M900/M1800 Base Station Subsystem Feature Description Manual

Contents

Contents
12 Cell Broadcast .........................................................................................................................12-1
12.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................12-2 12.2 Cell Broadcast Functions ..........................................................................................................................12-2 12.3 Cell Broadcast Features.............................................................................................................................12-3

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Figures

Figures
Figure 12-1 Cell broadcast system architecture................................................................................................12-2

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12 Cell Broadcast

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About This Chapter
The following table lists the contents of this chapter. Title 12.1 Overview 12.2 Cell Broadcast Functions 12.3 Cell Broadcast Features Description

Cell Broadcast

Introduces the necessity and functions of the cell broadcast technology. Describes the cell broadcast technology. Describes the cell broadcast features including the MS DRX and BTS flow control.

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12.1 Overview
Cell broadcast is a specific service of the GSM system, broadcast information to all mobile stations in a specific area periodically. The MS supporting this service can monitor this broadcast information continuously and this information can be displayed on the MS terminals. The typical examples of cell broadcast are to broadcast traffic information and weather forecast. Short Message Service Cell Broadcast (SMSCB) allows short message to be broadcast to all mobile stations in certain areas. These areas may be one or several cells, even the entire PLMN area. The short message from Cell Broadcast Centre (CBC) is sent to BSC, and BSC will manage and dispatch the message, and send the received message to BTS, which can control the flow of short message broadcast. The architecture of cell broadcast system is as shown in Figure 12-1.

Figure 12-1 Cell broadcast system architecture

OMC WAN Remote connection LAN connection LAN CDB GMEM GMEM BTS BTS BSC BTS CBC

...

CBC CDB

GMEM GMEM

...

BSC

12.2 Cell Broadcast Functions

Receiving and storing of short messages
CDB receives and stores the short message from CBC. There are three kinds of commands to broadcast short messages sent from the CBC: send a new broadcast short message, delete an outdated message or a message that meet specified requirements, and replace an old message with a new one. CDB handles these three cases respectively and updates the memory of short messages, i. e., adding the new message to the short message database. On the reception of new command it deletes the older one, or deletes the older message before adding a new message

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after the reception of replacing message. If old message can not be deleted then the new message will not be added.

Dispatching and transmitting of short messages

Every short message should be broadcast in specific areas, which correspond to one or more cells. In the meantime, every message has its own transmission requirements, i. e. the transmit times and frequencies are different. BSC should send each message to the specific area according to its transmit requirements. When a cell requests multiple short message, BSC should calculate the transmitting time sequence according to specific message dispatch algorithm, and send these messages to BTS in turn according to the assigned sequence.

Responding to the query of cell broadcast centre

While storing and transmitting short messages, CDB will record the completion message, the number sent by each cell, message load conditions of each cell and the broadcast channel state of each cell. CBC can keep track of the current system running state by querying and monitoring the cell broadcast system. It can adjust and optimize the system to ensure satisfactory running. When fault occurs in cell, CDB will report it to CBC, which will stop sending short messages to this cell. When CBC identifies that a specific broadcast message is been sent, it will send a command to delete or replace this message from CDB to reduce its load.

12.3 Cell Broadcast Features

Supporting MS DRX mode
If MS in idle mode has selected its serving cell, it is ready to monitor the paging message from this cell. To lower the power consumption of MS, the GSM specification adopts the discontinuous receiving mechanism (DRX), i. e. each subscriber (IMSI) corresponds to a dedicated paging group and each group corresponds to a paging sub-channel of the cell. MS recognizes its paging group and the corresponding paging sub-channel according to the last three digits of the IMSI and PCH allocation on service cell. MS in idle mode uses its own paging sub-channel to receive the paging message (or to monitor the receiving level of the BCCH carrier of the non-serving cell). MS ignores the message from other paging sub-channel or even shuts down the power of some hardware to lower its power consumption during the broadcasting of other paging sub-channels. But MS must measure the network messages task periodically. The BSC supporting DRX mode needs to send scheduling messages to satisfy the requirement of the discontinuous receiving by MS. One dispatch message contains the information of the short messages to be sent one after another in a cell. The cycle occupied by short messages in one dispatch message is called dispatch cycle. Dispatch message contains the descriptions of each short message to be broadcast according to the transmit sequence, and indicates the message position in dispatch cycle. Mobile subscriber can read concerned short message in less time by reading dispatch message, thus minimizing power consumption.

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Supporting traffic control for BTS

Transmit sequence of short messages in each cell is dispatched by BSC and transmitted by BTS. Each TRX maintains one message buffer and sends short message periodically to MS through specific channel. Thus, there will be an asynchronous state of sending short messages between BSC and BTS. In this case, BTS will report this asynchronous state to BSC in the form of load indication message. If a specific TRX receives too many short messages and can not send them in time, BSC will temporarily stop sending short messages of this TRX. If a TRX barely receives short messages, BSC will send out some short messages so that the time sequence for sending short message in this cell will be met. By sending broadcast messages to BTS to control traffic, CDB can schedule the balance of the broadcast system of the whole cell. Thus the requirement of sending broadcast messages is satisfied as much as possible.

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