GPRS/EDGE performance on reserved and shared packet data channels

Worldwide 2.5G GPRS and 3G EDGE packet data technology shows rapid penetration in voice dominated GSM networks. Efficient radio resource management allows both configuring reserved channels for data and sharing the channels between voice and data on demand. Depending on the offered data traffic load, an appropriate cell configuration has to be introduced to ensure optimum network performance and acceptable user data throughput. Today, operators´ revenue, however, is mainly generated by voice traffic. The reservation of excessive radio resources exclusively for GPRS/EDGE packet data services would be inefficient, even though typical mobiles currently available require up to 4 GSM timeslots for maximum data capacity. The resource allocation strategy proposed favors a low number of reserved packet data channels along with an appropriate number of shared ones. Detailed simulation results for different load scenarios and channel configurations are provided and practical dimensioning rules are given. For a typical 4/12 reuse on the BCCH carrier, the simulation results show that dedicating one to two channels for GPRS/EDGE and enabling additional 5 (4 in case of 2 reserved) shared channels provides both sufficient data capacity and user throughput without significant degradation of the voice service in the majority of practical implementations.