UMTS WCDMA HSPA HSDPA

Mobile, posted: 3-Apr-2009 13:45

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is one of the third-generation (3G) cell phone technologies. The most common form of UMTS uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) as the underlying air interface.

High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is a collection of mobile telephony protocol that extend and improve the performance of existing UMTS protocols. Three standards, HSDPA, HSUPA and HSPA+ have been established.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) deployments support peak downlink speeds of 1.2, 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 Mbps. Each data speed is defined as a Category within HSDPA.

High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) deployment support peak uplink speeds up to 5.76 Mbps. Also uses Categories to describe the various evolutions within HSUPA

HSPA+ (also known as: HSPA Evolution & Evolved HSPA) provides data rates up to 42 Mbps on the downlink and 22 Mbps on the uplink. Most common mechanism for increasing data rates is MIMO, a smart antenna technology.

LTE Long Term Evolution next version

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

HSDPA Categories
Category 1    1.2 Mbit/s
Category 2    1.2 Mbit/s
Category 3    1.8 Mbit/s
Category 4    1.8 Mbit/s
Category 5    3.6 Mbit/s
Category 6    3.6 Mbit/s
Category 7    7.2 Mbit/s
Category 8    7.2 Mbit/s
Category 9    10.2 Mbit/s
Category 10    14.4 Mbit/s

HSUPA Categories
Category 1    0.73 Mbit/s
Category 2    1.46 Mbit/s
Category 3    1.46 Mbit/s
Category 4    2.93 Mbit/s
Category 5    2.00 Mbit/s
Category 6    5.76 Mbit/s
Category 7     11.5 Mbit/s

Technology Standards Evolution
(2G)          GSM
(2.5G)        GPRS
(2.75G)    EDGE
(3G)         UMTS
                      WCDMA
                             Rel99
                             HSPA
                                  HSDPA
                                  HSUPA
                               HSPA+
LTE (4G)

It is worth noting that a number of 3G devices are WCDMA Rel99. This means that either their Uplink or both Uplink and Downlink is constrained to either 384kbps or even worse 128kbps.

Tag(s): umts wcdma hspa hsdpa hsupa categores

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Permalink to UMTS WCDMA HSPA HSDPA | Add a comment (1 comment) | Main Index

Comment by Loftus, on 3-Apr-2009 16:40

Don't forget the additional categories introduced with HSPA+, namely:

Cat 13: 17.6Mbps
Cat 14: 21.1Mbps

(Cat 11 & 12 are for devices unable to support 16QAM modulation, and have been somewhat superceded by cat 3+)

L

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Neal Richardson
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Firstly, I am a engineer. I am not from marketing, sales or public relations. Feel free to correct me if I have got anything technically incorrect.
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