GPRS measurement methodologies and performance characterization for the railway environment

The railway environment presents a unique challenge for cellular radio coverage. European cellular operators, among others, have realized the potential of the mobile user on railways and have constantly sought to improve the performance of cellular networks to accommodate current and next generation wireless services. Improving cellular coverage and services on railways is becoming increasingly important, considering the serious efforts of various European nations to boost public rail usage. However, performance limitations that certain environments such as railways might place on current technologies such as 2.5G general packet radio service (GPRS) have yet to be accurately verified. This paper highlights operational challenges and introduces strategies for defining, measuring and verifying GPRS key performance indicators (KPIs) on railways, describes manual and automated field-testing concepts, and presents selected KPI results from a trial campaign conducted in the UK.