Enhancing Packet Data Performance by dynamic Half-Rate Allocation of Speech Services

As customer demand for wireless data services increases the bandwidth requirements for new applications are rapidly growing. Half-rate speech codecs have been introduced in GERAN networks to save operator's spectrum shared by circuit switched voice and packet switched data services. The released physical resources by allocating voice calls on half-rate channels can be efficiently utilized to significantly increase the data rate of packet switched services. Since by nature the speech quality on half-rate channels is inferior to that on full-rate channels a dynamic half-rate assignment strategy has been introduced triggering half-rate allocation by taking into account both the radio conditions of the voice call and the cell traffic load.