Nokia Siemens Crosses Significant Mark in GSM Evolution Path

Nokia Siemens Networks says it has successfully carried out a test drive for the Orthogonal Sub Channel (OSC) to carry four calls in one GSM radio timeslot. According to the company this will increase the voice capacity of GSM two fold.

 

Nokia (News - Alert) Siemens Networks provides a complete portfolio of mobile, fixed and converged network technology, as well as professional services including consultancy and systems integration, deployment, maintenance and managed services.

 

As service providers are facing with reduction in revenue on calls per minute Nokia Siemens (News - Alert) believes this new innovation will give providers a big support.

 

“This successful demonstration opens up a profitable growth path for operators, evolving their networks to a new level of efficiency with minimized CAPEX and OPEX (News - Alert). This is made possible by a software upgrade to existing Flexi EDGE Base Station and Base Station Controller. OSC is fully interoperable with existing handsets, so it promises immediate cost saving for operators”, said Prashant Agnihotri, head of GSM/EDGE product management, Nokia Siemens Networks (News - Alert).

 

Nokia Siemens says this demonstration as a commitment to greener products and solutions. As existing base station can handle more capacities there is no need for operators to install additional infrastructure to expand their business, which in turn saves energy and decreases the CO2 emissions.

 

The company said the OSC demonstration was the first of its kind. They are actively contributing to the standardization of OSC and are planning to have the technology commercially available in 2010.

 

The company officials explain the concept of Orthogonal Sub-channels (OSCs) and how they can be used to increase the voice capacity of GSM EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN) cells (GSM is Global System for Mobile; EDGE is Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution). In an OSC scheme, the base station (BS) uses Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation for downlink (DL), which multiplexes voice data from two users. The multiplexing is done such that legacy Mobile Stations (MSs) using Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) can receive their respective data.