Paving the path for high data rates by GERAN evolution EDGE2 with dual-carrier

The introduction of the upcoming GERAN evolution feature package in current GSM/EDGE deployments offers operators significant boost in network capacity and mobile data users UMTS/HSPA like high speed packet data services along with competitive latency. Intelligent radio resource management supports novel dual-carrier capable mobile stations by dynamic configuration of GPRS/EDGE packet data channels (PDCHs) on multiple non-BCCH carriers. In addition the currently standardized EDGE2 level B (EDGE2-B) concept provides enhanced PDCH data rates up to 118.4 kbps per timeslot. In this paper system level simulation results for the end-to-end performance of GERAN over TCP/IP are presented assuming conventional 4 timeslots up to future potential 14 timeslots capable EDGE and EDGE2-B mobiles showing up to 800 / 1600 kbps peak data rates. FTP-application throughput has been investigated with respect to both download file size and important TCP settings such as e.g. receiver window size. The GERAN dual-carrier performance has been evaluated for EDGE and EDGE2-B both under ideal radio conditions and in regular hexagonal cellular deployments depending on system load, exemplifying FTP 500 kbyte download with 8 timeslots capable mobiles. At medium system load EDGE2-B compared to EDGE reveals about 100% capacity gain and more than 60% gain in mean user throughput.