Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

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"3GSM" redirects here. For the mobile exhibition, see Mobile World Congress. Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular technology for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunications Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. UMTS employs Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators. UMTS specifies a complete network system, covering the radio access network(UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network, or UTRAN), the core network (Mobile Application Part, or MAP) and the authentication of users via SIM cards (Subscriber Identity Module). The technology described in UMTS is sometimes also referred to as Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA) or 3GSM.[1] Unlike EDGE (IMT Single-Carrier, based on GSM) and CDMA2000 (IMT Multi-Carrier), UMTS requires new base stations and new frequency allocations.
Contents [hide]

1 Features 2 Technology

2.1 Air interfaces

o o

2.1.1 W-CDMA (UTRA-FDD) 2.1.2 UTRA-TDD HCR 2.1.3 TD-SCDMA (UTRA-TDD 1.28 Mcps low chip rate)

2.2 Radio access network 2.3 Core network

3 Spectrum allocation 4 Interoperability and global roaming

4.1 Handsets and modems

5 Other competing standards 6 Migrating from GPRS to UMTS 7 Problems and issues 8 Releases

o o o o o o

8.1 Release '99 8.2 Release 4 8.3 Release 5 8.4 Release 6 8.5 Release 7 8.6 Release 8

9 See also 10 Literature 11 Notes 12 References 13 External links

[edit]Features

UMTS supports maximum theoretical data transfer rates of 42 Mbit/s when HSPA+ is implemented in the network.[2] Users in deployed networks can expect a transfer rate of up to 384 kbit/s for R99 handsets, and 7.2 Mbit/s for HSDPA handsets in the downlink connection. These speeds are significantly faster than the 9.6 kbit/s of a single GSM error-corrected circuit switched data channel, multiple 9.6 kbit/s channels in HSCSD and 14.4 kbit/s for CDMAOne channels. Since 2006, UMTS networks in many countries have been or are in the process of being upgraded with High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), sometimes known as 3.5G. Currently, HSDPA enables downlinktransfer speeds of up to 21 Mbit/s. Work is also progressing on improving the uplink transfer speed with the High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA). Longer term, the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) project plans to move UMTS to 4G speeds of 100 Mbit/s down and 50 Mbit/s up, using a next generation air interface technology based upon orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. The first national consumer UMTS networks launched in 2002 with a heavy emphasis on telco-provided mobile applications such as mobile TV and video calling. The high data speeds of UMTS are now most often utilised for Internet access: experience in Japan and elsewhere has shown that user demand for video calls is not high, and telco-provided audio/video content has declined in popularity in favour of high-speed access to the World Wide Webeither directly on a handset or connected to a computer via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared or USB.
[edit]Technology

UMTS Network Architecture

UMTS combines three different air interfaces, GSM's Mobile Application Part (MAP) core, and the GSM family of speech codecs.
[edit]Air

interfaces

UMTS provides several different terrestrial air interfaces, called UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA).[3] All air interface options are part ofITU's IMT-2000. In the currently most popular variant for cellular mobile telephones, W-CDMA (IMT Direct Spread) is used. Please note that the terms W-CDMA, TD-CDMA and TD-SCDMA are misleading. While they suggest covering just a channel access method (namely a variant of CDMA), they are actually the common names for the whole air interface standards.[4]
[edit]W-CDMA (UTRA-FDD)

Main article: W-CDMA (UMTS)

UMTS transmitter on the roof of a building

W-CDMA uses the DS-CDMA channel access method with a pair of 5 MHz wide channels. In contrast, the competing CDMA2000 system uses one or more available 1.25 MHz channels for each direction of communication. W-CDMA systems are widely criticized for their large spectrum usage, which has delayed deployment in countries that acted relatively slowly in allocating new frequencies specifically for 3G services (such as the United States). The specific frequency bands originally defined by the UMTS standard are 18852025 MHz for the mobile-tobase (uplink) and 21102200 MHz for the base-to-mobile (downlink). In the US, 17101755 MHz and 2110 2155 MHz will be used instead, as the 1900 MHz band was already used.[5] While UMTS2100 is the most widely deployed UMTS band, some countries' UMTS operators use the 850 MHz and/or 1900 MHz bands (independently, meaning uplink and downlink are within the same band), notably in the US by AT&T Mobility, New Zealand by Telecom New Zealand on the XT Mobile Network and in Australia by Telstra on the Next G network. Some carriers such as T-mobile use band numbers to identify the UMTS frequencies. For example, Band I (2100 MHz), Band IV (1700/2100 MHz), and Band V (850 MHz). W-CDMA is a part of IMT-2000 as IMT Direct Spread.
[edit]UTRA-TDD HCR

Main article: UTRA-TDD HCR UMTS-TDD's air interfaces that use the TD-CDMA channel access technique are standardized as UTRA-TDD HCR, which uses increments of 5 MHz of spectrum, each slice divided into 10ms frames containing fifteen time slots (1500 per second).[6] The time slots (TS) are allocated in fixed percentage for downlink and uplink. TD-

CDMA is used to multiplex streams from or to multiple transceivers. Unlike W-CDMA, it does not need separate frequency bands for up- and downstream, allowing deployment in tight frequency bands. TD-CDMA is a part of IMT-2000 as IMT CDMA TDD.
[edit]TD-SCDMA (UTRA-TDD 1.28 Mcps low chip rate)

Main article: TD-SCDMA TD-SCDMA uses the TDMA channel access method combined with an adaptive synchronous CDMA component[7] on 1.6 MHz slices of spectrum, allowing deployment in even tighter frequency bands than TD-CDMA. However, the main incentive for development of this Chinese-developed standard was avoiding or reducing the license fees that have to be paid to non-Chinese patent owners. Unlike the other air interfaces, TD-SCDMA was not part of UMTS from the beginning but has been added in Release 4 of the specification. Like TD-CDMA, it is known as IMT CDMA TDD within IMT-2000.