem, which is the main part of which is the Mobile services Switching Center, performs the switching of calls between the mobile and other fixed or mobile network users, as well as management of mobile services, such as authentication.

Fig 1: GSM Network Overview.

Mobile Station:

The Mobile Station (MS) represents the only equipment the GSM user ever sees from the whole system. It actually consists of two distinct entities. The actual hardware is the Mobile Equipment (ME), which is anonymous and consists of the physical equipment, such as the radio transceiver, display and digital signal processors. The subscriber information is stored in the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), implemented as a Smart Card. The mobile equipment is uniquely identified by the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI). The SIM card contains the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), identifying the subscriber, a secret key for authentication, and other user information. The IMEI and the IMSI are independent, thereby providing personal mobility. Thus the SIM provides personal mobility, so that the user can have access to all subscribed services irrespective of both the location of the terminal and the use of a specific terminal. By inserting the SIM card into another GSM cellular phone, the user is able to receive calls at that phone, make calls from that phone, or receive other subscribed services. The SIM card may be protected against unauthorized use by a password or personal identity number.

This can be summed-up with the basic GSM architectural equation, MS = ME + SIM.
The ME provides generic radio and processing functions to access the network through the radio interface as well as an interface to the user (microphone loudspeaker, display and keyboard) together with an interface to some other terminal equipment (fax machine, PC). The SIM contain all the subscriber-related information stored on the user's side of the radio interface.

The MS is operational only when a valid SIM is placed in a

ME.

Base Station Subsystem:

The Base Station Subsystem is composed of two parts, the Base Transceiver Station (BTS) and the Base Station Controller (BSC). The BTS houses the radio transceivers that define a cell and transmits and receives signals on the cells' allocated frequencies with the mobile station. A BSC operates with a group of BTSs and manages the radio resources for one or more of them. The BSC is the connection between the MS and the Network Subsystem. It manages the radiochannel (setup, tear down, frequency hopping, etc.) as well as handovers and the transmission power levels and frequency translations of the voice channel used over the radio link to the standard channel used by the Public Switched Telephone Network or ISDN.

Network Subsystem:

The central component of the Network Subsystem is the Mobile services Switching Center (MSC). It acts like a normal switching node of the normal telephones of the land lines and in addition provides all the functionality needed to handle a mobile subscriber, including registration, authentication, location updating and inter-MSC handovers. These services are provided in conjunction with several functional entities, which together form the Network Subsystem. The MSC provides the connection to the public fixed network (PSTN or ISDN) and is the interface between the GSM and the PSTN networks for both telephony and data. Thus the MSC is primarily responsible for: Traffic management Call set-up Call Routing to a roaming subscriber Termination Charging and accounting information

Services Provided by GSM:

Telecommunication services can be divided into Bearer Services, Teleservices, and Supplementary Services. Call diversion, caller identification, encrypted speech, fax and error protected data are a few examples of current and new services provided by the GSM. Supplementary services are provided on top of teleservices or bearer services, and include features such as caller identification, call forwarding, call waiting, multiparty conversations, and barring of outgoing (international) calls, among others.

1 Teleservices:

A Teleservice utilises the capabilities of a Bearer Service to transport data, defining which capabilities are required and how they should be set up.

The most basic Teleservice supported by GSM is telephony. There is an emergency service, where the nearest emergency service provider is notified by dialing three digits (similar to 911). The Telephony Teleservice and Emergency Teleservice cover normal speech calls. These are both the fundamental services for making ordinary telephone calls, but they are separated because of a special need for Emergency calls. When a call is made from a GSM Mobile Station, the type of service requested is indicated in the set-up message. This means that the GSM operator has the option to treat emergency calls differently by allowing mobile equipment without a SIM card to make them. The ISDN, on which GSM is based, has a great deal of potential for other information and data services. These are the videotext, teletex, and electronic mail services. The Videotex, Teletex and Advanced Message Handling Teleservices provide these for in GSM. The last of these covers the electronic mail requirements. This Advanced Message Handling Teleservice (or the Electronic Mail Teleservice) is designed to allow quite long messages. GSM has one more Teleservice that is designed for short, paging type messages. This Teleservice, called Short Message Service (SMS), is by far the most widely used and flexible. The SMS Teleservice was originally defined to utilise some spare signalling capacity in GSM. However, it soon became apparent that SMS would become a key service in differentiating GSM from any other cellular service. SMS is effectively an international paging service, overlaid on top of the GSM network, with the capability to send, as well as receive, messages. SMS is a bidirectional service for sending short alphanumeric (up to 160 bytes) messages in a store and forward fashion. For point to point SMS, a message can be sent to another subscriber to the service, and an acknowledgement of receipt is provided to the sender. SMS can also be used in a cell broadcast mode, for sending messages such as traffic updates or news updates. Messages can be stored in the SIM card for later retrieval.

2 Supplementary Services: The supplementary services basically consist of call forwarding and call barring. 2.1 Call Forwarding: The Call Forwarding Supplementary Service is used to divert calls from the original recipient to another number, and is normally set up by the subscriber himself. It can be used by the subscriber to divert calls from the Mobile Station when the subscriber is not available, and so to ensure that calls are not lost. A typical scenario would be a salesperson turns off his mobile phone during a meeting with customers, but does not with to lose potential sales leads while he is unavailable. 2.2 Call Barring:

The concept of barring certain types of calls might seem to be a supplementary disservice rather than service. However, there are times when the subscriber is not the actual user of the Mobile Station, and as a consequence may wish to limit its functionality, so as to limit the charges incurred. Alternatively, if the subscriber and user are one and the same, the Call Barring may be useful to stop calls being routed to international destinations when they are routed. The reason for this is because it is expected that the roaming subscriber will pay the charges incurred for international re-routing of calls. So, GSM devised some flexible services that enable the subscriber to conditionally bar calls.

Newer GSM Services:

The newer GSM services were not all generally available by the GSM operators at the time of writing and comprise:

1 Number Identification: Calling Line Identification Presentation: This service deals with the presentation of the calling party's telephone number. The concept is for this number to be presented, at the start of the phone ringing, so that the called person can determine who is ringing prior to answering. The person subscribing to the service receives the telephone number of the calling party.

Calling Line Identification Restriction: A person not wishing their number to be presented to others subscribes to this service. In the normal course of event, the restriction service overrides the presentation service. Connected Line Identification Presentation: This service is provided to give the calling party the telephone number of the person to whom they are connected. This may seem strange since the person making the call should know the number they dialled, but there are situations (such as forwardings) where the number connected is not the number dialled. The person subscribing to the service is the calling party. Connected Line Identification Restriction: There are times when the person called does not wish to have their number presented and so they would subscribe to this person. Normally, this overrides the presentation service. Malicious Call Identification: The malicious call identification service was provided to combat the spread of obscene or annoying calls. The victim should subscribe to this service, and then they could cause known malicious calls to be identified in the GSM network, using a simple command. This identified number could then be passed to the appropriate authority for action. The definition for this service is not stable.

2 Multi-Party: Multi-Party Service: This service is similar to a conference type service, in that several calls may be connected with all parties talking to each other. However, there are enough differences, caused by its application in the mobile environment, for it to be known by a different name.

3 Communication of Interest: Closer User Group: This service is provided on GSM to enable groups of subscribers to only call each other. In this way, intrusions can be limited only to those members who wish to talk to each other.

4 Charging: Advice of Charge: This service was designed to give the subscriber an indication of the cost of the services as they are used. Furthermore, those Service Providers who wish to offer rental services to subscribers without their own Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) can also utilize this service in a slightly different form.

5 Additional Information Transfer: User-to-User Signalling: This service allows the subscriber to send and receive information to and from the person with whom they have an active call. The amount of information is limited, but may include text (such as names and addresses), and numbers (such as telephone numbers).

6 Call Offering: Call Tranfer: The call transfer service allows the subscriber to transfer or forward a call to another party. This party can be either another GSM Mobile Station or indeed, a person on a different network. One of the difficulties with this service is the billing ramifications. If A calls B, and B asks to be transferred to C, then it is not clear who should be charged for the rest of the call (A, who initiated the call but is no longer a participant, or B, who asked for the call transfer. To charge B is technically difficult.)

Conclusion:

Thus it seems that probably the potential of GSM is not fully realized till date. The real power of its capabilities is yet to be harnessed and will influence the human life in a big way in the future. The future has a lot to see in terms of the new generation state-of-the -art cellular phones and other devices being used in common. Indeed! GSM is making the world a small place !