sierz017 Basics of Wireless Call Flow — Rajnee Kanth Rajnee Kanth OSS Telecom Product Engineering TELECOM Basics of Wireless Call Flow Author: rajneekanth — 16 Comments Hello Friends, ‘Today I would like to explain different basic telecom equipments and their relations in a wireless call flow. Let me start from mobile phone. A mobile phone is also known as Mobile Equipment (ME). Dr. Martin Cooper from Motorola demonstrated the first mobile phone in 1973. When we first switch on the mobile phone, ME contacts to the nearest BTS (Base Transceiver Station) through air interface or radio link. And it updates the network that this particular mobile phone is under this BTS. hhtpsirajneokanth wordpross.con2013/01/08Mbasics-of-wirless-cal-ow! 18sierz017 Basics of Wireless Call Flow — Rajnee Kanth BTS is also called as Cell tower or cell sites. Cell Sites are categorized as single El or double E1 sites. One E1 has 32 channels where 1 channel is used for signaling and 1 channel used for synchronization. Remaining 30 channels are used for traffic. ie,, 30 people can talk at a time under a single El cell site Each Cell site serves a particular range. And the range of a Cell site depends on lot of factors, including, * Height of antenna * Signal’s frequency * Terrain/Place. All the BTS/Cell sites are connected through a BSC (Base Station Controller) to the network. BSC acts as an interface between network and ME. When we dial a number and press the green button to make a call, in the background BTS requests a traffic channel from BSC. BSC handles all the radio channels in a pool kind of mechanism on air interface. Once user finishes conversation, the traffic channel will be released back to the traffic channel pool. BSC has a very import role in Handoff or Handover of a call. Lets me explain Handoff through an example. hitperaineskanth wordpross.com2013/01/08/basics-of-wirloss-cal-fow! 28svor2o17 Basics of Weelss Call Flow—Rajnee Kanth User is driving and he is on a call. So user is moving from one cell site range to another cell site range. There could be a change that user is moving from a BSC to another BSC also. ‘As we know when we are speaking one traffic channel has allocated to us from BSC to BTS and to mobile. Now when user is moving from one BTS to another BTS, a new channel will be allocated. The process of transferring the call from one traffic channel to another traffic channel is called as Handoff. Handoffs are basically two types. Soft Handoff and Hard Handoff. GSM systems use Hard Handoff and CDMA systems use Soft Handoff. In Hard Handoff, an existing traffic channel will be dropped before a new channel is allocated. But this happens in few milliseconds (approx 60 ms) where user cannot identify the call drop. In Soft Handoff, before the existing channel dropped, a new channel will be allocated and traffic will be routed through the new channel. This gives a seamless connectivity and a mobile phone can be simultaneously connected to several base stations at a time. In the Handoff time, the call is in progress is transferred not only from one base station to another base station but also from its current frequency to another frequency. From BSC the call now reaches to MSC. MSC is known as Mobile Switching Center or Main Switching Center. In Wireline domain MSC is called as Telephone Exchange. MSC is the heart of the telecom network. As the name explains it switches different calls. MSC maintains a routing table where it has it has source and destination targets. Based on the destination number, MSC connects to the destination trunk groups (TG). In simple words, bunch of traffic channels at MSC level called as trunk groups. For example, if user dials a local land line number, it connects to a local TG. If user dials a STD different operator number, it connects to that particular TG. Between two MSCs either same operator or different operator, there should be a physical connection. This connection is called as POI (Point of Interconnectivity).. Ina network, MSC will carry different functions depending upon its position. GMSC (Gateway MSC) acts as a interface between PSTN (Public Switching Telephone Network) and BSC. If multiple MSCs need to connect to a PSTN, all the MSCs will be connected to a Tandem MSC and Tandem MSC alone will be connected to PSTN. This is to create simple network architecture. All forms of communication, whether between two cell phones or between a cell phone a land phone, travel through the MSC. In Handoffs, MSC also comes into picture. If the Handoff is between inter-BSC level or intra hitperaineskanth wordpross.com2013/01/08/basics-of-wirloss-cal-fow! a8svor2o17 Basics of Weelss Call Flow—Rajnee Kanth MSC level. When user is on a call and driving and when user reaches the edge of BTS coverage, BSC requests MSC for Handoff. MSC scans the list of adjacent cells and their corresponding BTS details and facilitates the handoff. ‘As mobile phones move, MSC should know the phone's location to facilitate communication. So MSC maintains a large database for the mobile phones information. This is called as HLR (Home Location Registry). Usually there will be one HLR for one operator. Accessing one HLR by multiple MSC takes time. So each MSC maintains a small subset of HLR type database. This is called as VLR (Visitor Location Registry). As the name says, it stores the entire home + roaming customers’ location details. HLR is a huge database which contains user's information such as account info, account status, user preferences, location, IMSI and MSISDN details. The IMSI uniquely identifies each Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and serves as the primary key for each HLR record. Each time the mobile moves to a new area, HLR gets updated with the location change. If user sends a sms and if the destination MSC responds that the receipt’s phone is not available, a message waiting flag is set in the HLR. Whenever/wherever the mobile phone connects back to the network, HLR delivers that message. As we discussed earlier, VLR is a subset of HLR. VLR is a small database which resides inside the MSC. VLR stores home users + roaming users information. Under that particular MSC, who all the users are present, those customers information will be stored in that VLR. If a customer moves out from MSC1 to MSC2, that customer's data will be deleted from VLR1 and hhtpsirajneokanth wordpross.con2013/01/08Mbasics-of-wirless-cal-ow!svor2o17 Basics of Weelss Call Flow—Rajnee Kanth adds in VLR2. ‘As we got a glance of different telecom equipments in a call flow, lets discuss different call flows. Mobile to Mobile under same BTS and BSC: MEI > BTS1 > BSC -> MSC > BSC > BTS1 > ME2 Mobile to Mobile under different BT'S and BSC: MEI -> BTS1 -> BSC1 > MSC > BSC2 -> BTS2 -> ME2 Mobile to Mobile between two different operators: MEI > BTS1 > BSC] -> MSC1 MSC2 -> BSC2 -> BTS2 > ME2 Thank you. LIVE Boe BREAKING NEWS Ur ll Ex a LIVE Boe BREAKING NEWS amazen Published by rajneekanth hhtpsirajneokanth wordpross.con2013/01/08Mbasics-of-wirless-cal-ow!sierz017 Basics of Wireless Call Flow — Rajnee Kanth View all posts by rajneekanth 16 thoughts on “Basics of Wireless Call Flow” Add Comment 1. Rajib Kundu SQL DBAa says: January 9, 2013 at 4:48 pm Good to see that and nice doc. Reply 1. rajneekanth says: January 8, 2014 at 12:54 pm Thank you bhai, credit goes to you for inspiring me to write blogs Reply 1. mukesh garg says: February 3, 2016 at 6:33 pm great blog.may be it will help me for tommrow’s interview 2. Ramalingam says: October 24, 2013 at 2:50 pm Superb Reply 3. Durgadatta says: January 7, 2014 at 7:02 am Very good representation with simple example .. really so good and easy to understand Thank You Reply 1. rajneekanth says: January 8, 2014 at 12:54 pm thanks for your reply Reply 4, muhammad junaid asif says: August 22, 2014 at 6:47 am extra ordinary explanation . .. thumbs up Reply 5. Madan says: September 16, 2014 at 10:54 am Nice writeup of beginners. Keep it up. Reply 1. rajneekanth says: hitperaineskanth wordpross.com2013/01/08/basics-of-wirloss-cal-fow!svor2o17 Basie of Wireless Cal Flow ~ Rajnee Kanth September 16, 2014 at 5:23 pm Thanks for your comments @ Reply 6. Gyan says: February 11, 2015 at 1:42 pm Great Work Rajneekanth, really informative and easy to understand Reply 1. rajneekanth says: February 12, 2015 at 3:31 pm Thanks for your comments. Reply 7. kaushal Kumar says: March 9, 2015 at 12:21 pm. Very easy way to explain & easy to understand Thanks Reply 8. Thaya says: May 22, 2015 at 4:16 am Nice and easily explained. Thank you Reply 9. Mohammed Khan says: July 8, 2015 at 4:06 pm Very good and simple explanation Rajnee. Keep it up. Learnt a bit of something new today. Reply 10. Sakhawat Hossain says: May 28, 2016 at 8:52 am Very much informative documentary!!! Thanks for sharing your ideas. Reply 11. Senthilvelavan says: November 8, 2016 at 2:42 pm Super explanations. Everybody can understand. 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