A mobile station (MS) comprises all user equipment and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

needed for

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

with a mobile network. The term refers to the global system connected to the mobile network, i.e. a

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

or mobile computer connected using a mobile broadband adapter. This is the terminology of 2G systems like

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

. In 3G systems, a mobile station (MS) is now referred to as

user equipment In the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), user equipment (UE) is any device used directly by an end-user to communicate. It can be a hand-held telephone, a laptop computer equipped with a mobile bro ...

(UE). In GSM, a mobile station consists of four main components: * Mobile termination (MT) - offers common functions such as: radio transmission and handover, speech encoding and decoding, error detection and correction,

signalling In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

and access to the SIM. The IMEI code is attached to the MT. It is equivalent to the network termination of an

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work ...

access. *

Terminal equipment In telecommunication, the term terminal equipment has the following meanings: * Communications equipment at either end of a communications link, used to permit the stations involved to accomplish the mission for which the link was established. * I ...

(TE) - is any device connected to the MS offering services to the user. It does not contain any functions specific to GSM. * Terminal adapter (TA) - provides access to the MT as if it were an ISDN network termination with extended capabilities. Communication between the TE and MT over the TA takes place using

AT commands The Hayes command set (also known as the AT command set) is a specific command language originally developed by Dennis Hayes for the Hayes Smartmodem 300 baud modem in 1981. The command set consists of a series of short text strings which can b ...

. *

Subscriber identity module A typical SIM card (mini-SIM with micro-SIM cutout) A GSM mobile phone file:Simkarte NFC SecureElement.jpg, T-Mobile nano-SIM card with NFC capabilities in the SIM tray of an iPhone 6s file:Tf sim both sides.png, A TracFone Wireless SIM card ha ...

(SIM) - is a removable subscriber identification token storing the IMSI, a unique key shared with the mobile network operator and other data. In a mobile phone, the MT, TA and TE are enclosed in the same case. However, the MT and TE functions are often performed by distinct processors. The application processor serves as a TE, while the

baseband processor A baseband processor (also known as baseband radio processor, BP, or BBP) is a device (a chip or part of a chip) in a network interface controller that manages all the radio functions (all functions that require an antenna); however, this term i ...

serves as a MT, communication between both takes place over a bus using AT commands, which serves as a TA.

References

{{Reflist, colwidth=30em Mobile telecommunications user equipment Telecommunications equipment Telecommunications infrastructure 3GPP standards

See also

References