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The German Federal Armed Forces have commissioned a consortium consisting of Siemens Business Services (SBS) and IBM to modernize and manage its non-military information and communications technology. The 10-year contract is worth approximately 7.1 billion euros including value added tax and will go into effect immediately. Through the HERKULES project, the German Federal Armed Forces will bring their data centers, software and applications, PCs, telephones, and voice and data networks up to the latest standard.

A company called BWI Informationstechnik GmbH (BWI IT), which is based in Meckenheim near Bonn, has been set up to supply the relevant IT services. SBS and IBM – who are equal partners in the consortium – together hold 50.1 percent of the shares, while the Federal Government holds 49.9 percent.

As part of the process of modernization, IBM and SBS will support the German Federal Armed Forces in revising workflows and replace the software currently in use with standard software. Together, they will also set up a help desk for users. Within the project, IBM and SBS will focus on these distinct areas:
IBM will be responsible for modernizing both the applications and the operation of the data centers. In this context, individual and standard software (SAP), web-based applications belonging to the intranet of the German Federal Armed Forces, and communication programs such as Lotus Notes will be maintained. In addition, there will be a PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), so that documents sent electronically can comply with signature and encryption regulations.
SBS will be responsible for operating and modernizing the decentralized systems at more than 1,500 locations in Germany. These will include some 140,000 PCs, 7,000 servers, 300,000 fixed-network telephones and 15,000 mobile phones. Activities will also include managing local and inter-regional data networks and voice networks.

IBM has been an IT partner of the German Federal Armed Forces for almost fifty years. “With HERKULES, the German Federal Armed Forces are going for innovation and transformation. The close cooperation between employees of the Federal Government and industry, working together in integrated teams, will ensure that this important project is brought to a successful conclusion. The ongoing regeneration of the systems will keep information and communications in the German Federal Armed Forces at the leading edge,” explains Rudolf Bauer, Executive Director of IBM Germany, and the person responsible for the company’s IT service business.

This cooperation between the German Federal Armed Forces and industry is currently the largest public-private partnership (PPP) in Europe. Going forward, up to 2,950 German Federal Armed Forces IT employees will be working within the project. Says Jürgen Frischmuth, a member of Group Executive Management at Siemens Business Services: “As Siemens, we are not only bringing comprehensive expertise in IT and processes to this project; we are also contributing the experience we have gained in many successful partnerships between the state and business, both at home and abroad.” SBS has been a partner of the German Federal Armed Forces for many years.

Base Transceiver Station (BTS) is the equipment which facilitates the wireless communication between user equipments and the network.

The term BTS is generally and commonly associated with mobile communication technologies like GSM and CDMA. A BTS forms part of the Base Station Subsystem (BSS) and has the equipments (transceivers) for transmitting and receiving of radio signals, signal processors, signal paths, signal amplifiers, and equipments for system management. It may also have equipments for encrypting and decrypting communications, spectrum filtering tools (band pass filters) etc. Antennas may also be considered as components of BTS in general sense as they facilitate the functioning of BTS. A BTS is controlled by a parent Base Station Controller via the Base station Control Function (BCF).The BCF provides an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) connection to the Network management system (NMS), and manages operational states of each TRX, as well as software handling and alarm collection.

The BTSs are equipped with radios that are able to modulate layer 1 of interface Um; for GSM 2G+ the modulation type is GMSK, while for EDGE-enabled networks it is GMSK and 8-PSK.

The Base Station Controller (BSC) provides, classically, the intelligence behind the BTSs. Typically a BSC has 10s or even 100s of BTSs under its control. The BSC handles allocation of radio channels, receives measurements from the mobile phones, controls handovers from BTS to BTS. Networks are often structured to have many BSCs distributed into regions near their BTSs which are then connected to large centralised MSC sites.

Although the Transcoding (compressing/decompressing) function is as standard defined as a BSC function, there are several vendors which have implemented the solution in a stand-alone rack using a proprietary interface. This subsystem is also referred to as the TRAU (Transcoder and Rate Adaptation Unit). The transcoding function converts the voice channel coding between the GSM (Regular Pulse Excited-Long Term Prediction, also known as RPE-LPC) coder and the CCITT standard PCM (G.711 A-law or u-law). Since the PCM coding is 64 kbit/s and the GSM coding is 13 kbit/s, this also involves a buffering function so that PCM 8-bit words can be recoded to construct GSM 20 ms traffic blocks, to compress voice channels from the 64 kbit/s PCM standard to the 13 kbit/s rate used on the air interface. Some networks use 32 kbit/s ADPCM on the terrestrial side of the network instead of 64 kbit/s PCM and the TRAU converts accordingly. When the traffic is not voice but data such as fax or email, the TRAU enables its Rate Adaptation Unit function to give compatibility between the BSS data rates and the MSC capability.

However, at least in Siemens’ and Nokia’s architecture, the Transcoder is an identifiable separate sub-system which will normally be co-located with the MSC. In some of Ericsson’s systems it is integrated to the MSC rather than the BSC. The reason for these designs is that if the compression of voice channels is done at the site of the MSC, fixed transmission link costs can be reduced.

BSS interfaces

Um – The air interface between the MS (Mobile Station) and the BTS. This interface uses LAPDm protocol for signaling, to conduct call control, measurement reporting, Handover, Power control, Authentication, Authorization, Location Update and so on. Traffic and Signaling are sent in bursts of 0.577 ms at intervals of 4.615 ms, to form data blocks each 20 ms.

Abis – The interface between the Base Transceiver Station and Base Station Controller. Generally carried by a DS-1, ES-1, or E1 TDM circuit. Uses TDM subchannels for traffic (TCH), LAPD protocol for BTS supervision and telecom signaling, and carries synchronization from the BSC to the BTS and MS.
Link Access Procedures on the D channel (LAPD), is the second layer protocol on the ISDN protocol stack in the D channel.

A – The interface between the BSC and Mobile Switching Center. It is used for carrying Traffic channels and the BSSAP user part of the SS7 stack. Although there are usually transcoding units between BSC and MSC, the signaling communication takes place between these two ending points and the transcoder unit doesn’t touch the SS7 information, only the voice or CS data are transcoded or rate adapted.

Ater – The interface between the Base Station Controller and Transcoder. It is a proprietary interface whose name depends on the vendor (for example Ater by Nokia), it carries the A interface information from the BSC leaving it untouched.

Gb – Connects the BSS to the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) in the GPRS Core Network.