Multiple Access in GSM and (E)GPRS

Chapter 4, by far the longest chapter in this book, covers the GSM air interface. It provides an in-depth discussion of physical and logical channels from GSM Phase 1 to EGPRS in GSM Release 1999 describes in detail how the voice service is supported over the GSM air interface discusses circuit-switched data in GSM, including High Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD) and Enhanced-Circuit Switched Data (ECSD) presents results on radio resource utilisation under heterogeneous GSM and HSCSD traffic load in blocking-limited GSM systems, explains the effect of trunking efficiency, and reviews literature on interference-limited GSM systems The GSM General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is featured prominently in this chapter, more than half of it is devoted to GPRS and its evolutions. Topics include an introduction to GPRS (its purpose, the different options that were considered to support packet data traffic on the GSM air interface, the system architecture) GPRS physical and logical channels the GPRS physical layer, e.g. coding schemes, theoretical data-rates, link adaptation and ‘real’ data-rates the GPRS RLC/MAC, such as basic features of the GPRS MAC, multiplexing principles, block structures, control messages, and a thorough description of how mobile originated and mobile terminated packet transfer works the GPRS random access algorithm (strengths, weaknesses, how stabilisation of and prioritisation at the random access are possible) Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), including ‘EDGE Compact’ mode