What is GPRS and what are the advantages of it?

GPRS definition

GPRS: General Packet Radio Service is a packet-switching technology that enables data transfers through the cellular network’s global system for mobile communications (GSM), providing end-to-end, wide-area wireless IP connectivity.

GPRS transmission rate can be improved to 56Kbps or even 114Kbps. Moreover, the existing wireless applications are no longer required as an intermediary converter, so the connection and transmission become more convenient and easy. In this way, users can log onto the Internet, participating in interactive communication such as video conference, and users on the same video network (VRN) can connect to the network even without dial-up.

Technical advantages of GPRS:

1. Relatively Low Connection Cost

In the GSM network, it has a high resource utilization. GPRS first introduced packet-switching, transmission mode, making the original use of circuit-switching GSM data transmission mode changing fundamentals, which is particularly important in the case of wireless resource scarcity.

For circuit-switching mode, the user will own the wireless channel independently whether data is transferred or not throughout the connection period. During the session, many applications often have much free time, such as Internet browsing, sending and receiving E-mails and so on. For packet-switching mode, the user only takes up resources during the period of transmitting or receiving data, which means that multiple users can efficiently share the same wireless channel, thereby improving resource utilization.

The billing of GPRS users takes the data volume of communication as the main basis, reflecting "how much obtain and how much to pay" principle. In fact, the GPRS users’ connection time may be as long as several hours, but only need to pay the relatively low connection cost.

2. High Transfer Rate

GPRS can provide transfer rate up to 115kbit/s (the maximum is 171.2kbit/s, excluding FEC). It  means that GPRS and ISDN users can quickly surf the Internet through portable computers within a few years, at the same time, it makes some mobile multimedia applications sensitive to the transmission rate become possible.

3. Short Access Times

GPRS mainly provides a connection between mobile users and remote data networks (e.g..  Support TCP/IP, X.25 and other networks), so that providing mobile users with high-speed wireless IP and wireless X.25 services.

GPRS adopts packet-switching technology, which allows multiple users to share some fixed channel resources. If the 8 slots of the TDMA frame in air interface are used to transmit data, then the data transfer rate can reach up to 164kb/s. The channel resources in the GSM air interface can be occupied by the voice and GPRS data services.

Of course, in the case of sufficient channels, some channels can be defined as a GPRS dedicated channel. To realize GPRS network, it needs to introduce a new network interface and communication protocol based on traditional GSM network. At present, GPRS network has introduced GSN (GPRS Supporting Node). The mobile station must be GPRS mobile station or GPRS / GSM dual-mode mobile station.