A soft pairing approach for MUROS to increase voice capacity in GERAN

In GERAN networks, Multiple Users Reusing One Single timeslot (MUROS) promises to enhance the cell capacity through pairing of two or more users onto a single timeslot. So far no work has been done on the basis on which the different users would be paired. The criteria used for the pairing decision to pair two or more users is critical for MUROS as this will eventually decide the actual gains due to MUROS. Currently there exists no work that has evaluated pairing criteria or the system impacts of pairing decision process in MUROS. When pairing two or more users, care should be taken that the link quality of the two or more users being paired does not see a drastic degradation leading to call drops. In this paper a novel soft pairing approach is suggested. The gains provided by the Soft Pairing approach are presented through system simulations. We also formulate the problem of pairing in MUROS in a game theoretic setting to better understand the system level impact of trying to maximize paired users in a cell and over all system throughput.