Written by: Frank Müller, Joakim Sorelius and Dalibor Turina

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The next evolutionary step for the GSM/EDGE cellular system is a standardization of enhancements that yield greater alignment with UMTS/UTRAN, thus further evolving GSM toward third-generation wireless systems. These enhancements are currently being specified for the GSM/EDGE radio access network (GERAN) in coming releases of the 3GPP standard. By using the EDGE high-speed transmission technique, and combining it with a GPRS radio link interface (and further enhancing it), GERAN provides efficient support for all QoS service classes defined for UMTS. Thus, GERAN can support a range of new applications, including IP multimedia. GERAN is also adopting the UMTS architecture—through its support of the Iu interface, GERAN connects to the same UMTS core network as UTRAN.

[First published in Ericsson Review no. 03, 2001]