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TUTORIAL I UMTS: High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) Technology

Syed Ismail Shah

Iqra University, Islamabad, Pakistan

ABSTRACT As of July 31, 2007, there are over 522 million 3G subscribers in the world (source: 3gtoday.com). Out of these 130 million are on UMTS, a growth of almost 100% in one year. Data services are expected to grow significantly within the next few years. Current 2.5G and 3G operators are already reporting that a significant proportion of usage is now due to data, implying an increasing demand for high-data-rate, content-rich multimedia services. Although current Release 99 WCDMA systems offer a maximum practical data rate of 384 kbps, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have included in Release 5 of the specifications a new high-speed, low-delay feature referred to as High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). HSDPA also known as Release 5, provides significant enhancements to the Downlink compared to WCDMA Release 99 in terms of peak data rate, cell throughput, and round trip delay. This is achieved through the implementation of a fast channel control and allocation mechanism that employs such features as Adaptive Modulation and Coding and fast Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ). Shorter Physical Layer frames are also employed High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) (UMTS Release 6) complements the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology. As the name suggests the improvement is in the uplink where the theoretical uplink data rate can be up to 5.76 Mbps. Together, HSDPA and HSUPA offer reduced latency and much higher data rates on the downlink and uplink, theoretically as high as 14.4 Mbps in the downlink and up to 5.76 Mbps in the uplink. Together they are now also known as the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA). HSPA also reduces latency and improves network capacity. The new radio capabilities enable a new set of packet-based applications to go wireless in an efficient way. For operators the network upgrade from WCDMA to HSPA is straightforward as the HSPA solution builds on top of the WCDMA radio network, reusing all network elements. This tutorial provides an overview of HSPA. Starting with Release 99, the tutorial will cover HSDPA (Release 5) and then the details of HSUPA (Release 6).

BIOGRAPHY Syed Ismail Shah did his PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA in 1997. Dr. Shah is a QUALCOMM certified trainer and has conducted several workshops and tutorials on UMTS/WCDMA and CDMA2000 technologies in many countries. He has been teaching wireless and digital communication at internationally reputable universities. He is currently working as, Head, Department of Computing and Technology, Iqra University Islamabad Campus (www.iqraisb.edu.pk), Pakistan and is also the founding member of the Central Asian CDMA forum (www.3gca.org) Dr. Shah is a Senior Member, IEEE, USA. Prior experience of the presenter is: • Main Speaker and Resource Person at the workshop on 3G Wireless Technologies at the University

of Pittsburgh, PA, USA, June 2006. • Keynote speaker at the 10th IEEE International Multi-topic Conference, Pakistan, Dec. 2006. • Tutorial on 3G technologies at the IEEE International Conference on Information and Emerging

Technologies (ICIET), Karachi, Pakistan, July 2007. • Tutorial on HSPA Technology at the IEEE 7th IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing

and Information Technology, Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 2007.

978-1-4244-2152-7/08/$25.00 ©2008