enhanced general packet radio service (GPRS) (EGPRS)
Enhanced General Packet Radio Service (EGPRS) is based on General Packet Radio Service(GPRS), extended by Enhanced Data Service for GSM Evolution( EDGE). It is a mobile communications technology that can achieve much higher transmission rates than GPRS because EDGE starts with modulation and transmits several bits in a carrier phase change.
EDGE is being promoted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute( ETSI) as part of the IMT-2000 project for the 3rd generationmobile communications network.
GPRS, a packet-switched method, achieves relatively high data rates due to channel bundling, which are further increased by EDGE.
With GPRS, the available time slots are bundled for transmission. How many time slots can be bundled for transmission depends on whether only data traffic or also voice transmission takes place. It also depends on the quality of the radio link. Channel bundling is defined in the multislot classes, in which the channels for the transmit and receive directions are specified.
EDGE, on the other hand, works with two different modulation methods: Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying ( GMSK) modulation and phase shift keying (8PSK). If the connection permits, the transmission works with 8- PSK and can thus roughly triple the data rates of GPRS. If the different coding schemes are taken into account and combined with channel bundling, the peak value of 473.6 kbit/s is reached. However, this value is only achieved when all eight time slots are available simultaneously for data transmission in one direction.