TA Timing advance.

The agreement in a GSM system is for the MS to send its data three time slots after it received the data from the BTS. The BTS then expects the bursts from the MS in a well-defined time frame. This prevents collision with data from other mobile stations. The mechanism works fine, as long as the distance between MS and BTS is rather small. Increasing distance requires taking into account the propagation delay of downlink bursts and uplink bursts. Consequently, the mobile station needs to transmit earlier than defined by the three time slots delay rule. The information about how much earlier a burst has to be sent is conveyed to the mobile station by the TA. The TA is dynamic and changes in time. Its current value is sent to the mobile station within the layer 1 header of each SACCH. In the opposite direction, the BTS sends the current value for TA within the MEAS_RES messages to the BSC (e.g., for handover consideration). The farther the MS is away from the BTS, the larger is the required TA. Figure G.62 illustrates the relation between distance and TA.

Using the TA allows the BTS to receive the bursts from a particular MS in the proper receiver window. The BTS calculates the first TA when receiving a

RACH and reports the value to the BSC. TA can take any value between 0 and 63, which relates to a distance between 0 km and 35 km. The steps are about 550 m (35 km/63 550 m). With respect to time, the different values of TA refer to the interval 0 ms through 232 ms, in steps of 48/13 ms. It is important to note that this value of TA represents twice the propagation delay. Figure G.63 illustrates the effect of TA by an example in which a connection is active on TS 1.