3G UMTS

3G cellular systems, most notably UMTS, are currently the most widely deployed mobile broadband technology with a huge established presence in terms of operators, customer base, brand, deployed base station sites, and backhaul capacity. Standardized by 3GPP in its Release 5, HSDPA is a tremendous performance upgrade for UMTS packet data, enabling peak data rates up to 14.4 Mbit/s, although the initial limit is 1.8 Mbit/s.

Latency is also reduced, and spectral efficiency is improved as well. These improvements are achieved through improved modulation and coding, and implementing fast scheduling and retransmissions at base station level.

Although most WCDMA/HSDPA deployments are based on FDD where different radio bands are used to separate downlink and uplink transmission, 3GPP specifications also include a TDD version of UMTS where both transmit and receive functions alternate in time on the same radio channel. This can be beneficial for the many asymmetric data applications that consume more bandwidth in the downlink than in the uplink.

A TDD radio interface can dynamically adjust the downlink to uplink ratio accordingly, and thus can balance both forward link and reverse link capacity. Spectral allocation is also more straightforward, as TDD requires only one band instead of two bands and a further guard band in FDD. UMTS TDD is also known as TD-CDMA and has been commercialized by the vendor IP Wireless. (Rysavy 2005)

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MOBILE BROADBAND WIRELESS ACCESS

Emerging telecommunications applications such as multimedia streaming, music download, on-line gaming and content browsing are popular examples of the digital revolution we have been facing as the world gets connected.Fixed broadband access has already become an urban commodity in the developed countries, but so far there have been few means of delivering these bandwidth-consuming services effectively and affordably to the significant number of rural and mobile users.

However, recent advances in e.g. signal processing, radio protocols, and mobile network infrastructure are now enabling the concept of mobile broadband for consumers around the world.

Mobile broadband is defined here as the potential to transfer low-latency user data with speeds exceeding 256 kbit/s while roaming the network with seamless handover between adjacent cells. This paper presents the different mobile broadband technologies with commercial availability already or within a few years.

Related regulation aspects are important factors affecting the regional markets. Analysis of the current market situation, significant vendors’ strategies and foreseen future developments are also used to draw the conclusions about the respective potential of these technologies.

Currently there are a number of different technologies for broadband wireless access for both fixed and mobile applications. Some of them are completely proprietary, based on vendor-specific solutions that are noninteroperable, while others are based on open standards developed by industry working groups. In the following subsections, we briefly describe the fundamental characteristics of the currently most significant wireless broadband technologies, focusing on key metrics such as operating frequencies, channel bandwidth, cell sizes, user data rates and latency, handover capabilities, and timeframe of availability.

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Mobile Broadband

To understand Mobile Broadband it is important to understand the terms broadband and mobile separately first.

Mobile access technology is a technology used for communication; to transmit data between network element and user device via radio frequency waves. In order to facilitate the service continuity, network infrastructure is required to manage radio resource and mobility. The information data is routed via different network elements in the infrastructure. Example of this type of network infrastructure are GSM Network Evolution (WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, HASP) or CDMA Network Evolution (CDMA2000 1X EV-DO, EV-DO Rev A, EV-DO Rev B, Flash OFDM).

Broadband is the system of sending and receiving small packets of data, from one computer to a server computer and hence forth. Conventionally this data would get transferred using cables with optical fiber. Data flows via these cable wires like packets of information and get delivered and vise versa.

Increasingly sophisticated technology in modulation technique and cellular network architecture provides a platform for data to be delivered via cellular radio network in a more power and spectrum efficient way. Its objective is to provide continuous wireless access to packet data networks. However from the data rate and latency performance perspective, it is quite close to the fixed broadband access; such as cable modem and ADSL.

The advantages of mobile broadband are numerous: simply a user can be connected on the move:- everywhere and anytime.

EvDO provides very high data throughput, with a theoretical maximum speed of about 2 megabits per second. HSDPA speeds theoretically can reach 3 mbps and faster--so fast that some people call HSDPA a "3.5G" service.

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