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UMTS and WCDMA Overview
UMTS and WCDMA Overview
UMTS and WCDMA Overview
1 Background Information
Pre-reading: See the ‘3G Cellular Mobile Overview’ document.
Three major cellular mobile systems under the hood of IMT-2000 are UMTS (by 3GPP), CDMA2000 (by 3GPP2) and
EDGE (also called as EGPRS) (by UWCCC or newly named 3G America). The following figure depicts how the 2G
systems are heading towards 3G systems (her UMTS is represented by W-CDMA, which is one but the most prominent
system of UMTS). This document gives an overview of W-CDMA and CDMA2000 (UWC-136 or EDGE is covered under
GSM/GPRS).
http://www.comsec.uwaterloo.ca/~flchiu/CDMA/IMT2000%20standard.pdf
2 UMTS Overview
UMTS was formed in 1996 and then joined with few other organizations to form a bigger 3GPP body to carry on the ‘GSM-
driven CDMA’ system (see ‘3G Cellular Mobile Overview’ document for a further detail) where it adopts CDMA for the
radio interface but keeps GSM technologies as much as it can. The UMTS has three major systems: W-CDMA TD-CDMA
and TD-SCDMA. Among them the W-CDMA is the most prominent system.
In addition to traditional speech and data communication services, UMTS offers the user full interactive multimedia
communications, information and entertainment services with speeds of up to 2 Mbit/s, comparable with the current fixed
networks. Further evolutions of UMTS will make even higher transmission speeds possible.
In UMTS there are four different kinds of services defined. Each with its own quality of service:
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The UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) is the fixed network infrastructure that contains the facilities for the
transmission to and from the mobile users over radio. The components of the UTRAN are the base stations, which are called
Node B in UMTS, and control nodes, which are called Radio Network Controller (RNC). The Radio Network Controllers are
connected to the Core Network (CN).
The interface for the transmission to and from the mobile users is called the UTRA (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access). There
are two different modes: an UMTS FDD mode and a UMTS TDD mode. The FDD requires a paired band (up and down
link) whereas TDD works with an unpaired band.
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• The UTRA makes use of W-CDMA in the paired bands. These bands are used the following bit-rates:
144 kbit/s in suburban and rural areas (high-mobility => up to 500 km/h)
up to
384 - 512 kbit/s in urban areas (medium-mobility => up to 120 km/h)
W-CDMA is officially known as IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread (CDMA DS). The main characteristics of W-
CDMA are:
• The UTRA TDD has two types: TD-CDMA and TD-SCDMA, which use unpaired band. These bands are used for
high bit rates at hotspots (up to 2 Mbit/s) with low-mobility (less then 10 km/h). All bit rates are based on the first
generation of UMTS (Release 1999). Further evolutions of UMTS will make even higher transmission speeds
possible
IP-based Multimedia Services (IMS) is a part of the UMTS specification (as of Release 5) that provides IP transport in the
core network and the radio access network (UTRAN). IMS enables the convergence of data, speech, and mobile network
technology over an IP–based infrastructure.
IMS was designed to fill the gap between the existing traditional telecommunications technology and Internet technology.
This will allow operators to offer end-to-end IP services. This increases the potential for new innovative services and service
integration with other networks such as the Internet.
IMS enriches the way people communicate with each other by combining voice, image, and video into a single session. IMS
uses SIP and session description protocol (SDP) underneath architecture to communicate between various IMS components.
The architecture of IMS specifically helps enable and enhance real-time multimedia mobile services such as rich voice
services, video telephony, messaging, conferencing, and push services.
IMS enables these user-to-user communication services via a number of key mechanisms such as session negotiation and
management, quality of service (QoS) and mobility management. However, IMS enables much more than just real-time user-
to-user services.
The HSDPA is an enhancement of the UMTS radio-interface to make higher data rates possible. HSDPA introduces a high
speed downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH). This high speed channel is shared among the users. The "theoretical" peak data
rate is in the order of 14 Mbps. HSDPA provides average data throughput speeds of 550-1100 kbps to the user. The delay
within the network (latency) is also lower.
HSDPA can be implemented in the standard 5 MHz channels available for UMTS. HSDPA requires a software and hardware
modification of the base stations (Node B) as well as a software upgrade of the Radio Network controller (RNC). The user
will require a new terminal.
The GERAN is a radio access network architecture, based on GSM/EDGE radio access technologies. The GERAN is fully
harmonised with the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) through a common connectivity to the UMTS core
network. This makes it possible to build a combined network for GSM/GPRS and UMTS.
The HSUPA is an enhancement of the UMTS radio-interface to make higher data rates possible in the uplink. To do so,
HSUPA introduces an enhanced dedicated channel (E-DCH). In UMTS Release 6, HSUPA is referred to as E-DCH.
The HSUPA improves the coverage, the throughput as well as the delay of the uplink dedicated transport channels.
HSUPA is the counterpart of HSDPA, which improves the data rate on the downlink.
The MBMS is a feature to provide the capability for Broadcast and Multicast Services in GERAN (GSM/EDGE) or UMTS
mobile networks. MBMS can be used to transfer light video and audio clips or other data to a large group of mobile
subscribers in an efficient manner. To do so, MBMS is a so-called point-multipoint service. This means that multiple users
receive the same information using the same radio resources.
In MBMS there are two different kinds of services defined. A broadcast service in which every user can receive the
information within the service area and a multicast service in which only users that have subscribed to the service can receive
the information. Multicast users have a return channel which gives the possibility for interactive services. This return channel
can also be used to subscribe to the desired service.
Although MBMS can be used for mobile TV, it has some limitations in the capacity that can be used for this kind of services
within the network. MBMS can take up to 30% of the capacity of a cell. In the first phase of Multimedia Broadcast and
Multicast Service (MBMS) this capacity can be used to deliver streams of 64 - 256 kbps over an UMTS network and 32 to
128 kbps streams over a GSM/EDGE network. Additional improvements in the technology (such as HSDPA) will enhance
the throughput and the quality of service.
The MIMO) is a technique that utilizes multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver, i.e. at both the base station
and the terminal in a wireless network. Each antenna sends only a part of the total bit stream.
MIMO is especially useful in an environment with a lot of multipath fading i.e. in an environment where there are more than
one transmission paths from the transmitter to the receiver due to reflections. This is especially the case in a mobile
environment and in an in-house environment. MIMO technology will be used by both UMTS and Wi-Fi as a technology to
increase the data capacity of a link.
The network architecture for EDGE is basically the same as that for GPRS, the same network elements, the same interfaces,
the same protocols and the same procedures. The only minor differences lie in the air interface improvement for supporting
higher data transfer rate and reliability.
Since the coded signal looks like higher bit-rate signal (7 times higher in the above example) the bandwidth of the resultant
signal is expected to be higher. In the above example, if the original signal bandwidth is 1 MHz then the coded signal’s
bandwidth is 7 MHz. However, this seven bandwidth is not used just this signal. It is shared by many others (bandwidth per
user is lower enough).
The following figures show how CDMA signal is generated in the transmitter and recovered in the receiver.
signal reception. Question is how much separation is good enough? It is like, what voice quality is good enough for
you in a poor coverage area. The fact is there is no hard threshold. This is the key to the flexibility we are talking
about. If a network operator reduces its quality it can allocate more codes and hence more users using the same
bandwidth (Just imagine a poorer quality at peak hours and better quality at other hours).
The chip rate may be extended to two or three times the standard 3.84 Mcps to accommodate data rates higher than 2 Mbps.
The 200 kHz carrier raster has been chosen to facilitate coexistence and interoperability with GSM.