Paving the Path for High Data Rates by GERAN

Evolution EDGE2 with Dual-Carrier

K. Ivanov, C. F. Ball, R. Mullner
Radio Access Division
Nokia Siemens Networks
Munich, Germany
kolio.ivanov@nsn.com
Abstract- The introduction of the upcoming GERAN evolution
feature package in current GSMIEDGE deployments offers
operators significant boost in network capacity and mobile data
users UMTSIHSPA like high speed packet data services along
with competitive latency. Intelligent radio resource management
supports novel dual-carrier capable mobile stations by dynamic
configuration of GPRS/EDGE packet data channels (PDCHs) on
multiple non-BCCH carriers. In addition the currently
standardized EDGE2
1
level B (EDGE2-B) concept provides
enhanced PDCH data rates up to 118.4 kbps per timeslot. In this
paper system level simulation results for the end-to-end
performance of GERAN over TCPIIP are presented assuming
conventional 4 timeslots up to future potential 14 timeslots
capable EDGE and EDGE2-B mobiles showing up to 800 11600
kbps peak data rates. FTP-application throughput has been
investigated with respect to both download tile size and
important TCP settings such as e.g, receiver window size. The
GERAN dual-carrier performance has been evaluated for EDGE
and EDGE2-B both under ideal radio conditions and in regular
hexagonal cellular deployments depending on system load,
exemplifying FTP 500 kByte download with 8 timeslots capable
mobiles. At medium system load EDGE2-B compared to EDGE
reveals about 100% capacity gain and more than 60% gain in
mean user throughput.
Keywords- GERAN Evolution; EDGE; EGPRS; EGPRS2;
TCPIIP; dual-carrier;
I. INTRODUCTION
GERAN (GSM EDGE Radio Access Network) is today's
backbone of mobile communications with almost 3 billion
subscribers providing worldwide access and roaming for voice
and packet data services. Current deployments of GPRS and
especially the recent wide-spread rollout of EDGE in existing
GSM networks have opened the door for worldwide mobile
Internet services [I]. Commercially available mobile stations
(MS) with a downlink multi-slot capability of 4 - 5 timeslots
(TS) provide typical application peak data rates of up to 75 - 90
kbps with GPRS, and 225 - 275 kbps with EDGE, respectively
[2].
The goal of the upcoming GERAN evolution presently
under 3GPP standardization is to significantly increase
capacity and spectrum efficiency along with a boost of user
throughput at a very competitive and significantly reduced
1 By convention in this paper the term EDGE refers to EGPRS, and the
term EDGE2 refers to EGPRS2.
978-1-4244-2644-7/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE
H. Winkler
Program and System Engineering
SiemensAG
Vienna, Austria
hubert. winkler@siemens.com
overall latency [3]. GERAN evolution relies on the EDGE2
concept, a comprehensive feature package including the
introduction of higher order modulation schemes (such as
QPSK, 16-QAM and 32-QAM) along with increased symbol
rate (1.2 times the normal GSM symbol rate), mobile station
receive diversity (MSRD), advanced turbo coding in downlink,
reduced latency by improved interleaving schemes (LATRED)
and fast Ack/Nack reporting (FANR) [4], [5]. A detailed study
of the EDGE2 uplink performance is found in [6]. EDGE2 in
combination with the downlink dual-carrier approach, in
particular, will break through the currently immanent 4 - 5 TS
MS limit, opening the possibility to offer enhanced 2 to 3 times
higher data rate compared to conventional single carrier
EDGE.
As a consequence, on the network side both an intelligent
radio resource management (RRM) as well as efficient radio
link quality control (LQC) strategy have to be implemented for
dynamically handling MS dual-carrier allocations on BCCH
and non-BCCH transceivers (TRX) with multiple reuse
planning (MRP) characterized by variable radio conditions [7].
In this study simultaneous allocation of 4 downlink TS on
single TRX and up to 14 downlink TS on two TRX has been
assumed. Preserving the present EDGE coding schemes the
focus is set on the end-to-end performance under ideal radio
conditions (single cell, not coverage limited scenario) as well
as in a real network interference limited environment. In
addition the new EDGE2-B concept has been investigated
under the same conditions to evaluate the resulting
performance gain in terms of user throughput and network
capacity.
The effects of TCP/IP as today's dominant transport layer
protocol over Internet on the application throughput in wireless
networks have been thoroughly investigated [7], [8], [9].
Valuable recommendations concerning the setting of the TCP
receiver window size on the client side have been given.
Furthermore the dependency of the application throughput on
the FTP download file size has been derived. FTP application
throughput results under varying system load are presented for
slow moving MS in cellular hexagonal deployments with
relaxed frequency reuse.
The paper is structured as follows. Section II gives an
overview of the GERAN Evolution architecture and the
network simulation model including the novel GERAN dual-
carrier approach. In Section III simulation results for ideal
radio conditions have been presented. Target throughput
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Packet
-
-
-
IP Packet _-__
Asub
Service Request, TCP-Acks
RF Channel
GSM/GPRS/EGPRS/EGPRS2 Network (BSS, Core)
POCH Mapping
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(E)GPRS-TRX or
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Figure 1. Network simulation model according tothe GERAN evolution architecture featuring thedual-carrier approach and including allend-to-end network
entities and relevant protocol stacks such asRLC/MAC, LLC, TCP/IP.
GERAN for DL packet switched data transmission along with
the RLC maximum data rate per TS.
Coding Modulation
RLC Data Rate
Standard Family per Timeslot
Scheme Scheme
[kbps]]
CS-l 8.0
GPRS
CS-2 not defined 12.0
CS-3 14.4
CS-4
GMSK
20.0
MCS-l C 8.8
EDGE, MCS-2 B 11.2
EDGE2 MCS-3 A(A
a
) 14.8
MCS-4 C 17.6
MCS-5 B 22.4
MCS-6 A(A
a
) 29.6
EDGE MCS-7 B 8-PSK 44.8
MCS-8 A
a
54.4
MCS-9 A 59.2
DBS-5 B QPSK 22.4
DBS-6 A (A
a
) QPSK 29.6 (27.2)
DBS-7 B 16-QAM 44.8
EDGE2 DBS-8 A(A
a
) 16-QAM 59.2 (54.4)
LevelB DBS-9 B 16-QAM 67.2
DBS-I0 A (A
a
) 32-QAM 88.8 (81.6)
DBS-ll A
a
32-QAM 108.8
DBS-12 A 32-QAM 118.4
figures for 4 TS MS up to 14 TS MS have been derived
depending on TCP receiver window size and FTP download
file size. Section IV deals with system level simulation results
in regular hexagonal GERAN deployments depending on
packet data load. EDGE and EDGE2-B dual-carrier allocation
with 8 TS on two non-BCCH carriers in relaxed 4x3 frequency
reuse has been evaluated. The main conclusions are drawn in
Section V.
II. NETWORK SIMULATION MODEL INCLUDING GERAN
DUAL-CARRIER ARCHITECTURE
The network simulation model shown in Fig. 1 includes all
GERAN network elements considering latency, queuing,
transmission delay and all relevant call processing features.
The following layers of the protocol stack have been
implemented [4], [5].
1) The physical layer covers GPRS, EDGE and EDGE2-B
link adaptation (LA) as well as incremental redundancy (IR).
The physical link is modeled by block erasure rate (BLER) vs.
carrier-to-interferer-ratio (CIR) mapping obtained from link
level simulations performed for TV3 (no FH) in case of EDGE
and TV3 (ideal FH) in case of EDGE2-B. A decent MS
receiver performance has been assumed excluding advanced
features like MS receive diversity, and single / dual antenna
interference cancellation (SAIC / DAlC). Table I gives an
overview of the modulation and coding schemes available in
TABLE!. GPRS, EDGE AND EDGE2 RLC USER DATA RATES
a. Family A with padding
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2) Radio Link Control/Medium Access Control
(RLC/MAC) layer: the selective ARQ protocol for RLC has
been completely implemented. For EDGE the round trip time
(RTT) on RLC level (Le. signaling delay from the MS to the
packet control unit (PCU) and vice versa) was adjusted to 100
ms, the Relative Reserved Block Period (RRBP) to 40 ms [10].
For EDGE2 both RTT and RRBP have been reduced, to 80 ms
and 20 ms, respectively.
3) Logical Link Control (LLC) layer: the mobile specific
LLC flow control function in the SGSN operates on estimated
MS throughput and memory congestion state. The SGSN flow
control is a token leaky bucket algorithm and receives flow
control commands fromthe PCU.
4) RRM: the radio resource management includes a
comprehensive functionality for dynamic and fixed allocation
of radio and Abis resources to voice and data services [11]. For
packet data services, several strategies of the temporary block
flow (TBF) allocation onto PDCHs as well as RLC schedulers
(cyclic polling, fairly weighted, and QoS-based) have been
implemented and can be chosen accordingly. Intra-cell
handover and periodical GPRS/EDGE TS downgrade and
upgrade procedures are used to improve throughput. PDCHs
can be configured arbitrarily on BCCH and/or non-BCCH
carriers in different reuse patterns. Shared (on demand) PDCHs
might suffer from voice service soft preemption. The novel
dual-carrier approach allows dynamic configuration of the
mobile's PIXH allocation simultaneously on two TRX. As an
example a mobile might utilize in downlink 12 PDCHs
(4 PDCHs on TRX-2 and 8 PDCHs on TRX-3) as well as 2
PDCHs in uplink on TRX-2.
5) The network layer comprises the transmission of IP
packets as well as routing functionality.
6) The transport layer offers both User Datagram Protocol
(UDP) as well as TCP (Reno). Specific features of TCP have
severe impact on the overall performance of wireless data
services. Thus the model covers for example the choice of the
maximum TCP segment size (MSS), advertising window size
of the receiver/client (AWND), congestion window
management at the sender/server and TCP slow start. The TCP
roundtrip time is continuously measured and filtered to update
the retransmission timeout (RTO). RTO expiry causes TCP
retransmissions and a new slow start. In addition the effects of
duplicate acknowledgments (DUPACKs) combined with fast
recovery and fast retransmit are part of the model. Hence the
complete TCP Reno implementation of the transport layer has
been incorporated in the simulator.
7) The application layer consists of a variety of traffic
models for WAP, HTTP, email, FTP, SMS, MMS and
streaming services. Because of the open architecture of the
simulator, new traffic models or traces of real sessions can
easily be imported [12], [13]. User's behavior is modeled by
probability distributions of the number and size of downloads
per Internet session and reading times between separate
downloads. Nevertheless the network simulation results
presented in this paper are exclusively performed for the FTP
download service with deterministic file volume of 500 kByte.
Fig. 1 shows the network elements and interfaces included in
the simulation model as well as the path through the network
for an IP packet (from the server to the client) on a download
request. When a mobile leaves the idle state, a packet data
protocol (PDP) context is generated at the SGSN. The mobile
makes an access to the GPRSIEDGE network and submits a
download request via the mobile network and the Internet to a
server. The server divides the requested data volume into TCP
segments, adds a TCP/IP header and sends them as IP packets
via a router to the SGSN. Furthermore the server initializes the
TCP flowcontrol parameters, e.g. to perform the slowstart.
The SGSN creates LLC frames out of the IP packets and
transmits them over the Gb interface to the PCU, if a
permission has been obtained from the leaky bucket flow
control, otherwise the LLC frames are queued. Packet queuing
on the Gb interface due to congestion is considered.
Meanwhile the PCU allocates radio resources (PDCHs) and
the necessary bandwidth on the dynamic Abis interface.
The LLC frames wait within a queue in the PCU for being
segmented into RLC blocks. The RLC blocks are scheduled
and transmitted over the air interface to the mobile. The PCU
polls the mobile for a bitmap to indicate the correctly and
erroneously received RLC blocks. The latter are retransmitted.
During the TBF lifetime the PCU performs a periodic TS
upgrade/downgrade and LA.
As soon as the MS has correctly received all the RLC
blocks belonging to the same LLC frame, it reassembles the
LLC frame and sends it to the connected Laptop/PC client. In
the client the corresponding IP packet and hence the TCP
segment is reassembled. On the receipt of a TCP segment with
the expected sequence number, the client sends an
acknowledgement to the server. Delayed acknowledgement is
considered. For segments out of sequence, the TCP layer of the
client transmits DUPACKs. Depending on the state of the TCP
parameters the server invokes on receipt of the TCP
acknowledgements and their sequence numbers the appropriate
TCP algorithm, e.g. flow control and congestion window
management, RTO handler and retransmission management, as
well as fast recovery/retransmissions.
As soon as the client has received all TCP segments of the
application data volume, the network resources of the packet
call are released. The client/user might send additional
download requests after a certain idle period. Otherwise the
GPRS/EDGE session is finished and the PDP context is deleted
in the SGSN.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS FOR IDEAL RADIO CONDITIONS
The GSMIEDGE standard specifies nine modulation and
coding schemes MCS-l ...MCS-9 utilizing both GMSK and 8-
PSK and providing RLC data rates of up to 59.2 kbps per
PDCH. The GERAN evolution concept EGPRS2-B supporting
higher order modulation and coding schemes with higher
symbol rate and turbo coding allows for 118.4 kbps per PDCH,
i.e, twice higher than that provided by legacy EDGE. A BLER-
based LA algorithm selects the most appropriate MCS/DBS
according to the radio conditions optimizing the overall
throughput [14], [15]. Hence under ideal radio conditions (zero
BLER) the highest MCS-9/DBS-12 with EDGE/EDGE2-B will
be selected all the time. Furthermore the support of the
extended UL TBF feature has been assumed.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Ivan Muzic. Downloaded on December 16, 2008 at 04:36 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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Figure 2a. EDGE MCS-9 FTP 2 MByte mean application throughput of 1 up
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with extended UL-TBF assumed).
File Size [kByte]
I--MS capabilty 4 TS ....6 TS .....8 TS .....10 TS ....12 TS Tsl
Figure 3a. EDGE MCS-9 FTP application throughput for 4 TS up to 14 TS
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Figure 2b. EDGE2-B DBS-12 FTP 2 MByte mean application throughput of
1 up to 14 TS MS depending on the TCP receiver window size.
(30% EDGE2 latency improvements assumed in addition).
Fig. 2a shows the simulated FTP 2 MByte end-to-end mean
application throughput for a single TS MS (one PDCH
allocated) up to 14 TS MS depending on the TCP receiver
window size ranging from 16 kByte (Windows XP default) up
to 48 kByte. Application throughput means that upper layer
effects such as TCP slow start as well as overhead including
TCP/IP and LLC headers have been considered, the latter
reducing the peak data rates by up to 5%.
The Windows XP default TCP window size of 16 kByte is
absolutely sufficient for 1 up to 4 TS allocations. Target
throughput of 56 kbps for single TS, 112 kbps for 2 TS, 169
kbps for 3 TS and 225 kbps for 4 TS MS has been achieved.
Obviously 16 kByte receiver window size is absolutely
insufficient for the dual-carrier approach and has to be properly
adjusted. A throughput degradation of roughly 10% from
approximately 340 kbps down to 300 kbps is clearly visible for
6 TS MS. A TCP receiver window size of24 kByte is required
for 6 and 8 TS MS to obtain peak throughput of 340 and 450
kbps, respectively. A lOTS MS needs a TCP window size of
32 kByte to achieve data rates of 550 kbps. A potential
throughput of650 kbps 1750 kbps to become feasible with 12 I
14 TS MS a TCP receiver window size of at least 40 kByte is
recommended.
The results shown in Fig. 2b for EDGE2-B reveal that the
TCP receiver window size has to be adjusted to 64 kByte to
File Size [kByte]
I.....MSCapabHity4 TS ....STS .....10 TS ....12TS Tsl
Figure 3b. EDGE2-B DBS-12 FTP application throughput for 4 TS up to 14
TS MS depending on file size with 64 kByte TCP receiver window size.
(30% EDGE2 latency improvements assumed in addition).
support data rates of up to 1.45 Mbps achievable with 14 TS
MS on an EDGE2-B dual-carrier. It is worth noticing that for a
certain application throughput the TCP receiver window size
required with EDGE2- B is significantly less than that required
with EDGE due to the latency reduction features to be
introduced with EDGE2-B significantly improving the TCP/IP
round trip time (ping reduction from currently 160 ms down to
less than 100 ms expected).
The impact of FTP download file size on the achievable
peak application throughput for different MS TS capabilities
ranging from 4 TS up to 14 TS is illustrated in Fig. 3a for
EDGE and in Fig. 3b for EDGE2-B respectively. The file size
has been varied from rather small 10 kByte to a quite large one
of 10 MByte. For a small file size no major difference in
throughput has been observed with different MS multi-slot
capabilities. Due to the adverse TCP slow start effect the user
data rate is heavily degraded down to approximately 100 kbps
for both EDGE and EDGE2-B. With increasing file size the
application throughput grows very rapidly up to a certain
saturation level depending on the MS multi-slot capability, e.g.
225 kbps for a 4 TS MS in EDGE and 450 kbps in EDGE2-B.
Apparently the higher the MS multi-slot class the larger is the
file size required for throughput saturation, e.g. a file size of 1
MByte is sufficient to obtain the target throughput of 225 I 450
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Figure 4a. EDGE FTP 500 kByte application throughput vs. system load for
8 TS MS on 2 non-BCCH carriers in 4x3 frequency reuse (4 reserved PDCH
per carrier).
Figure 5. PDCH utilization vs. system load on 2 non-BCCH carriers in 4x3
frequency reuse (4 reserved PDCH per carrier).
Figure 4b. Application throughput gain ofEDGE2-B vs. EDGE.
kbps for 4 TS MS, however, 5 MByte are required for 8 TS MS
to achieve 450 / 900 kbps and 10 MByte for 12 TS MS at 680 /
1360 kbps with EDGE / EDGE2-B respectively.
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IV. SYSTEM LEVEL SIMULATION RESULTS FOR REGULAR
HEXAGONAL CELL DEPLOYMENT
System level simulations have been performed for a dual-
carrier deployment scenario assuming 8 TS MS and FTP
download service with a constant download volume of 500
kByte (not a full buffer!) in a regular hexagonal cells
interference limited network with a 4/4/4 configuration (i.e, a
3-sector site with four TRX per sector) and 700 m cell radius.
In each cell (sector) 8 reserved PDCHs have been configured
on two non-BCCH TRXs planned in a relaxed 4x3 frequency
reuse. LA has been enabled in both scenarios EDGE and
EDGE2-B, while IR has been enabled only in EDGE.
Fig. 4a depicts the mean application throughput along with
the 10th and 90th user percentiles for varying system load
measured in terms of mean user busy hour (BH) data rate. In
the investigated scenarios an offered load of e.g. 500 bps
translates to 18.6 kbps per TS.
It shall be pointed out that the EDGE dual-carrier mean
user throughput of 350 kbps to 360 kbps achieved with 8 TS
MS under very low load conditions (up to 100 bps offered
load) is as high as in 3G-UMTS Re1.99 networks. 10% of the
EDGE users enjoy the top data rates of roughly 400 kbps and
900/0 ofthe subscribers achieve data rates higher than 250 kbps.
As the offered load increases the perceived user throughput
gradually decreases due to increased interference level in the
network and resource sharing between users. An excellent
mean user throughput of 200 to 250 kbps has been obtained at
medium load (400 to 600 bps), and even in a fully loaded
system (800 bps) mean user data rates well above 100 kbps are
feasible. Further increase of the data load drives the EDGE
network into congestion. The worst 10% of the users get
practically out of service (less than 32 kbps).
EDGE2-B outperforms EDGE in terms of both user
throughput and capacity over the entire system load range. The
gain in user throughput achieved by the introduction of the
higher order modulation and coding schemes with turbo coding
DBS-5 through DBS-12, increased 1.2 symbol rate as well as
the latency reduction features in GERAN evolution EDGE2
has been evaluated as a function of the offered system load
(Fig. 4b). Obviously the gain in peak data rates of roughly
factor 2 is independent of the load. The gain in both mean user
throughput and that of the best 10% users varies in the range of
60% to 90% for an offered load up to 700 bps. At system load
beyond 800 bps the EDGE scenario runs into congestion
causing the exponential gain growth. For an offered load higher
than 650 bps (24 kbps/TS) EDGE2-B provides more than
doubled throughput for the worst 10% users.
Furthermore the improvement in throughput performance
reduces the effective load in the network since the sojourn time
of each EDGE2-B user gets shorter. This improves the capacity
of the system. Fig. 5 clearly indicates the reduced PDCH-
utilization with EDGE2-B as the offered load increases. At
medium to high offered load (300 to 700 bps) the PDCH-
utilization measured in the EDGE scenario has been reduced
by nearly 30% in the EDGE2-B scenario. The spared resources
along with the enhanced link level performance and latency
reduction features in EDGE2-B translate to a roughly 100%
capacity gain as indicated in Fig. 4a. While the EDGE scenario
runs into an overload situation at 900 to 1000 bps offered load
the PDCH-utilization of 70% to 80% observed in the EDGE2-
B scenario still allows for excellent mean user throughput of
about 200 kbps.
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The cumulative distribution functions (CDF) of the
application throughput at low (100 bps), medium (500 bps) and
high system load (800 bps) are presented in Fig. 6.
The distributions clearly demonstrate the optimum
exploitation of the good radio conditions (good CIR) on the
non-BCCH carriers in 4x3 reuse. Especially at low load
EDGE2-B users can overwhelmingly profit from the excellent
CIR which is typically higher than 25 dB in 90% of the cell
area. While the application throughput for about 70% of the
EDGE users is limited to the peak value of 380 kbps (cf Fig.
4a), 50% of the EDGE2-B users enjoy 240 kbps higher
throughput (higher than 620 kbps). The best 10th EDGE2-B
users perceive almost double data rates (higher than 720 kbps).
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the user throughput
perception with EDGE2-B at high system load is at least as
good as with EDGE at medium load revealing the significantly
improved spectral efficiency of EDGE2-B. In addition the best
10th EDGE2-B users achieve data rates higher than 500 kbps.
v. CONCLUSIONS
The novel dual-carrier approach as well as the currently
standardized EDGE2-B GERAN evolution feature package
have been investigated by means of system level simulations
under both ideal and realistic radio conditions. Preserving the
modulation and coding schemes currently used with EDGE a
dual-carrier implementation on two non-BCCH carriers
planned in 4x3 frequency reuse demonstrates a substantial
performance gain over today's single carrier approach. A 3G-
UMTS Re1.99 like mean user throughput can be obtained in
EDGE dual-carrier networks.
Mean user throughput of 360 kbps has been measured for
FTP 500 kByte download with 8 TS capable MS at low system
load. TCP receiver window size and download file size have a
much stronger impact on the end-to-end performance of
EDGE2-B compared to that of EDGE. As an example, a TCP
receiver window size of 24 kByte is required for 8 TS MS to
achieve peak data rate of approximately 450 kbps in EDGE
while the receiver window size has to be adjusted to 40 kByte
for an EDGE2-B MS with 8 TS to support a peak data rate of
900 kbps. Following this recommendation and assuming
sufficiently large download file size target throughput of up to
800 I 1600 kbps could be achieved under ideal radio conditions
(single cell not coverage limited scenario) with the dual-carrier
approach using EDGE I EDGE2-B capable MS with 14 TS.
In a cellular interference limited deployment (4x3
frequency reuse) at medium system load EDGE2-B
outperforms EDGE providing more than 60% gain in mean
user throughput and an increase in network capacity of about
factor 2.
GERAN evolution including dual-carrier and EDGE2-B is
a promising method for enhancing GERAN packet data service
towards UMTS/HSDPAlHSUPA such that in near future
subscribers can enjoy seamlessly high data rates in multi RAT
mobile networks.
REFERENCES
[1] M. Taferer, E. Bonek, "Wireless internet access over GSM and UMTS",
Springer, 2002.
[2] C.F. Ball, K. Ivanov, R. MOllner, P. Stockl, "Impact of Configuration
and Parameter Settings on GPRS/EDGE Latency and Throughput",
IEEE Global Mobile Congress - GMC, Shanghai, 2004.
[3] 3GPP TSG GERAN, "Feasibility study for evolved GSM/EDGE radio
access network (GERAN)", 3GPP TR 45.912, Ver. 7.2.0, available at
www.3goo.org.
[4] 3GPP TS 43.064 Ver.7.9.0, "General Packet Radio Service (GPRS);
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[5] 3GPP TS 44.060 Ver. 7.13.0, "General Packet Radio Service (GPRS);
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Orlando, 2003.
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[14] C.F. Ball, K. Ivanov, P. Stockl, C. Masseroni, S. Parolari, R. Trivisonno,
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[15] C.F. Ball, K. Ivanov, L. Bugl, P. Stockl, "Optimizing GPRSIEDGE End-
to-End Performance by Link Adaptation and RLC Protocol
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