Question 1

a) Briefly describe the purpose of traffic channel and control channel in Global System
for Mobile Communication (GSM).

 Traffic channel – are intended to carry encoded speech or user data.

 Control channels – the control channels are intended to carry signalling and
Synchronization data between the base station and the Mobile station. Logical are
used by the system and the MS for different purposes.

b) Figure 1 shows GSM architecture. The network mainly consists of mobile Station
(MS), Base Station Subsystem (BSS) and network Subsystem (NSS). Briefly describe
the function of component mark as “A”, “B”, “C” in Figure 1.

A – Base Tranceiver Station(BTS)

 Each BTS defines a single cell and includes radio antenna, radio
transceiver and a link to a base station controller (BSC).
B – Base Station Controler(BSC)
 BSC reserves radio frequencies, manages handoff of mobile units from
one cell to another within BSS, and controls paging.
C – Mobile-service Switching Controller(MSC)
 provides links between cellular networks and public switched
telecommunications networks.
Question 2
a) Distinguish between Coverage Oriented and Capacity Oriented based on cell
sizes, application types and the number of Access Point use.

Coverage oriented Capacity oriented

Cell sizes
Application types
Number of access point
Provides WLAN Capacity-oriented cell
coverage with roughly sizes are smaller than
25-30 users per AP. coverage-oriented cells,
requiring a higher AP
density.
Low packet rate High packet rate
applications types applications types
Uses 14 Aps to provide 30 APs
complete coverage.

b) Data frame in IEEE802.11 are sent using the distributed Coordination Function
(DCF), which composed of the following two main component
i) Interframe space and
ii) Random backoff (contention window)

Briefly describe the purpose of these two components:

Interframe space

 Interframe spaces (IFS) are waiting periods between transmission of

frames operating in the medium access control (MAC) sublayer where
carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) is
used.

 These are techniques used to prevent collisions as defined in IEEE 802.11-

based WLAN standard (Wi-Fi).

 IFS is the time period between completion of the transmission of the last
frame and starting transmission of the next frame apart from the variable
back-off period.
 Random backoff (contention window)

 Backoff is a scheme commonly used to resolve contention problems among

different stations wishing to transmit data at the same time.
 When a station goes into the backoff state, it waits an additional, randomly
selected number of time slots (in 802.11b a slot has a 20 μs duration and the
random number must be greater than 0 and smaller than a maximum value
referred to as the contention window (CW)).
 The contention window (CW) variable determines the number of back-off
periods that the channel must be available before starting to transmit. For
example, if CW is equal to 2, the device starts transmitting only after two
consecutive back-offs resulted in an available (idle) channel. 
a) The purpose of the multiplexing technique is to allow the signal to be transmitted more
effectively over a given channel so it can decrease the transmission costs. Besides, it can
reduce the number of electrical connections for the transmission of some signals.

b) The drawback happened because 1st generation cellular network use analog transmission
to transmit data while the technique in Figure 3 are suitable for digital transmission. This
technique is used in 2nd generation.

c) Multiplexing technique used in GSM is TDMA. TDMA allow user to transmit data only
within specific time slot. This technique can overcome channel allocation issue by assign
time slot to each channel. This way the transmission of data will flow according to the time
slot given.