Repeat Audio

The EDGE-Family

Formerly, EDGE was the abbreviation for Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution. Nowadays, with EDGE also being adopted by the North American market, EDGE is the acronym for Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution. However, EDGE is not a single standard or protocol stack for high speed mobile data. Instead, EDGE introduces a new modulation scheme which is 8-PSK in addition to, e.g. GMSK in the case of GSM. As illustrated in the figure below, three members of the EDGE family need to be distinguished. There is EDGE for GSM which will migrate GPRS and HSCSD to EGPRS and ECSD. There is also the North American EDGE extension for the IS-136 standard which is called IS-136 HS or EDGE Compact. Finally, there is UWC 136 which is the UWCC's proposal for IMT-2000.