Higher Order Modulation and Turbo Coding for GSM/EDGE Continued Evolution

GSM/EDGE is the world´s largest and most widespread cellular technology. EDGE offers an attractive solution for 3^rd generation cellular services in existing GSM networks. The introduction of new services into an existing network typically leads to increased capacity demands, since more users of different service types need to coexist in limited spectrum, while the existing speech service is required to function at least as well as before. Higher Order Modulation in combination with Turbo Coding is proposed to substantially enhance spectrum efficiency and average user bit rates in GSM/EDGE through improved interference robustness and increased peak bit rates. Simulation results indicate link level gains of 2.5-5.5 dB. When additionally applying incremental redundancy, similar relative improvements are shown. Bit rates can be increased by more than 30%, at C/I levels above 30dB. System performance gains are indicated by average user bit rate enhancements of up to 30-40%, along with substantial gains in spectrum efficiency, up to 40%. It is also shown that system gains are rather insensitive to frequency reuse and whether frequency hopping is applied or not (in sparse reuse scenarios).