EDGE Compact and EDGE Classic Packet Data Performance

Abstract

Even though cellular radio services have been extremely successful in providing untethered voice communications, wireless data services have captured only a limited market share so far. One obstacle for wireless data services is their limited peak bit rates. Existing wireless data rates, up to several tens of kb/s, may be over one order of magnitude short of what is required to make popular applications user-friendly. To accomplish these necessities we go for EDGE(Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) employs adaptation between a number of modulation and coding schemes (“link adaptation”) as a means for providing several hundred kb/s peak rates in a macro-cellular environment while supporting adequate robustness for impaired channels. In this paper we discuss the two phases of EDGE, classic and compact. We start our discussion with the link adaptation and incremental tendency techniques. Secondly we go for discussing EDGE classic and compact systems and their deployment scenarios, followed by downlink performance comparison and some MAC layer enhancement techniques which improve the performance.