1. Introduction

[2]  There are some indications that the current (23rd) solar cycle at the century boundary could be unusual when compared with the previous cycles in the second half of the 20th century when the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) intensity has been monitored near the Earth. Besides, during the last five solar cycles the spacecraft have been exploring the heliosphere at progressively greater heliocentric distances and now they send the data from the heliocentric distances r = 75-93 AU. In our previous work [Krainev and Bazilevskaya, 2004; Krainev and Webber, 2003; Krainev et al., 1999, 1999a, 2001] we studied the development of the current solar cycle in the GCR intensity, especially its maximum phase, from the inside of this phase. Now when the current cycle maximum phase in the GCR intensity terminated in the inner heliosphere and it is close to the end in the outer heliosphere we can discuss the overall features of this phase and the solar and heliospheric factors responsible for them, both near the Earth, where it can be compared to the previous cycles, and in the outer heliosphere, where the influence of the termination shock can be searched for. In this paper we consider the structure of the maximum phase in the solar cycle variation of the GCR intensity using the data smoothed with a 0.5-year period. In what follows by the maximum phase we mean the time period between two main gaps in the intensity (corresponding to two peaks in the intensity modulation with the so-called Gnevyshev gap between them [see Krainev et al., 1999, and references therein]).