Wireless Internet access based on GPRS

Internet technology has emerged as the major driving force behind new developments in the area of telecommunications networks. The volume of packet data traffic has increased at extreme rates. In order to meet these changing traffic patterns, more and more network operators adapt their strategies and plan to migrate to IP-based backbone networks. Clearly, the Internet will dominate our daily life in the future much more than today. Meanwhile, mobile networks face a similar trend of exponential traffic increase and growing importance to users. In some countries, such as Finland, the number of mobile subscriptions has recently exceeded the number of fixed lines. This tremendous success was not expected in the 1980s, when today's second-generation mobile communication systems were designed. The combination of both developments, the growth of the Internet and the success of mobile networks, suggests that the next trend will be an increasing demand for mobile access to Internet applications. It is therefore increasingly important that mobile radio networks support these applications in an efficient manner. Thus, mobile radio systems currently under development include support for packet data services. The most widely deployed standard for second-generation mobile radio networks is the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) [1]. Networks based on this standard will be extended in the near future with the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), which provides data rates up to 160 kb/s. When discussions about GPRS started in the early 1990s, applications such as road transport telematics and financial services were driving the demand. The high costs for circuit-switched GSM connections prevented the widespread use of mobile data transmission for such services. In recent years, however, end-user applications such as Web browsing and e-mail are becoming increasingly popular; therefore, the Inter-net has dominated the standardization of GPRS. Internet applications are predicted to contribute the largest share of the expected traffic volume. In brief, GPRS can be described as a service providing optimized access to the Internet, while reusing to a large degree existing GSM infrastructure. Advanced mobile terminals using multiple slots will offer more convenient and faster Internet access than today's technology. The GPRS concept allows volume-oriented charging, which permits users to have cheap, permanent connections to the Internet. This article concentrates on two objectives. First, it provides an overview of GPRS, including technology, architecture , and applicability; second, it presents some simulation results that exhibit the GPRS performance. In particular, the article analyzes Web …