TEACHING: Subjects

 GENERAL INFORMATION

Name:

Cellular Access Networks.

Degree:

Telecommunication Engineering. 2nd Cyle. Optional.

Professor(s):

Luis Muñoz Gutiérrez.
Ramón Agüero Calvo.

Timetable:

2nd Semester.
Tuesday (16:30 - 18:30)
Thursday (16:30 - 18:30)

 OBJECTIVES

The course is articulated over two main goals:

The first is to study in depth the analysis and design of wireless networks techniques, covering aspects that embrace radio engineering, multiple access techniques either time division (TDMA) or code division (CDMA). In addition, within this first goal, an initial and basic study of the capacity that characterizes both methods, so a comparison in terms of their capacities can be established.

The second objective is to introduce the student the most relevant wireless communications systems: GSM, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), UMTS, TErrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), wireless local area networks, WLAN and the standard IEEE 802.11x.

 SYLLABUS

It presents a high level vision of the techniques used by the analogical and digital communication systems, thus providing the student with a set of the fundamental concepts that will allow him to understand the architectures that will be studied in the following lessons.

The CEPT finalized in February, 1987 the specification of a new cellular mobile radio system, digital, known as GSM. The goal of this lesson is the study of the services and interfaces, specially the radio one, defined in the GSM standard. Specifically, it discusses the logical channels, the different channel coding schemes as well as the following processes: synchronization, access, handover, localization, search, and authentication.

Due to the flexibility that the GSM design offers for the establishment of new services, as well as to the clear demand on mobile data services that appeared in the latest 80s, the system known as General Packet Radio Service GPRS appears, it was originally proposed as a first step towards the future International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT-2000). In this lesson, we discuss some of the general aspects that differentiate GPRS from GSM, both in the radio interface and in the core part of “its” network.

If the GSM system was, during the last century’s last decade, a revolution on all society levels, it was believed that the UMTS was going to play the same, or even a more relevant, role in what it is today known as information society technologies. This lesson is devoted to the most relevant characteristics of this system.

The mobile communication systems do not only cope with the public sector necessities, but there are also a large number of private entities that require infrastructures so as to promote voice and data services within the mobile environment. Within the private mobile systems, there has been an evolution from the conventional systems, in which a homogeneous group of users uses on radio channel within a particular coverage area, to those in which a number of users (not homogeneous) use a set of common radio channels. This lesson presents a brief overview of these systems, both analogical (MPT13XX) and digital (TETRA)

The systems that have been introduced in the previous lessons correspond with the ones that the traditional operators have deployed, still deploy and will deploy aiming at consolidating their traditional business sector. However, the presence of non-conventional and low cost networks, which are characterized by the use of unlicensed bands is becoming more important. In this lesson the following systems are discussed: IEEE 802.11x (including security aspects) and IEEE 802.15.x.

 EVALUATION CRITERIA

Final exam in June and extraordinary exam in September.

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Hernando Rábanos: “Comunicaciones Móviles”; Ed. Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces S.A., 1997

B. Walke: “Mobile Radio Communications”; John Wiley, 2002

M. Mouly, M.B. Pautet: “The GSM system for mobile communications”; 1992

G. Heine, H. Sagkob: “GPRS, Gateway to Third Generation Mobile Networks”: Artech House, 2003

H. Holma, A. Toskala: “WCDMA for UMTS: Radio Access for 3rd Generation Mobile Communications”; John Wiley, 2000

M. S. Gast: “802.11 wireless networks : the definitive guide”; O'Reilly, 2005

 MATERIALS