Enhance Data rate for GSM Evolution

Most mobile service providers moving to 3G have an existing 2G/2.5G network that will co-exist with 3G networks. Business objectives will be to increase revenue per subscriber, reduce the cost per subscriber, and do more with reduced budgets. Mobile and wireless networking is gradually emerging as a discipline. Their impact ranges from medical, to military, to industrial, to societal. This workshop intends to bring together leading researchers and practitioners in this field of research to identify the fundamental challenges and future prospects of mobile and wireless networks, especially cellular networks, ad-hoc networks and sensor networks. By the first quarter of 2004, the GSM/GPRS wireless standard was serving over 1 billion subscribers worldwide. Today, more than 50 percent of capital expenditures on wireless infrastructure are directed to the GSM/GPRS standard, and more than 70 percent of mobile phones sold are supported by GSM technology.
EDGE offers on average up to three times the data throughput of GPRS — yielding a level of service that can support widespread data adoption, allowing new service offerings to evolve and making mobile multimedia services more affordable to more subscribers. For example, the EDGE technology enables an operator to handle the mass adoption of services like MMS and Push to Talk while also enhancing the end user’s experience of these as well as other services like Web Browsing, FTP and Video/Audio Streaming. With a global footprint of over 550 GSM networks in more than 180 countries, EDGE is in 111 networks and is expected to continue to be widely adopted given its cost-effective evolution properties.
The network EDGE plays a critical role in addressing these challenges because it is the network EDGE that creates the services customers will value. Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) was designed to deliver the capacity and the performance necessary to offer high-speed data services that will hold their own value against other 3G standards. EDGE shares spectrum and resources with GSM and GPRS, solving the spectrum availability dilemma for 3G services, and allowing for a highly flexible implementation, minimizing network impact and costs.





1. EDGE Overview

The edge of the network is the boundary between the network infrastructure and the data center servers. A data request moves from the client, over the Internet using the networking infrastructure, and then must travel across the gray area of the edge of the network before being passed on to a Tier 1 Web server. It is here, at the edge, where all the preparation for moving data into the server room happens, with these functions focusing on traffic processing rather than actual data processing. The reason this is considered a gray area is because these functions can be performed either by or with Tier 1 systems or by networking equipment such as routers and switches.
Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) is a third-generation (3G) wireless technology that’s capable of high-speed data. EDGE occasionally is called “E-GPRS” because it’s an enhancement of the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network. EDGE can’t be deployed by itself; it must be added to an existing GPRS network. So, for example, an operator could offer GSM/GPRS/EDGE but not GSM/EDGE.
Cingular Wireless launched the world’s first commercial EDGE network in June 2003 in Indianapolis, Indiana.3 In September, CSL deployed EDGE in Hong Kong.4 Both operators introduced their services with a single handset model – the Nokia 62005 and Nokia 62206 respectively – although they say more models will be available sometime in the near future. The EDGE device that’s most likely to hit the market next is the Sony Ericsson GC82 PC card, 7 although its release date has been pushed back at least once. Cingular’s launch is noteworthy, if only because EDGE has been promised and then postponed so many times. For example, in 1998, Ericsson forecast EDGE deployments by 2000.
Three years later, AT&T Wireless and Nokia forecast commercial launches by 2002. By being late out of the gate, EDGE may have missed its window of opportunity in following key respects. First, EDGE has to catch up with other 3G technologies such as CDMA2000 and W-CDMA, which have been commercially deployed for more than three years.

1.1 GPRS & EDGE: -

Nortel’s EDGE solution integrates almost seamlessly into current GPRS networks. From a Core Network perspective, the same GPRS SGSN and GGSN are used. As more users and services become available, Nortel GGSN can be leveraged to implement new IP-based service offerings including VPNs, personal content portals and content-based billing. All of the nodes in the packet core network follow an aggressive capacity growth curve that is possible through simple software updates. For our Access portfolio, all currently shipped hardware is EDGE-ready with the only upgrade required for older base stations being a new radio transceiver and power amplifier. The resulting EDGE coverage footprint can be better than the original GSM RF plan.
2.1.1 Minimizing Costs, Maximizing Spectrum: -

Nortel has earned a reputation for improving spectral efficiency and minimizing cost in our GSM/GPRS core and access portfolios. For our Access portfolio, all currently shipped hardware is EDGE-ready with the only upgrade required for older base shipped hardware is EDGE-ready with the only upgrade required for older base stations being a new radio transceiver and power amplifier. The resulting EDGE coverage footprint can be better than the original GSM RF plan. Nortel’s EDGE solution was designed such that the power amplifier and radio modules support voice, GPRS and EDGE simultaneously, reducing the need for separate radios and RF spectrum for GPRS/EDGE and voice. Implemented with such flexibility, Nortel’s EDGE solution can be deployed on a cell site configured with only one radio per sector. Cost savings aside, Nortel’s EDGE solution will be differentiated in the marketplace by its spectral efficient characteristics of the access solution. Nortel continues to demonstrate innovation and leadership in spectral efficiency with major technological breakthroughs in system capacity and end-user quality of service (QoS)

2.1.2 Speeding Time To Revenue: -

With most network elements requiring only a software upgrade to support EDGE, the time interval between the business decision to deploy EDGE and the implementation of EDGE on the network can be quite short. In addition, Nortel has devised other features for driving EDGE services revenue right from the start. The most important of these is the bandwidth management for classes of users, which Nortel refers to as the PCUSN QoS Management feature. The ability to differentiate users and services also provides flexibility for the operator to articulate different service packages and address a greater number of market segments. High-end business users with high-bandwidth requirements can be provisioned a Gold or Silver attribute, for example, while flat rate mass market (text) subscribers can use a Bronze subscription. At the busy hour, the Gold and Silver segments can be set to leave, perhaps, 10 percent of relative bandwidth to the Bronze subscription. This
implementation will ensure a good level of customer satisfaction and loyalty from business users. Overall this could dramatically increase the revenues being generated during busy hours depending on the operator’s specific service offerings and user profiles.
In the near future software release from Nortel, R99 terminals supporting Packet Flow Context as defined in the 3GPP Standards release 99 will have the additional benefit of guaranteed throughput for conversational and streaming services. This additional service differentiation will ensure the availability of bandwidth for services like PTT delivering customer satisfaction even under very high traffic loading condition.


2.1.3 Operational excellence: -

The introduction of EDGE in the network translates into more bandwidth delivered to the base station, which requires more backhaul transmission. Furthermore, there is a benefit in being able to closely monitor and fine-tune EDGE radio parameters to maximize EDGE performance for the end users. Nortel’s EDGE solutions come with a set of features that
addresses these operational needs and network transmission costs through a robust, intuitive and easy-to-optimize EDGE software solution and two backhaul transport efficiency features that complement Nortel’s unique strengths in the backbone. Nortel’s EDGE software provides intuitive parameter options for simple but highly effective EDGE performance
optimization, giving the operator a competitive edge.
Backhaul considerations are integrated into the Nortel EDGE solution portfolio. To support EDGE with a standard TDM interface, EDGE’s new modulation and coding scheme would require up to eight additional DS0s per radio. To mitigate this impact, Nortel is introducing an asynchronous interface on the backhaul that can reduce the need for additional DS0s by dynamically sharing a smaller pool of resources, reducing the additional bandwidth
required at the cell site by up to 50 percent. The dynamic AGPRS interface between the BSC and the PCUSN also provides some pooling of resources with a similar 30 percent gain on the number of T1s required.

3.2 Optimal Resource Use With N1: -

As part of the shift from application delivery to network service delivery, data management becomes considerably more complex. Companies need to be able to consolidate computing resources, easily manage them from a centralized view, and optimize resource utilization to maximize their return on investment. Sun solutions first disaggregate resources by delivering component solutions that are tuned for specific functions. At the lowest end, blade servers will provide tightly integrated edge and Tier 1 functionality, enabling intelligent blades to achieve optimal processing for a specific function, such as SSL encryption or load balancing. Sun plans to then reaggregate all of a company’s optimized computing resources with N1— Sun’s vision, architecture, and products for making entire data centers appear as one system. Instead of requiring system management for each server, N1 will provide a single virtual view of a company’s complete computing infrastructure. This will enable a roomful of servers, blades, storage devices, applications, and networking components to appear as a single entity. As a result, system administrators will be able to manage all of these infrastructure components from a single, central view instead of sending out a team of engineers to reconfigure compute resources as workloads change. This virtual view will also support automated configuration, enabling a manager to state a parameter that will then be implemented intelligently across all affected tiers, converting centralized policy into distributed local policy. N1 data center management promises revolutionary benefits, including the following:

· Increases business agility by supporting dynamic reallocation of resources as processing demands and business needs change
· Eliminates the need for individual systems to maintain excess capacity for peak processing demands by allowing excess capacity to be shared
· Boosts server utilization from industry norms of 15 to 30 percent up to 80 percent or higher
· Significantly reduces resource management complexity and the need for manual intervention
· Simplifies deployment of new services
· Protects technology investments by integrating existing equipment
· Increases availability by leveraging the N1 pool of resources to reassign services
· Provides a Web-based single point of control that delivers anywhere, anytime administration

Ultimately, these benefits can result in significantly lower operations costs by eliminating manual management tasks and simplifying resource allocation. These cost savings are critical, as today’s companies spend more than 70 percent of their information technology budget on managing data center complexity. By integrating edge functions into intelligent blade servers that support centralized N1 management, Sun will help to optimize resource use, simplify installation and administration, and deliver exceptional price/performance both in Tier 1 and at the edge of the network. For more information on Sun’s N1 vision, see the Additional References section below.