Improving EGPRS Capacity using Orthogonal Sub Channels (OSC)

Due to the increasing demand for data services in mobile networks, operators are observing the quality of data services to degrade as their packed switched (PS) resources become insufficient. Even though there are newer 3/4G technologies available, EGPRS is still a good solution for data services due to ubiquitous coverage, the availability of low cost user terminals and its low deployment costs. Hence, alternative solutions are needed to deal with this increased data traffic without affecting the voice services, which play an important role in GSM networks. This paper presents a study on the usage of the Orthogonal Sub Channels (OSC) for improving voice capacity in order to increase the available resources for PS data services in a GSM/EGPRS network, showing that along with OSC it is possible to increase the number of EGPRS subscribers without extensive capital expenditure, such as increasing the number of radios or acquiring further spectrum resources.