Abstract:The introduction of global system for mobile communication (GSM) air interface has undoubtedly created a new area in telecommunications. In view of its extensive use in real world applications, it is highly desirable to further investigate the performance of the GSM system under different operating conditions and environments. Furthermore, there is increasing interest in using high-level modulation to provide enhanced data rate for GSM evolution (EDGE). This thesis investigates the performance of both GSM and GSM/EDGE systems operating in Raleigh fading channel. The results are reported for different models of fading channel in order to describe various environments. A detailed SIMULINK model is developed in MATLAB environment to simulate the GSM system. Furthermore, a MATLAB software package is developed to simulate extensively the EDGE system. Both simulation models are handled to characterize each essential part in these systems. The simulation takes into account channel coding, modulation type, interleaving and burst building, multipath channel effect, channel estimation, and detection process. The simulation results indicate clearly that to achieve a bit error rate (BER) of 1x10P -5 P in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio should be 5.25, 3.75 and 12.25 dB when GSM, MCS-1 EDGE (GMSK modulation), and MCS-7 EDGE (3ð/8-8PSK modulation) systems are used , respectively. These values are to be compared with R12R.43, R1R0.21 and R2R1.05 dB, respectively, for HT100-type fading channel. The MSC-1 system offers the best BER characteristics followed by GSM system. The MCS-7 offers the worst BER characteristics among the three systems.