BSC

Base Transceiver Station (BTS)

The name for the antenna and radio equipment necessary to provide wireless service in an area. Also called a base station or cell site. (Cingular)

The Base Transceiver Station, or BTS, contains the equipment for transmitting and receiving of radio signals (transceivers), antennas, and equipment for encrypting and decrypting communication with the Base Station Controller (BSC). Typically a BTS for anything other than a picocell will have several transceivers (TRXs) which allow it to serve several different frequencies and different sectors of the cell (in the case of sectorised base stations). A typical BTS site may have from 1 to 12 TRXs in 1, 2, or 3 sectors, although these numbers may vary widely.

Base Station Controller (BSC)

The part of the wireless system's infrastructure that controls one or multiple cell sites' radio signals, thus reducing the load on the switch. Performs radio signal management functions for base transceiver stations, managing functions such as frequency assignment and handoff. (Cingular)

Base Station Controller

The Base Station Controller (BSC) provides, classicaly, 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 (except in the case of an inter-MSC handover in which case control is in part the responsibility of the Anchor MSC). A key function of the BSC is to act as a concentrator where many different low capacity connections to BTSs (with relatively low utilisation) become reduced to a smaller number of connections towards the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) (with a high level of utilisation). Overall, this means that networks are often structured to have many BSCs distributed into regions near their BTSs which are then connected to large centralised MSC sites.