Information about handover and EDGE

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Tomek Kuchta - 23 Oct 2006 22:43 GMT

Hi,
I am looking for information about handovers in GSM (Intra Cell, Inter
BTS) and EDGE system. If anyone knows web resources about those topis
and could post links to them I would be grateful for help.
Thank you in advance,
Tomek Kuchta

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Antti - 24 Oct 2006 15:48 GMT

> Hi,
> I am looking for information about handovers in GSM (Intra Cell, Inter
> BTS) and EDGE system. If anyone knows web resources about those topis
> and could post links to them I would be grateful for help.
> Thank you in advance,
> Tomek Kuchta

I'm not sure whether by handover you mean CS connection handover (e.g.
speech) or cell reselection in idle or during (E)GPRS data transfer. (For
now, handovers are not supported for (E)GPRS i.e. PS connections as this is
specified starting from Rel-6 and no devices or networks so far support
that).

Anyhow, regardless of what kind of specific information you are after, I
think the 3GPP specifications should shed some light into it. See (for
example):

03.64 (GPRS radio interface stage 2) :
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest/R1999/03_series/0364-8c0.zip
05.08 (Radio link control) :
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest/R1999/05_series/0508-8n0.zip
04.18 (RR) :
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest/R1999/04_series/0418-8r0.zip
04.60 (RLC/MAC) :
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/latest/R1999/04_series/0460-8r0.zip

NOTE:
CS above means Circuit-Switched
PS above means Packet-Switched

Antti

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Tomek Kuchta - 24 Oct 2006 20:56 GMT

Thank you very much for reply.

> I'm not sure whether by handover you mean CS connection handover (e.g.
> speech) or cell reselection in idle or during (E)GPRS data transfer.

I am searching for information about procedure of changing "singal
path" during call (inside the cell by switching to another channel or
between cells). If I understood correctly, that would be "CS connection
handover".

> Anyhow, regardless of what kind of specific information you are after, I
> think the 3GPP specifications should shed some light into it. See (for
> example):

I have been looking for specifications there, but through WWW search on
3GPP's page. When I wanted to download a document I have been doing it
by providig my e-mail (first I had created account). Do you know if
use/download of documents on ftp server, that you linked to is
restricted to 3GPP members?

Thank you once again.
Best regards,

Tomek Kuchta

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matt weber - 24 Oct 2006 23:13 GMT

>Hi,
>I am looking for information about handovers in GSM (Intra Cell, Inter
>BTS) and EDGE system. If anyone knows web resources about those topis
>and could post links to them I would be grateful for help.
>Thank you in advance,
>Tomek Kuchta

I don;t think an Edge handover is any different than any other GSM
handover. All EDGE does is to encode the carrier with 4 bits per
symbol instead of 1 bit per symbol. It is all software at both ends.

There are several good texts on the inner working of GSM. I happen to
like introduction to GSM by Reid,Weber & Oliphant.
I am no relation to that Weber, but I knew Oliphant very well 40 years
ago.

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Anonymous - 25 Oct 2006 06:40 GMT

>>Hi,
>>I am looking for information about handovers in GSM (Intra Cell, Inter
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> handover. All EDGE does is to encode the carrier with 4 bits per
> symbol instead of 1 bit per symbol. It is all software at both ends.

To be accurate, it is 3 bits per symbol (8-PSK) which of course needs some
HW support too (starting from a power amplifier that supports linear,
non-constant envelope modulation), and EDGE improves the protocol
performance too. But in this context, your (intentionally) simplified
description should be sufficient.

> There are several good texts on the inner working of GSM. I happen to
> like introduction to GSM by Reid,Weber & Oliphant.
> I am no relation to that Weber, but I knew Oliphant very well 40 years
> ago.

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Tomek Kuchta - 25 Oct 2006 07:44 GMT

Thank you for replies.

Now I realised that I created question incorrectly. I meant to ask
about 2 things :
1) moving active calls to other channels/BTS (Intra Cell, Inter BTS
handovers)
2) EDGE system - information about how it works (not necessarily
related to handover mechanism)

I apologise for being not precise.

Best regards ,

Tomek Kuchta

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