A new proposal for link adaptation in EDGE system based on the use of turbo codes

The enhanced data rates for global evolution system known in short as EDGE is considered as a major step towards reaching the full 3G mobile communications services. The EDGE system, usually referred to as the 2 3/4 G, promises users with data rates reaching 384 kbps versus only 9.6 kbps in the well-known GSM system. In order to achieve such high data rates, two methods are used in the EDGE system to increase the throughput obtained by each user of the system; these are link adaptation (LA) and incremental redundancy (IR). In this paper, we explain how these methods are applied in the EDGE system and we introduce a new proposal for modifying the existing EDGE coding schemes based on the use of convolutional codes to schemes based on the use of turbo codes to further increase the throughput and consequently increase the data rates obtained.