The UMTS Network and Radio Access Technology: Air-Interface Techniques for Future Mobile Systems

• Authors: Jonathan P. Castro
• Venue: The UMTS Network and Radio Access Technology: Air-Interface Techniques for Future Mobile Systems
• Year: 2001

From the Book:The specification extracts in this book are intended to provide a concise reference for the manydocuments related to UMTS systems. After all, the whole UMTS specification set would probablyexceed 4000 pages. Thus, it is hoped that the synthesis presented in this book will be useful insome way. In this context, in order to offer a complete source on the UMTS air interface andnetwork issues, this book aims to present a description of the principles, methods and technologyused in the standard specification. Different aspects of the UMTS multiple access and networkconfiguration are presented; however, this concise and integrated volume, which embodies themain design elements, goes further. Thus, the content of this book follows structurally thespecifications of the 3GPP recommendations to comply entirely with the concept, terminology,approach and style, and not just the technical essence.Chapter 1 deals with concrete requirements for 3G mobile systems after summarizing the rapidgrowth of wireless communications and the Internet. It also outlines briefly enhancing technologiessuch as capacity increasing antennas, multi-user detection techniques, and software radioapplications.Chapter 2 presents the fundamentals of system analysis, e.g. multiple access options, whichconsiders narrow-band and wide-band digital channels, as well as the background for the UTRAFDD and TDD modes. It covers signal processing aspects describing the principles of spreadspectrum, modulation and spreading, the CDMA performance, PN sequences, power control andhandovers. It presents the communications environments envisaged for UMTS operation anddeployment. It also describes the channel models used to verify and justify the performance for theselected operating scenarios. It provides a summary of the mathematical formulation for theperformance analysis results seen in the forthcoming chapters (e.g. Chapter 7).Chapter 3 describes the UMTS development platform. It introduces its architecture top down,identifying the core and access network domains. It defines the UTRA identifiers and functions,e.g. system access control, radio channel ciphering and deciphering, mobility functions, and radioresource management and control functions. It also presents mobility management with itssignaling connections and impact of mobility handling. Chapter 3 presents the UTRANsychronization and UTRAN interfaces besides pointing out co-existing 2G/3G network issues. Italso introduces the radio interface protocol architecture with its structure in terms of services andfunction layers. This chapter thus outlines the most relevant elements, which require technicaldescription for design and implementation.Chapter 4 describes the UTRA physical layer design and configuration, where we introduce all thebuilding blocks in detail with their respective technical description and requirements. It all coversdedicated common transport channels, configuration of FEE and TDD physical channels in theuplink and downlink with their spreading and coding characteristics. Spreading and modulation,including scrambling, muliplexing and channel coding are also discussed. The chapter presentsthe aforementioned characteristics for the FDD and TDD separately for each mode or unified whenthe case applies to both.Chapter 5 introduces the UTRA transmission system starting from the spectrum allocation, i.e. theUTRA frequency bands. It presents the radio transmission and reception aspects, describingtransmitter and receiver characteristics for the User Equipment (UE) and the Base Station (BS). Itdescribes the maximum output power and output power dynamics, out of synchronization outputpower handling, transmit onloff power. Details on the output RF spectrum emissions, such asoccupied bandwidth and out band emission, spectrum emissions, adjacent channel leakage power ratio, spurious emissions, and transmit modulation and inter-modulation are given. The summaryof examples includes a review of simulation scenarios for the coexistence of FDD/FDD whenanalyzing ACIR with macro-to-macro and macro-to-micro cases. Before presenting results thechapter also reviews propagation models.Chapter 6 describes the UMTS service components. It covers the UMTS bearer architecture,concepts in quality of service for 3G systems, multimedia transmission and traffic classes inUMTS. The classes include conversational, streaming, interactive, and background types.Sensitivity to IP transmission impairments are also covered here. To provide an overview ofpotential applications in UMTS this chapter also summarizes service offerings and selected areasof service technology.Chapter 7 introduces the factors that influence 3G network dimensioning. It discusses coverageand capacity trade-off in the FDD mode pointing out impacts from soft handover, power controland orthogonality deviations. It covers the analysis of parameters for multi-service traffic in PS andCS. It establishes service models starting from capacity projections, and service strategy. Cellularcoverage planning issues, i.e. the coverage concept, radio network parameter assumptions for CSand PS, characteristics of CDMA cells (with its theoretical capacity and cell loading effects)constitute the essential parts of this chapter. Link budget principles for the forward and reverselinks and their respective formulation are covered. In the latter part, these principles are applied toa field study. For completeness the chapter also describes briefly the dimensioning of the RNC inthe UTRAN side. Chapter 7 also presents the dimensioning of the core network and transmissionsystems. In the last part, results of a field study are provided using hypothetical parameters toillustrate the concepts end-to-end. The illustrations correspond to dimensioning exercises carriedout while optimizing 3G networks. However, the input and output values in this chapter do notnecessarily reflect actual values that may be used directly while dimensioning a future UMTSnetwork. Finally, to complete the assessment of UMTS network deployment within 2G networkslike GSM, this chapter discusses briefly collocation and site sharing, as well as collocation ofantenna systems.Chapter 8 presents issues on resource and network management. It covers radio resourcemanagement and signalling, i.e. managing power (fast and low). The conceptual aspects ofnetwork management are covered from the network management system point of view. Initialconsiderations for network optimization are also covered.Chapter 9 as a prelude to future predominantly PS domain networks, covers the conceptualarchitecture of UMTS Release 2000 or more specifically Release 4 and 5. It starts with theevolution of R99 and discusses briefly the long term view and vision of the UMTS architecture.Then it describes the components of R00 with their corresponding interfaces or reference points.This chapter also presents an introduction to and considerations of mobility management,registration aspects, multimedia signalling, service platforms, QoS aspects, and transport issuessuch as the basic differences of Ipv4 and Ipv6.