Chapter 1
UMTS High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
1.1 Standardization and Current Deployment of HSDPA
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is the forum where standardization has been handled from the first Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) specification on. It unites many telecommunication standard bodies to coordinate their regional activities in order to establish global standards aligned down to bit-level details. The 3GPP was created in December 1998, with the original scope of producing technical specifications and technical reports for 3G mobile systems, both for Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes. The scope was subsequently amended to include the maintenance and development of Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), and Enhanced Data Rates for Global system for mobile communications Evolution (EDGE) specifications. The specifications themselves are published regularly, with major milestones being denoted as “Releases” [20].
Figure 1.1 shows the chronological development of the 3GPP standardization releases. During the work on Rel'4, it became obvious that some improvements for packet access would be needed [30]. Rel'5, which was finished in June 2002, thus introduced a high-speed enhancement for the Downlink (DL) packet data services: High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA).1 The innovation that happened for HSDPA was quite ...
