Cellular network basics

The network forms the heart of any cellular telephone system. The cellular network fulfils many requirements. Not only does the cellular network enable calls to be routed to and from the mobile phones as well as enabling calls to be maintained as the cell phone moves from one cell to another, but it also enables other essential operations such as access to the network, billing, security and much more. To fulfill all these requirements the cellular network comprises many elements, each having its own function to complete. The most obvious part of the cellular network is the base station. The antennas and the associated equipment often located in a container below are seen dotted around the country, and especially at the side of highways and motorways. However there is more to the network behind this, as the system needs to have elements of central control and it also needs to link in with the PSTN landline system to enable calls to be made to and from the wire based phones, or between networks. Different cellular standards often take slightly different approaches for the cellular network required. Despite the differences between the different cellular systems, the basic concepts are very similar. Additionally cellular systems such as GSM have a well defined structure, and this means that manufacturers products can be standardized.

Basic cellular network structure

An overall 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). Of the units within the cellular network, the BTS provides the direct communication with the mobile phones. There may be a small number of base stations then linked to a base station controller. This unit acts as a small centre to route calls to the required base station, and it also makes some decisions about which of the base station is best suited to a particular call. The links between the BTS and the BSC may use either land lines of even microwave links. Often the BTS antenna towers also support a small microwave dish antenna used for the link to the BSC. The BSC is often co-located with a BTS. The BSC interfaces with the mobile switching centre. This makes more widespread choices about the routing of calls and interfaces to the land line based PSTN as well as the HLR and VLR.

Base transceiver station, BTS

The base transceiver station or system, BTS consists of a number of different elements. The first is the electronics section normally located in a container at the base of the antenna tower. This contains the electronics for communicating with the mobile handsets and includes radio frequency amplifiers, radio transceivers, radio frequency combiners, control, communication links to the BSC, and power supplies with back up. The second part of the BTS is the antenna and the feeder to connect the antenna to the base transceiver station itself. These antennas are visible on top of masts and tall buildings enabling them to cover the required area. Finally there is the interface between the base station and its controller further up the network. This consists of control logic and software as well as the cable link to the controller. BTSs are set up in a variety of places. In towns and cities the characteristic antennas are often seen on the top of buildings, whereas in the country separate masts are used. It is important that the location, height, and orientation are all correct to ensure the required coverage is achieved. If the antenna is too low or in a poor location, there will be insufficient coverage and there will be a coverage "hole". Conversely if the antenna is too high and directed incorrectly, then the signal will be heard well beyond the boundaries of the cell. This may result in interference with another cell using the same frequencies. The antennas systems used with base stations often have two sets of receive antennas. These provide what is often termed diversity reception, enabling the best signal to be chosen to minimize the effects of multipath propagation. The receiver antennas are connected to low loss cable that routes the signals down to a multicoupler in the base station container. Here a multicoupler splits the signals out to feed the various receivers required for all the RF channels. Similarly the transmitted signal from the combiner is routed up to the transmitting antenna using low loss cable to ensure the optimum transmitted signal.

Mobile switching centre (MSC)

The MSC is the control centre for the cellular system, coordinating the actions of the BSCs, providing overall control, and acting as the switch and connection into the public telephone network. As such it has a variety of communication links into it which will include fibre optic links as well as some microwave links and some copper wire cables. These enable it to communicate with the BSCs, routing calls to them and controlling them as required. It also contains the Home and Visitor Location Registers, the databases detailing the last known locations of the mobiles. It also contains the facilities for the Authentication Centre, allowing mobiles onto the network. In addition to this it will also contain the facilities to generate the billing information for the individual accounts.

In view of the importance of the MSC, it contains many backup and duplicate circuits to ensure that it does not fail. Obviously backup power systems are an essential element of this to guard against the possibility of a major power failure, because if the MSC became inoperative then the whole network would collapse. While the cellular network is not seen by the outside world and its operation is a mystery to many, the cellular network is at the very centre of the overall cellular system and the success of the whole end to end system is dependent largely on its performance. On any cellular telecommunications system the way in which registration and call set-up occur needs to be carefully managed. Not only does the cellular telecommunications network need to provide quick and efficient service for its rightful customers, but it also needs to be able to offer high levels of security for the user and the network. There are many different cellular telecommunications systems in use around the globe. Older ones are being phased out, and newer cellular systems are being introduced. Accordingly there is no single way in which registration and call set up are managed. However there are some general principles that are used, and these are illustrated here.

Basic requirements
When the mobile phone is turned on it needs to be able to communicate with the cellular telecommunications network. However the phone does not have an allocated channel, time slot or chip code (dependent upon the type of access method used). It is therefore necessary for there to be some methods or allocated means within the cellular telecommunications network, whereby a newly switched on mobile can communicate with the network and set up the standard communication. Even if a call is not to be made instantly, the network needs to be able to communicate with the mobile to know where it is. In this way the network can route any calls through the relevant base station as the network would be soon overloaded if the notification of an incoming call had to be sent via several base stations.

Cellular registration
There are a variety of tasks that need to be undertaken when a phone is turned on. This can be seen by the fact that it takes a few seconds from switching the phone on before it is ready for use. Part of this process is the software start-up for the phone, but the majority comes from the registration process with the cellular network. There are several aspects to the registration. The first is to make contact with the base station, and next the mobile has to register to allow it to have access to and use the network. In order to make contact with the base station the mobile uses a paging or control channel. The name of this channel, and the exact way in which it works will vary from one cellular standard to the next, but it is a channel that is used that the mobile can access to indicate its presence. The message sent is often called the "attach" message. Once this has been achieved it is necessary for the mobile to register with the cellular network, and to be accepted onto it.

Network elements
It is necessary to have a register or database of users allowed to register with a given network. With mobiles often being able to access the all the channels available in a country, methods of ensuring the mobile registers with the correct network, and to ensure the account is valid are required. Additionally it is required for billing purposes. To achieve this, an entity on the network often known as the Authentication Centre (AuC) is used. The network and the mobile communicate and numbers giving the identity of the subscriber. Here the user information is checked to provide authentication and encryption parameters that verify the user's identity and ensure the confidentiality of each call protecting users and network operators from fraud. Once accepted onto the network two further registers are normally required. These are the Home Location Register (HLR) and the Visitors Location Register (VLR). These two registers are required to keep track of the mobile so that the network knows where it is at any time so that calls can be routed to the correct base station or general area of the network. These registers are used to store the last known location of the mobile. Thus at registration the register is updated and then periodically the mobile updates its position. Even when the mobile is in what is termed its idle mode it will periodically communicate with the network to update its position and status. When the mobile is switched off it sends a detach message. This informs the network that it is switching off, and enables the network to update the last known position for the mobile.

Cellular roaming
The two registers are required, one for mobiles for which the network is the home network, i.e. the one with whom the contract exists, and the other for visitors. If there was only one register then every time the mobile sent any message to the foreign network, this would need to be relayed back to the home network and this would require international signaling. The approach which is adopted

is to send a message back to the HLR when the mobile first enters the new country saying that the mobile is in a different network and that any calls for that mobile should be forwarded to the foreign visited network. By undergoing a registration procedure when the mobile is turned on, the cellular network is able to communicate correctly with it, provide access for outgoing calls, and also route any incoming calls to it in the most efficient manner. Registration also only allows those mobiles that have permission to access the network to communicate with it. The concept of a cellular phone system is that it has large number base stations covering a small area (cells), and as a result frequencies are able to be re-used. Cell phone systems also provide mobility. As a result it is a very basic requirement of the system that as the mobile handset moves out of one cell to the next, it must be possible to hand the call over from the base station of the first cell, to that of the next with no discernable disruption to the call. There are two terms for this process: cellular handover is used within Europe, whereas cellular handoff is the term used in North America. The handover or handoff process is of major importance within any cellular telecommunications network. It is necessary to ensure it can be performed reliably and without disruption to any calls. Failure for it to perform reliably can result in dropped calls, and this is one of the key factors that can lead to customer dissatisfaction, which in turn may lead to them changing to another cellular network provider. Accordingly handover or handoff is one of the key performance indicators monitored so that a robust cellular handover / handoff regime is maintained on the cellular network.

Handover basics
Although the concept of cellular handover or cellular handoff is relatively straightforward, it is not an easy process to implement in reality. The cellular network needs to decide when handover or handoff is necessary, and to which cell. Also when the handover occurs it is necessary to re-route the call to the relevant base station along with changing the communication between the mobile and the base station to a new channel. All of this needs to be undertaken without any noticeable interruption to the call. The process is quite complicated, and in early systems calls were often lost if the process did not work correctly. Different cellular standards handle hand over / handoff in slightly different ways. Therefore for the sake of an explanation the example of the way that GSM handles handover is given. There are a number of parameters that need to be known to determine whether a handover is required. The signal strength of the base station with which communication is being made, along with the signal strengths of the surrounding stations. Additionally the availability of channels also needs to be known. The mobile is obviously best suited to monitor the strength of the base stations, but only the cellular network knows the status of channel availability and the network makes the decision about when the handover is to take place and to which channel of which cell. Accordingly the mobile continually monitors the signal strengths of the base stations it can hear, including the one it is currently using, and it feeds this information back. When the strength of the signal from the base station that the mobile is using starts to fall to a level where action needs to be taken the cellular network looks at the reported strength of the signals from other cells reported by the mobile. It then checks for channel availability, and if one is available it informs this new cell to reserve a channel for the incoming mobile. When ready, the current base station passes the information for the new channel to the mobile, which then makes the change. Once there the mobile sends a message on the new channel to inform the network it has arrived. If this message is successfully sent and received then the network shuts down communication with the mobile on the old channel, freeing it up for other users, and all communication takes place on the new channel. Under some circumstances such as when one base transceiver station is nearing its capacity, the network may decide to hand some mobiles over to another base transceiver station they are receiving that has more capacity, and in this way reduce the load on the base transceiver station that is nearly running to capacity. In this way access can be opened to the maximum number of users. In fact channel usage and capacity are very important factors in the design of a cellular network.

Types of handover / handoff

With the advent of CDMA systems where the same channels can be used by several mobiles, and where it is possible to adjacent cells or cell sectors to use the same frequency channel there are a number of different types of handover that can be performed:

Hard handover (hard handoff) Soft handover (soft handoff) Softer handover (softer handoff)

Although all of these forms of handover or handoff enable the cellular phone to be connected to a different cell or different cell sector, they are performed in slightly different ways and are available under different conditions.

Hard handover
The definition of a hard handover or handoff is one where an existing connection must be broken before the new one is established. One example of hard handover is when frequencies are changed. As the mobile will normally only be able to transmit on one frequency at a time, the connection must be broken before it can move to the new channel where the connection is re-established. This is often termed and inter-frequency hard handover. While this is the most common form of hard handoff, it is not the only one. It is also possible to have intra-frequency hard handovers where the frequency channel remains the same. Although there is generally a short break in transmission, this is normally short enough not to be noticed by the user.

Soft handover
The new 3G technologies use CDMA where it is possible to have neighboring cells on the same frequency and this opens the possibility of having a form of handover or handoff where it is not necessary to break the connection. This is called soft handover or soft handoff, and it is defined as a handover where a new connection is established before the old one is released. In UMTS most of the handovers that are performed are intra-frequency soft handovers.

Softer handover
The third type of hand over is termed a softer handover, or handoff. In this instance a new signal is either added to or deleted from the active set of signals. It may also occur when a signal is replaced by a stronger signal from a different sector under the same base station. This type of handover or handoff is available within UMTS as well as CDMA2000. Cellular handover or cellular handoff are performed by all cellular telecommunications networks, and they are a core element of the whole concept of cellular telecommunications. There are a number of requirements for the process. The first is that it occurs reliably and if it does not, users soon become dissatisfied and choose another network provider in a process known as "churn". However it needs to be accomplished in the most efficient manner. Although softer handoff is the most reliable, it also uses more network capacity. The reason for this is that it is communicating with more than one sector or base station at any given instance. Soft handover is also less efficient than hard handover, but again more reliable as the connection is never lost. It is therefore necessary for the cellular telecommunications network provider to arrange the network to operate in the most efficient manner, while still providing the most reliable service.