Advanced quality of service strategies for GERAN mobile radio networks

Customer demand for wireless data services is rapidly increasing. The introduction of GPRS, EDGE and UMTS providing high bit rate radio bearer, however, is not the complete response for satisfying the demands of these new high quality services. An advanced quality of service QoS management is necessary to handle the characteristic requirements of both different service types and user expectations. A new QoS strategy is proposed and analyzed comprising 3GPP QoS parameters along with operator´s specific weighting factors to define the appropriate QoS priority of each service type and user profile. Admission control as well as a deterministic up-and downgrading strategy are applied to ensure a minimum grade of service for low-priority applications. Furthermore, delay time sensitive services and premium users are granted a full bandwidth. Simulation results are provided to qualify the behavior of the proposed QoS strategy under different packet data load conditions. Especially in highly loaded and even overloaded GERAN networks the introduction of QoS provides significant benefits for the end user and offers powerful means to increase the service revenues according to the charging policy adopted by the network operator. The introduction of an appropriate QoS strategy is the prerequisite for an overlay deployment strategy of GSM/EDGE and UMTS.