A block coprocessor for user data rate improvements to GPRS coding scheme 4

The general packet radio service (GPRS) has been developed to allow packet data to be transported efficiently over an existing circuit-switched radio network, such as GSM. The main application of GPRS are in transporting Internet protocol (IP) datagrams from web servers (for telemetry or for mobile Internet browsers). Four GPRS baseband coding schemes are defined to offer a trade-off in requested data rates versus propagation channel conditions. However, data rates in the order of > 100 kbits/s are only achievable if the simplest coding scheme is used (CS-4) which offers little error detection and correction (EDC) (requiring excellent SNR) and the receiver hardware is capable of full duplex which is not currently available in the consumer market. A simple EDC scheme to improve the GPRS block error rate (BLER) performance is presented, particularly for CS-4, however gains in other coding schemes are seen. For every GPRS radio block that is corrected by the EDC scheme, the block does not need to be retransmitted releasing bandwidth in the channel and improving the user's application data rate. As GPRS requires intensive processing in the baseband, a viable field programmable gate array (FPGA) solution is presented in this paper.