Performance study of GPRS/EDGE systems for voice and data transmission in cellular systems

With the increasing demand for higher data rate services over current cellular systems, it is necessary for us to incorporate better data services into the existing GPRS system without affecting the quality of voice service. In this paper, we study the impact of data traffic on the performance of voice traffic with 4 different resource allocation schemes. A combination of the schemes was also studied to take advantage of the benefits contributed by each scheme. Performance parameters like system throughput, data user blocking probability and voice call blocking probability were examined. Our study indicates that the 4-carrier, 8-channel, voice with priority resource allocation scheme gives the most optimum data service performance with minimal degradation to voice service.