Location Dependent Addressing Using GSM-R
Cellular Positioning
Liao min, Zhong Zhangdui
Modern Communication Institute,
Northern Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, P.R.China
Min-liao@263. net,
Abstract
Location Dependent Addressing (LDA) is an
effective and efficient addressing in GSM-R,
which needs location information of mobile
station to forward the call to the correct called
party. It is worth developing the method that
is used to introduce GSM-R positioning
techniques into the solution of LDA. The
paper analyzes the possibility of using GSM-
R positioning in LDA. The characteristic of
GSM-R compatible with cellular positioning
is given. At last, a location system model as
well as positioning techniques suitable for
GSM-R system are presented.
INTRODUCTION
I n recent years, it has become apparent that there is a
large demand for mobile location services. E-91 1 calls,
fleet management, ITS, and fraud detection all make
good use of mobile positioning techniques. More and
more researchers and companies pay attention to
mobile positioning applications in above services.
Location dependent addressing (LDA) is also mobile
location service that is used i n GSM-R network as a
special efficient and effective addressing. It, however,
receives little attention as a kind of mobile positioning
technique applications. The location information
rcquired in LDA is provided by the Cell Specific
Routing or external location system, not the GSM-R
positioning itself. According to the good use of GSM
positioning techniques in many services, GSM-R
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positioning should have n bright future when used for
LDA. Certainly, due to railway terrain and special
requirements of communication services, there will be
many issues worthy of further research.
- OVERVIEW of GSM-R and LDA
GSM-R has been developed very fast as a European
mobile communication system for railway. It uses the
GSM standard special for railway, which considers the
requirement of railway communication and services.
So the main framework is same as GSM network and
critical communication protocol such as mobility
management, radio resources management is not
different from GSM. GSM-R just introduces many
special functions, which have been brought into the
GSM Phase 2+ standard, such as Voice Gio~ipcall
services (VGCS), Voice Broadcast Services (VBS),
etc. At the same time, EIRENE, responsible for the
standard of GSM-R, develops other new functions,
one of which is LDA. LDA is a special addressing by
which a call can be forwarded to the correct called
party according to the location of calling party, not
through the telephone number of the called party. It
can connect the called and calling party fast. For
example, a call from a mobile train driver to the
dispatcher responsible for him or her can be made like
the following way. After the driver just dialing a short
code or only a digit number such as '1' indicating a
call to the dispatcher, the system can automatically
route the call to the relevant dispatcher according to
the location of the driver. Such kind of call, playing an
important role in train runiiing operation, needs fast
connection and high reliability. Apparently, LDA
meets the challenge.
* 748
 roducing GSM-R
n, it is necessary to get the location
information of calling party in LDA. Just like the
definition of EIRENE specification,
information in present LDA systems is provided by
two sources. One is Cell Specific Routing of GSM-R
network itself and the other I S external system. In
GSM-R network, each cell has its ID number like that
i n GSM network. As a result, the network can get
location information of each mobile station in form of
cell ID number. Cell Specific Routing using in LDA
can find the observed mobile running train with the
accuracy of cell. Then the network routes the call
from the driver to the dispatcher managing the
specific cell. If the border between dispatchers is same
as that between cells, Cell Specific Routing will work
well. I n fact, however, the requirement is hard to meet.
It I S not surprising that there are two more dispatchers
in the same cell. EIRENE suggests that VGCS is used
in this situation. The network calls many dispatchers
using group call, with the train number in the call
information. Then only the relevant dispatcher
answers the call and contacts the train driver at last.
Although Cell Specific Routing is not a final solution,
i t is still used when it fails to get location information
from external system. LDA in this situation has low
efficiency due to the low accuracy of location
estimate.
The other IS IN-based (Intelligent Network) LDA.
External location system provides location
information of the mobile train driver, as well as the
relationship between short code and its corresponding
telephone number, which is stored in the database of
IN network. When a LDA call starts, MSC
interrogates the IN database for the real telephone
number of the called party. The external location
system such as GPS, balise, can provides high
accuracy of location, so that the LDA call can be
connected between the calling and called parties.
Despite its high accuracy, disadvantage of IN-based
LDA IS not ignored. Firstly, it increases the
complexity of LDA. Furthermore, the interface
performance between GSM-R network and external
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n system affeGts the reliability of LDA. Thirdly,
QoS of external location system may be not good,
including response time, update period of location
location information, etc. Long response time and update
period will affect its usefulness directly. Due to
coming from extemal system, QoS of location
estimate is not considered according to the LDA but
the external location system itself. So the requirement
of LDA is usually hard to mect. Specially, in GSM-R
network, LDA call as a kind of important train
running operation call, is hoped to have short call
setup time. Thus, there is a requirement of short
response time of location estimate. It’s hard for IN-
based LDA to overcome the challenge.
GSM positioning techniques have been developed fast
in recent years. As a similar network, GSM-R should
have many potential abilities to positioning. Main
positioning techniques including signal strength
measurement, Angle of Arrival (AOA), Time of
Arrival (TOA), Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA),
hybrid technique and positioning system architectures
such as mobile-based system, network-based, hybrid
system used in GSM can be developed similarly i n
GSM network. Furthermore, due to characteristic of
GSM-R and LDA, there are other advantages of
introducing GSM-R positioning into LDA. At the
same time, more considerations should be made
before using suitable positioning techniques and
architecture.
Advantage provided by GSM-R and LDA
There are many factors affecting the positioning
accuracy and efficiency. Due to GSM-R special
network architecture and railway terrain, sometimes it
is easier to overcome them than GSM positioning.
Hearability of non-serving BS ’ s
In general, each mobile station I S only covered by one
BS in cellular network. In most positioning techniques,
however, non-serving BSs are involved. The
hearability of signals to or from these BSs may cause
some measurements to be impractical when the
mobile station is closed to its serving BS. The signal
must be faint for the non-serving BS. As a result, i t
 may be impossible to collect
measurements from the non-serving BSs in a short
enough time. Redundancy configuration of GSM-R
wireless coverage gives a better solution about the
issue. As a professional network, GSM-R is required
to have high reliability. Reliability of wireless
coveragc makes a very important role in the reliability
of GSM-R conimunication. In order to meet the
challenge, many redundancy techniques have been
taken in GSM-R network. Figure 1 shows these
techniques in details.
1 2 3 not essential to consider MS not-reachable, detached
Figure I(a) Cell overlap coverage
I/-
. c-ecz3-
Fieuie I ( b ) Nctwork ovctldo coveraw
Cell overlap coverage is showed in Figure l(a), while
network overlap coverage is showed in Figure 2(b).
Both of them ensure that each mobile station is
covered by two BSs, one of which does not transmit
until the working one fails. So the mobile station can
get good coverage unless both BSs have failures,
which seldom occurs. The redundancy mechanism
gives a good chance to solve the measurement of
signal from one more BSs to the observed mobile
station. These two BSs can receive strong signal for
the MS. I n GSM-R network, only one BS works all
the time. A modification should be made that two BSs
work together when LDA call takes place.
Non-Line of Signal (NLOS)
With NLOS propagation, tlie signal arriving at the BS
from the mobile station is reflected or diffracted and
takes a long path than the direct path. Five mobile
positioning narrated above are based on the Line of
Signal (LOS). In other word, NLOS will degrade the
accuracy of location estimate. NLOS usually occurs in
urban or niontanic terrain, which there are inany high
buildings or mountains. Along the railway, mobile
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the required stations and BSs are in the same line. Furthermore, tlie
busy lines of railway are normally in the area of
plateau. Thus NLOS seldom occurs and higher
performance of positioning is expected to obtain than
GSM network from this aspect.
Advantage from LDA
From tlie definition of LDA, it is concluded that
location information request is invoked by GSM-R
network, 'while the call is triggered by the calling
party. At least three benefits are attains. Firstly, the
observed mobile station is always active. Thereby, it is
or purged. These three things must be given enough
consideration in other common cellular positioning
applications. For instance, externai location client may
request the location information of a not-reachable
MS. Secondly, location client is tlie GSM-R network
itself but not the external one. Transmission time of
location information gets shorter. In other word, LDA
positioning is convenient. Finally, Gateway mobile
location center (GMLC), an absolutely necessary
entity in GSM LCS network (will explain later)
becomes useless and will be canceled in tlie LDA
positioning architecture. At the same time, response
time of positioning procedure will decrease due to
fewer entities.
Need only two-dimensional location inforniation
According to the railway requirement, only two-
diniensional location information will be provided by
the LDA positioning system. Thus number of BSs
involved in signal nieasurenient becomes few. For
instant, at least four BSs are involved in TDOA
techniques, when three-diiiiensional location estimate
is required. Three BSs, however, are enough on the
request of two-dimensional estimate.
Direction of train running
There is a definite direction of train when it is running.
It is evaluable information because the location
L,,,,,.
= L,,,d + . (1)
estimate would be gained as followed when present
positioning fails:
Where L,,, is the present location estimate, with Lo,,
 location information, v and t meaning
running time from the last location to
the new destination. In general location application,
this equation is meaningless because the mobile
station runs in non-fixed direction
Now it is easy to draw a conclusion that introducing
mobile positioning into LDA is feasible and
convenient.
LDA logical model
It is necessary to select the positioning technique and
architecture before a LDA logical model is given.
As we known, there are many positioning techniques
used in cellular system. In typical GSM-R network,
directional antennas are installed along the rails in
order to get the elliptical coverage of cells. In the large
stations, sector cells are made while normal cells are
installed in other areas. Directional antennas of BSs
benefit AOA techniques. Another question is
Geometric Dilution if Precision (GDOP) caused by
railway layout. In certain scenarios, the GDOP will
have a significant effect on the accuracy of the system.
Specifically, railway cells with the BS arrangeiiient
may be in a straight line. But TOA and TDOA are
triangular solutions. F r o m the two points, TOA or
TDOA combining AOA is likely to increase
performance of mobile positioning along the railway.
The former needs only one BS and the latter needs
two BSs, as showed in Figure 2.
I n figure 2(a), TOA determines a circle with AOA
making a straight line. The intersection of them is the
location of the mobile station. Similarly, the
S ,
Figure 2 Hybrid technique for LDA
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intersection of a hyperbola provided by TDOA
between two BSs and a straight line from AOA
decides the location of mobile station.
A logical architecture of GSM LCS is defined in
GSM03.71 by ETSI, as showed in Figure 3.
.
L
MLC Extemal
chen t
v
Figure 3 Generic LCS Logical Architecture
LCS is logically implemented on the GSM structure
through the addition of one network node, the Mobile
Location Center (MLC). A number of new interfaces
is named. A LCS procedure is made out briefly below.
External LCS client accesses in a GSM network via
the Gateway Mobile Location Center (GMLC) with
the location request of a mobile station. Then GMLC
may request routing information of observed mobile
station from HLR. After performing registration
authorization, it sends positioning request including
QoS information to the Serving Mobile Location
Center (SMLC) via VMSC. SMLC manages the
overall coordination and scheduling of resources
required to perform positioning of a mobile station.
It's up to the Location Measuring Unit (LMUs)
controlled by the SMLC to perform positioning
measurement with the techniques decided by the
SMLC. After receiving the measurement result sent
by LMU via VMSC, SMLC calculates the final
location estimate and accuracy. ,At last, location
estimate is sent to the external LCS client via GMLC.
That's a successful LCS procedure.
LDA, as a special LCS application, should have a
more suitable architecture than above. Figure 4 shows
the procedure of LDA using GSM-R positioning. The
driver on a running train calls the dispatcher
responsible for him or her with dialing a short code
'1 12'. BS forwards the LDA call to MSC, which sends
its IMSI to the SMLC for the location estimate. Then
SMLC begins the location positioning same as GSM
network performing. After receiving the location
estimate from SMLC, MSC look up two databases: Conclusion
DBl for meaning of short code and looking up DB2 This paper has provided the overview of GSM-R and
LDA. It is characteristic of them
suitable for positioning that is
emphasized. Finally, a conclusion
is made that LDA using GSM-R
positioning is feasible and
convenient. Although GSM-R
has bright future, many issues
will be arisen when LDA
combining GSM-R positioning.
Thus it is evident that many
research challenges still exist in
providing high-reliability and
Figure 4 LDA using GSM-R positioning high QoS LDA call in GSM-R
with the driver location infoiination provided by network.
SMLC for dispatcher number. Similarly, if LDA
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