Unit 4

Introduction to mobile communication and multiple access techniques

4.1 Mobile and personal communication
Wireless and mobile networks are quickly becoming the networks of choice, not only
because of large bandwidth, but due to the flexibility and freedom they offer.

PCS (personal communications service) is a wireless phone service similar

to cellular telephone service but emphasizing personal service and extended
mobility. It's sometimes referred to as digital cellular (although cellular systems
can also be digital).
Like cellular, PCS is for mobile users and requires a number of antennas to
blanket an area of coverage. As a user moves around, the user's phone signal is
picked up by the nearest antenna and then forwarded to a base station that
connects to the wired network. The phone itself is slightly smaller than a cellular
phone.

The term Personal Communication Service (enabling communication with a person at

anytime, at any place, and in any form) include
Various Wireless Access
Personal Mobility Services

The "personal" in PCS distinguishes this service from cellular by emphasizing that,
unlike cellular, which was designed for car phone use and coverage of highways and
roads, PCS is designed for greater user mobility.

It generally requires more cell transmitters for coverage, but has the advantage
of fewer blind spots.

Technically, cellular systems in the United States operate in the 824-849

megahertz (MHz) frequency bands; PCS operates in the1850-1990 MHz bands.

Several technologies are used for PCS in the United States, including Time
Division Multiple Access (TDMA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), and
Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication. GSM is more commonly used
in Europe and elsewhere.

Personal Communication Service or PCS is referred to as 2G wireless service.

The FCC has defined PCS as radio communication that encompasses mobile and fixed
communication to individuals and businesses that can be integrated with a variety of
competing networks.
PCS refers to integrated networks as the ability to connect to PSTN, WiFi and Worldwide
Interoperability for Microwave Acess (WiMax) systems. This can be anything from point
to point to full cellular access.
Some other ways to define the mobility of PCS networks;
Personal Mobility -the ability of users to access any telecom service at any terminal
based on personal identifiers, the networks ability and users profile.
Terminal Mobility the wireless subscriber units ability to access services from different
locations while in motions.
Service Mobility the use of vertical features provided by landlines, users at remote
locations or while in motion.
PCS refers to services that are user specific as opposed to location specific.
PCS is referred to as follow me services.

PCS was the first wireless network from its inception. Upon obtaining licenses
PCS carriers were allowed to choose their air interface, thus we have TDMA,
CDMA and GSM carriers.
PCS uses the same type of equipment that cellular services use with the
difference being that more PCS base stations are need to cover the same
geographic area.

4.1.1 Types of PCS services

There are two types of PCS services; Narrowband and Broadband PCS.
1. Narrowband, using the 3MHz radio spectrum was used primarily for data
transmissions. These services were paging a short message system.
2. Broadband PCS is used for multimedia transmissions such as voice,
data. Internet, SMS, image and in the future full motion video. This
obviously requires more channel capacity and is set aside on the 140
MHz radio spectrum.
More specifically, PCS refers to any of several types of wireless voice and/or wireless
data communications systems, typically incorporating digital technology, providing
services similar to advanced cellular mobile or paging services. In addition, PCS can
also be used to provide other wireless communications services, including services
which allow people to place and receive communications while away from their home or
office, as well as wireless communications to homes, office buildings and
other fixed locations. PCS is a generation of wireless-phone technology that combines a
range of features and services surpassing those available in analog- and digital-cellular

phone systems, providing a user with an all-in-one wireless phone, paging, messaging,
and data service
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4.1.3 Popular cellular systems
Two of the most popular cellular systems are
High Tier Digital Cellular Systems
Lower Tier Cordless Telecommunication Systems
These PCS systems are connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to
provide access to wireline telephones. PCS networks can serve as a general platform to
build distributed computing applications (or so called mobile computing).
Examples of Personal Communications Services (PCS)
1 High-Tier Digital Cellular Systems(mobile phone systems)
Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM)
IS-136 TDMA based Digital Advanced Mobile Phone Service (DAMPS)
Personal Digital Cellular (PDC)
IS-95 CDMA-based cdmaOnesystem
2. Low-Tier Telecommunication Systems for residential, business, and public cordless
access applications
Cordless Telephone (CT2)
Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone (DECT)
Personal Access Communications Systems (PACS)
Personal Handy System (PHS)
Wideband Wireless Systems have been developed to accommodate Internet and
multimedia
cdma2000 : evolved from cdmaOne
W-CDMA : proposed by Europe
SCDMA : proposed by China/Europe

4.1.4 PCS Architecture

The basic architecture consists of two parts. (Fig. 4.1)
Radio Network
Wireline Transport Network

fig. 4.1

4.2 Circuit Switched Data

In communications, Circuit Switched Data (CSD) is the original form of data transmission
developed for the time division multiple access (TDMA)-based mobile phone systems
like Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). After 2010 many telecommunication
carriers dropped support for CSD, and CSD has been superseded by GPRS and EDGE (EGPRS).

CSD uses a single radio time slot to deliver 9.6 kbit/s data transmission to the
GSM network switching subsystem where it could be connected through the
equivalent of a normal modem to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN),
allowing direct calls to any dial-up service. For backwards compatibility, the IS95 standard also supports CDMA Circuit Switched Data.

However, unlike TDMA, there are no time slots, and all CDMA radios can be active
all the time to deliver up to 14.4 kbit/s data transmission speeds.

Prior to CSD, data transmission over mobile phone systems was done by using a
modem, either built into the phone or attached to it. With the introduction of digital
transmission in TDMA-based systems like GSM, CSD provided almost direct access
to the underlying digital signal, allowing for higher speeds.

A CSD call functions in a very similar way to a normal voice call in a GSM network. A
single dedicated radio time slot is allocated between the phone and the base station.
A dedicated "sub-time slot" (16 kbit/s) is allocated from the base station to
the transcoder, and finally, another time slot (64 kbit/s) is allocated from the
transcoder to the Mobile Switching Centre(MSC).

At the MSC, it is possible to use a modem to convert to an "analog" signal, though

this will typically actually be encoded as a digital pulse-code modulation (PCM) signal
when sent from the MSC. It is also possible to directly use the digital signal as an
integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) data signal and feed it into the equivalent
of a remote access server.

High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD), is an enhancement to Circuit Switched

Data (CSD), the original data transmission mechanism of the GSM mobile
phone system, four to six times faster than GSM, with data rates up to 57.6 kbit/s.

Channel allocation is done in circuit-switched mode, as with CSD. This contrasts with
the more widely adopted GPRS. Higher speeds are achieved as a result of superior
coding methods, and the ability to use multiple time slots to increase data
throughput.

4.3 Packet-switched networks

Packet-switched networks are the backbone of the data communication infrastructure.

Packet-switched networks are the building blocks of computer communication systems in

which data units known as packets flow across networks.

The goal of a broadband packet-switched network is to provide flexible communication in

handling all kinds of connections for a wide range of applications, such as telephone calls,
data transfer, teleconferencing, video broadcasting, and distributed data processing. An
example for the form of traffic is multi-rate connections, whereby traffic containing several
different bit rates flows to a communication node.

The form of information in packet-switched networks is always digital bits. This kind of
communication infrastructure is a significant improvement over the traditional telephone
networks known as circuit-switched networks.

A packet-switched network is organized as a multilevel hierarchy. In such a network, digital

data are fragmented into one or more, smaller units of data, each appended with a header to
specify control information, such as the source and the destination addresses, while the
remaining portion carries the actual data, called the payload. This unit of formatted message
is called a packet.

A single packet may even be split into multiple smaller packets before transmission. This wellknown technique is called packet fragmentation.
Apart from measuring the delay and ensuring that a packet is correctly sent to its destination,
we also focus on delivering and receiving packets in a correct sequence when the data is
fragmented. The primary function of a network is directing the flow of data among the users.

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fig. 4.5

Space-division multiple access (SDMA) uses direction (angle) as another

dimension in signal space, which can be channelised and assigned to different
users.
This is generally done with directional antennas. Orthogonal channels can
only be assigned if the angular separation between users exceeds the
angular resolution of the directional antenna.
If directionality is obtained using an antenna array, precise angular resolution
requires a very large array, which may be impractical for the base station or
access point and is certainly infeasible in small user terminals.
In practice SDMA is often implemented using sectorised antenna arrays.
In these arrays the 360o angular range is divided into N sectors.
There is high directional gain in each sector and little interference between
sectors. TDMA or FDMA is used to channelise users within a sector. For mobile
users SDMA must adapt as user angles change or, if directionality is achieved via
sectorised antennas, then a user must be handed off to a new sector when it
moves out of its original sector.
(SDMA) is a multiple access format for systems with multiple antennas; it can be
combined with all of the other multiple access methods. The so-called duplexing
which separates transmission and reception at a transceiver.
The goal of all these methods is to maximize spectral efficiency i.e., to maximize the
number of users per unit bandwidth.
To design a system so that the number of users per unit bandwidth and unit
area is maximized requires multiple BSs, and the assignment of spectral resources to
them. All this leads to the cellular principle.

Space-Division Multiple Access (SDMA) is a channel access method based on

creating parallel spatial pipes next to higher capacity pipes through spatial
multiplexing and/or diversity, by which it is able to offer superior performance
in radio multiple access communication systems.
In traditional mobile cellular network systems, the base station has no information
on the position of the mobile units within the cell and radiates the signal in all
directions within the cell in order to provide radio coverage. These results in
wasting power on transmissions when there are no mobile units to reach,
in addition to causing interference for adjacent cells using the same
frequency, so called co-channel cells. Likewise, in reception, the antenna
receives signals coming from all directions including noise and interference
signals.
By using smart antenna technology and differing spatial locations of mobile
units within the cell, space-division multiple access techniques offer
attractive performance enhancements. The radiation pattern of the base station,
both in transmission and reception, is adapted to each user to obtain highest gain
in the direction of that user. This is often done using phased array techniques. In
GSM cellular networks, the base station is aware of the mobile phone's
position by use of a technique called "timing advance" (TA). The Base
Transceiver Station (BTS) can determine how distant the Mobile Station (MS) is
by interpreting the reported TA.

This information, along with other parameters, can then be used to power down
the BTS or MS, if a power control feature is implemented in the network. The
power control in either BTS or MS is implemented inmost modern networks,
especially on the MS, as this ensures a better battery life for the MS and thus a
better user experience (in that the need to charge the battery becomes less
frequent). This is why it may actually be safer to have a BTS close to you as
your MS will be powered down as much as possible.

For example, there is more power being transmitted from the MS than what you
would receive from the BTS even if you are 6 m away from a mast. However, this
estimation might not consider all the MS's that a particular BTS is supporting with EM
radiation at any given time.
4.11.3 Features
1. In a mobile cellular communication network, the SDMA leverages the spatial
location of mobile terminals, equipments and devices within that cell, thereby
enhancing the efficiency in network bandwidth utilization.
2. Unlike traditional mobile cellular network systems, where the base station is
tied up, radiating radio signals in all directions within the cell, with no knowledge
of the location of mobile devices, SDMA architecture enables the channeling
of radio signals based on the mobile devices' locations.
3. In this way, SDMA architecture not only protects the quality of radio
signals, safeguarding against interference causing noise and signal
degradation coming from adjacent cells, but also saves on redundant signal
transmission in areas where mobile devices are not currently active or
unavailable.