Contrasting GPRS and EDGE over TCP/IP on BCCH and nonBCCH carriers

The introduction of EDGE in current GSM/GPRS deployments will give operators a significant boost in network capacity and will offer mobile data users high bandwidth packet data services. Intelligent radio resource management allows the allocation of the GPRS/EDGE packet data channels (PDCHs) on the beacon carrier (BCCH) or on nonBCCH carriers. Most key performance indicators (KPIs) such as user data throughput, channel capacity and spectrum efficiency are affected by an appropriate choice of the cell configuration. In this paper detailed simulation results for the end to end performance of GPRS and EDGE over TCP/IP are presented. Today's GPRS 4 timeslot capable mobiles as well as EDGE 2 and 4 multislot mobiles are investigated. The performance of PDCH allocations on the BCCH and nonBCCH carrier has been contrasted for pure GPRS and EDGE services showing the pros and cons for each configuration. Finally mixed scenarios with GPRS and EDGE multiplexing on the same PDCHs are covered.