Extension School Harvard University
Multiple Access and Modulation in GSM
By Qiang Wu
ENSC E – 129 Spring, 2004
Instructor: R. Victor Jones
Robert L. Wallace Research
Professor of Applied Physics
Harvard University
This term project paper focuses on the two topics in GSM system: TDMA/FDMA
structure and GMSK modulation. The goal is to understand and appreciate the concept of
modern techniques of GSM system by doing extra research and study in the GSM field in
addition to class materials.
Content
1. History of GSM
2. Multiple Access in GSM
2.1 FDMA & TDMA
2.2 GSM Multiple Access Scheme
2.3 GSM Channels
3. Modulations (GMSK) in GSM
3.1 Shift Keying
3.2 From QPSK to MSK
3.3 GMSK
4. Stage 2 and Beyond
5. Bibliography
1. History of GSM
In 1982, the group was formed to build a European public cellular system in 900 MHz
range, taking advantage of spectrum that had been previously allocated. This was the
beginning of GSM system. The initial goal was to create a digital cellular system in
which international roaming was seamless with a variety of enhanced services. GSM only
supports the digital network.
Commercial operation of GSM networks started in 1991 in European countries. By the
mid-90’s, there were 60 countries with operational GSM networks in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and South America with a total of over 5.4 millions subscribers. By 2003, GSM is
the world’s most popular cellular system. Almost every country in the world has a GSM
system operating.
One of the reasons GSM is the leader in cellular communications is that the entire GSM
system is standardized. Therefore most of the US standards borrowed much of those from
GSM.
There are several varieties of GSM in use throughout the world. The primary difference
is the frequency band being used. In America, GSM is used in the PCS band and is often
referred to as PCS-1900. GSM in Europe uses the all-digital 900-MHz band.
The most unique features about GSM system are the combination of FDMA and TDMA
by special modulation called Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying. We dis cuss these two
GSM features in the following two sections.
2. Multiple Access in GSM
2.1 FDMA & TDMA
FDMA divides the frequency spectrum into small slices, which are assigned to the
subscribers. Since the radio spectrum is limited and subscribers do not free their assigned
frequency until they are completely finished with it, the number of subscribers in the
system can be quickly limited. As the number of subscribers increases, the required
frequency spectrum also increases. Figure 2.1 shows the typical framework of FDMA.
Figure 2.1 Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA)
TDMA allows many users to share a common frequency (channel). The basic unit of time
is called a burst. Each subscriber is assigned its own burst within a collection of bursts
called a frame. Figure 2.2 shows the typical model of TDMA.
Figure 2.2 Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
2.2 GSM Multiple Access Scheme
GSM uses TDMA within a FDMA structure. As a result, different subscribers can
transmit using the same frequency, but they can’t transmit at the same time. A 25 MHz
frequency band is divided using an FDMA scheme into 124 one-way carrier frequencies.
Each base station is assigned one or more carriers to use in its cell. A 200 KHz frequency
band separates the carrier frequency from each other. Normally, a 25 MHz band should
be divisible into 125 carrier frequencies but in GSM the 1st carrier frequency is used as a
guard band between GSM and other services that might be working on lower frequencies.
One or more carrier frequencies are assigned to individual base stations, and each carrier
is divided into eight time slots using TDMA. Groups of eight consecutive time slots form
Figure 2.3 GSM System Architecture
TDMA frames, with a duration of 4.615 ms.
A transmission channel occupies one time slot position within a TDMA frame. TDMA
frames of a particular carrier frequency are numbered, and both the mobile station and the
base station are synchronized on this number. Larger frames are formed from groups of
26 and 51 TDMA frames (there are also larger groups), and position within such frames
defines the type and function of a channel.
2.3 GSM Channels
The base station transmit two types of channels to the mobiles: traffic channels and
control channels.
Speech in GSM is digitally coded at a rate of 13 kbps. This 13 kbps digital stream (260
bits every 20 ms) has forward error correction added by a convolutional encoder. The
gross bit rate after channel coding is 22.8 kbps (or 456 bits every 20 ms). These 456 bits
are then divided into eight 57-bit blocks, and the result is interleaved amongst eight
successive time slot bursts for protection against bursty transmission errors.
Each time slot burst is 156.25 bits and contains two 57-bit blocks, and a 26-bit training
sequence used for equalization. A burst is transmitted in 0.577 ms for a total bit rate of
270.8 kbps, and is modulated using Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) onto the
200 kHz carrier frequency. The 26-bit training sequence is of a known pattern that is
compared with the received pattern in the hope of being able to reconstruct the rest of the
original signal. Forward error control and equalization contribute to the robustness of
GSM radio signals against interference and multipath fading.
Figure 2.4: GSM Frequency Bands
The radio spectrum in the bands 890-915 MHz for the reverse band (mobile station to
base station) and 935-960 MHz for the forward band (See figure 2.4) has been reserved in
Europe for mobile networks. At least 10 MHz in each band was reserved explicitly for
GSM. This 2x25 MHz spectrum is divided into 200 kHz carrier frequencies using FDMA
as seen in Figure 2.3.
3. Modulation in GSM
3.1 Shift Keying
There are three components of an RF carrier that can be changed during the modulation:
the amplitude, the frequency, or the phase, maybe a combination of frequency and phase.
The easiest system is frequency modulation, which consists of many forms. In essence
FM involves making a change to the frequency of the carrier to represent a different
level. The corresponding method is called Frequency Shift Keying (FSK). The significant
disadvantage is the poor spectral efficiency. Since spectral efficiency is our major
concerns, we only deal with the phase modulation in this paper because it is the system
best suited for cellular and PCS systems.
Phase can be represented in the following form of a circular diagram known as a
constellation diagram.
00
10 00
11 01
Figure 3.1 Constellation diagram for QPSK
The phase of the signal can be represented by the angle around the circle, while
amplitude can be represented as the magnitude away from the center. During the
modulation, only the phase changes and amplitude stays constant. Our goal is to find the
smoothest digital modulation scheme by trying different phase modulations. We start
with the QPSK.
3.2 From QPSK to MSK
We use following sequence of square signals as input data to illustrate how QPSK
(Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) modulation works. Later on we use same example but
apply different modulation scheme.
Figure 3.2 A sequence of square signal
Suppose we have a sequence of square data shown as above figure. First we split the
input signals into in-phase and quadrature data streams (odd and even bits) as following
figures shown.
Figure 3.3 Splitting signals into odd and even bits
By modulating them onto the cos and sin functions of a carrier wave such that two carrier
waves are orthogonal to each other (preventing them interfering each other during the
transmission), we have a QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) waveform as follows:
Figure 3.4 QPSK
Above signals can be achieved by amplitude modulating two square data streams (odd
and even in this case) by following mathematical reduction.
s(t ) = cos p/4 × cos (2pft + p/4) + sin p/4 × sin (2pft + p/4)
s(t) = A × cos (2pft + p/4 + ?(t) )
The term p/4 + ?(t) is the phase. Since we use the constant p/4 as a orthogonal factor for
two corresponding carriers, the actual phase is ?(t). The only four values of ?(t) are 0,
p/2, - p/2 and p, representing fo ur possible combinations of odd and even squares wave.
The above figure shows that there are two bits per type (4 types of wave shapes). The
carrier phase can change only once every 2T times. If neither bit streams change sign
from one T interval to the next, the carrier phase remains unchanged. Otherwise it
changes accordingly. The four types of wave shapes corresponds to the figure 3.1:
Constellation diagram for QPSK.
Our goal is to smooth the modulation process as much as possible. Obviously QPSK is
not the optimized modulation for cellular communications. We can make it only two
types of phases during the modulation by offsetting odd and even sequences a half bit
interval.
The phase changes never exceed p. This will smooth modulation process by minimizing
the fluctuations of amplitude. Figure 3.5 shows there are only two types of phase change
during the Offsetting QPSK modulation.
Figure 3.5 Offsetting QPSK by half bit interval
We can go a step further to build a MSK (Minimum Shift Keying) modulation derived
from Offsetting QPSK shown above. Instead of rectangular pulse wave, we use half-cycle
sinusoidal pulse. The MSK modulation can be expressed as following figures.
Figure 3.6 Replacing rectangular pulse with half-cycle sinusoidal pulse for even sequences
Figure 3.7 Replacing rectangular pulse with half-cycle sinusoidal pulse for odd sequences
The summation of above two orthogonal waveforms we can get following
Figure 3.8 MSK Modulation
We have improved the phase modulation by minimizing amplitude fluctuations (number
of types of phase). MSK proves to be best result so far. The disadvantage of MSK is that
its power spectrum density doesn’t fall fast enough to completely reduce interference
between adjacent signals. If we can replace the rectangular pulse signals with a sinusoidal
pulse signals, could we use other shapes of pulse as well. The answer is the Gaussian-
shaped pulse signals. A Gaussian filter generates a narrower pulse signals.
3.3 GSMK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying)
The original binary signal is passed through a Gaussian low-pass filter before it is
modulated with MSK.
The beginning sequences of data as following figure shown go through Gaussian filter.
Figure 3.9 A sequence data 1,1,-1,1,1,-1,-1,1,-1 …
After being integrated properly, the following signal wave is ready for further MSK
modulation.
Figure 3.10 Signals after Gaussian Filter
Once we get above signal (function), we can apply MSK scheme to get I(t) and Q(t)
(corresponding to modulating the In-phase and Quadrature data as we did to odd and
even sequences).
Figure 3.11 cos function (even)
Figure 3.11 sin function (odd)
The GMSK signal m(t) = sin (2pfct) I (t) + cos (2pfct) Q(t)
Figure 3.12 GMSK modulation
Compared with MSK modulation as following figure shown. the problem with
MSK is that the spectrum is not compact enough to realize data rates approaching the RF
channel bandwidth. The following figure reveals side lobe extending well above the data
rate.
When we get more compact spectrum we also make demodulation more difficult. Hence,
spectral compactness is the primary trade-off in going from MSK to GMSK.
We can also consider GMSK as a combination of frequency or phase modulation. The
phase of the carrier is advanced or delayed by p/2 over the course of a bit period
depending on the data pattern, although the rate of change of phase is limited with a
Gaussian response. This helps to improve the bandwidth efficiency
4. Stage 2 and beyond
GSM has become closer to being the world standard for wireless communications than
any other system. With networks in virtually all geographic regions of the world, and
substantial growth continuing, the GSM standard still continues to evolve with the
development of high-speed data applications. GSM is used extensively in 900-MHz,
1,800-MHz, and 1,900-MHz bands, and now in the 800-MHz band as well. As the
technology matures even further, and the cost for the technology drops even lower, GSM
will certainly still continue to grow.
What next? GSM is currently at its second stage, which will include new items like high
speed packet data services. This high speed data application is the trend which drives the
growth of wireless formats. The newer emerging data formats (HSCSD and GPRS) will
be the driven force in the GSM next generation system (3G).
Bibliography
Book
Andrew Miceli WIRELESS TECHNICIAN’S HANDBOOK, 2nd Edition,
Mobile communication series, 2003, Chapter 1 & 9
B. P. Lathi Modern Digital Communication Systems, 3rd Edition
Oxford University Press, 1998, Chapter 9
Lecture Notes
Prof. R. Victor Jones ENSC E – 129 Lecture 4 Note, Lecture 6, Note Lecture 7 Note.
Online Sources
GSM 900, [Link]/~nazizi/gsm/
Fred Kostedt, [Link], INC GMSK [Link]
Geoff Smithson, Plextek Ltd Intro to Digital Modulation Schemes
[Link]/papers/[Link]
Digital Modulation and GMSK [Link]/reports/linkpcp/[Link]
