Questions

1.Explain benefits and challenges of wireless communications relative to wired communication?

2.Explain the evolution, market status and popular business actors for Cellular, Satellite,
Microwave and Radar Communication?
 Answers
1.1 Benefits of wireless communications relative to wired communications
1.1.2 Freedom from wires
Can be configured with the use of any physical connection.
1.1.3 Easy to setup
Wireless network is easy to expand and setup. Wireless network can be installed much faster and
ease, because it requires far less equipment to setup. Plus, we don’t need to spend time installing
countless cables and connecting each device to our network separately.
1.1.4 Better or global coverage
It provides global reach by providing networking in places such as rural areas, battlefields, etc…
where wiring is not feasible.
1.1.5 Flexibility
Wireless network is more flexible and adaptable compared to a wired network. Because wireless
communication uses air as channel instead of wired channel, like untwisted pair cable, coaxial
cable and optical fiber cable.
1.1.6 Cost-effectiveness
Since it is easy to install and doesn’t require cables, the wireless network is relatively cheaper.
Setting up a wireless network typically requires far fewer switches, routers, Ethernet cables, and
other hardware, as compared to installing wired networks. This is why the cost of implementing
it is relatively cheap, in most cases unless our network setup requires additional equipment, such
as a commercial grade router or wireless repeaters.
1.1.7 Mobile and portable: Wireless network is easy to carry and re-install in another place.
There is no rely or dependency on set of cables to stay online to download the important files and
reference documents. It has good mobility of usage.
1.1.8 Maintenance
Is easier, since most of the job is software based, and not hardware based.
1.2 Challenges of wireless communications relative to wired communications
1.2.1 Path loss: Path loss is one of the mechanisms causing attenuation between the transmitter
power amplifier and receiver front end. Path loss, or path attenuation, is the reduction in
power density (attenuation) of an electromagnetic wave as it propagates through space.
Path loss is a major component in the analysis and design of the link budget of a
telecommunication system. Path loss may be due to many effects, such as free-space
loss refraction, diffraction, reflection, aperture medium coupling loss and absorption.
Path loss is also influenced by terrain contours, environment (urban or rural, vegetation
and foliage), propagation medium (dry or moist air), the distance between the transmitter
and the receiver, and the height and location of antennas.
1.2.2 Reflection and Refraction of radio signals: Radio waves almost always travel through
space in a straight line. There are two exceptions. One is that radio waves are pulled and turn
slightly because of gravity when they pass by large masses. The other exception is that radio
waves can be reflected by certain substances, like the way that light is reflected by a mirror. We
encounter situations involving the reflection of waves all around us, for example, in the
phenomenon of echo, the sound reflected from a distant object reaches the listener with a little
delay. In the image shown below, we can see what happens when a pulse or a travelling wave
encounters a rigid boun

dary. We see how under such a situation the pulse or the wave gets reflected.

When a wave is an incident on any surface, a part of the incident wave is reflected and a part is
transmitted into the second medium. If the wave is incident obliquely on the boundary, the
transmitted wave can also be termed as a reflected wave.
Here, the incident and the refracted waves obey Snell’s of refraction, and the incident and the
reflected waves obey the laws of reflection. The reflection of a wave or a pulse can happen from
two types of surfaces, it can either be a fixed wall or a ring, as shown in the image below.
When the right end of the string is tied to a ring, which slides up and down without any friction
on a rod, we term it as a free end.  In this case, when the pulse arrives at the right end, the ring
moves up the rod and as it moves, it pulls on the string, stretching the string and producing a
reflected pulse with the same sign and amplitude as the incident pulse. Thus, in such a reflection,
the incident and reflected pulses reinforce each other, creating the maximum displacement at the
end of the string: the maximum displacement of the ring is twice the amplitude of either of the
pulses. Thus, the reflection occurs without any additional phase shift. In the case of a travelling
wave the reflection at an open boundary the reflection takes place without any phase change.
1.2.3 Diffraction of radio signals: Occurs when the path is blocked by an object with large
dimensions relative to one and sharp irregularities (edges). Secondary “wavelets” propagate into
the shadowed region. Diffraction gives rise to bending of waves around the obstacle. Diffraction
is caused by one wave of light being shifted by a diffracting object. This shift will cause the
wave to have interference with itself. Interference can be either constructive or destructive.
When interference is constructive, the intensity of the wave will increase. Diffraction occurs with
all waves, including sound waves, water waves, and electromagnetic waves such as visible light,
X-rays, and radio waves in wireless communication.

1.2.4 Scattering of radio signals: Occurs when a wave impinges upon an object with
dimensions on the order of I or less, causing the reflected energy to spread out or “scatter” in
many directions. Small objects such as street lights, signs, & leaves cause scattering Multipath in
wireless communication.
1.2.6 Multipath propagation
 In wireless telecommunications, multipath is the propagation phenomenon that results
in radio signals reaching the receiving antenna by two or more paths. Causes of multipath
include atmospheric ducting, ionospheric reflection and refraction, and reflection from water
bodies and terrestrial objects such as mountains and buildings. The effects of multipath
include constructive and destructive interference, and phase shifting of the signal.
Destructive interference causes fading. Where the magnitudes of the signals arriving by
the various paths have a distribution known as the Rayleigh distribution, this is known as
Rayleigh fading. Where one component dominates, a Rician distribution provides a more
accurate model, and this is known as Rician fading. In facsimile and television transmission,
multipath causes jitter and ghosting, seen as a faded duplicate image to the right of the main
image. Ghosts occur when transmissions bounce off a mountain or other large object, while
also arriving at the antenna by a shorter, direct route, with the receiver picking up two signals
separated by a delay. In radar processing, multipath causes ghost targets to appear, deceiving
the radar receiver. These ghosts are particularly bothersome since they move and behave like
the normal targets, and so the receiver has difficulty in isolating the correct target echo.
These problems can be overcome by incorporating a ground map of the radar's surroundings
and eliminating all echoes which appear to originate below ground or above a certain height.

Figure ,1.3 Multipath propagation.

1.2.7 Interference
Interference is a fundamental nature of wireless communication systems, in which multiple
transmissions often take place simultaneously over a common communication medium. In
recent years, there has been a rapidly growing interest in developing reliable and spectrally
efficient wireless communication systems.
Interference occurs when unwanted signals disrupt wireless communication, including the use of
your television, radio etc. Interference may prevent reception altogether, may cause only a
temporary loss of a signal, or may affect the quality of the audio or video produced by your
equipment. There are two types of interference - man-made and natural. The two most common
causes of man-made interference are transmitters and electrical equipment.

All communication systems that transmit signals are capable of generating interference.
Transmitters may produce ‘harmonics’ that may show up on undesired frequencies. Design
flaws such as insufficient filtering and inadequate shielding or frayed or corroded wires, dry
solder etc. may make equipment susceptible to cause and/or suffer interference
1.2.8 Handoff
The final obstacle in the development of cellular network involved the problem created when
a mobile subscriber traveled from one cell to another during a call. As adjacent areas do not
use the same radio channels, a call must either be dropped or transferred from one radio
channel to another when a user crosses the line between adjacent cells. Because dropping the
call is unacceptable, the process of handoff was created. Handoff occurs when the mobile
telephone network automatically transfers a call from radio channel to radio channel as a
mobile crosses adjacent cells (see Figure 1.4)

Figure, 1.4 Handoff between adjacent cells.

2.1 Evolution, market status and popular business actors for Cellular, Satellite,
Microwave and Radar Communication.
2.1.1 Evolution of cellular communication
2.1.1.1 Introduction
All over the world, wireless communications services have enjoyed dramatic growth over the
past 25 years. It was only in late 1983 that the first commercial cellular telephone system in the
United States was deployed by Ameritech in the Chicago area. That was the analog service
called Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS). Today, digital cellular telephone services are
available throughout the world, and have well surpassed fixed-line telephone services both in
terms of availability and number of users. In fact, as of March 2010 we have over 4.8 billion
mobile subscribers in the world, which is more than double the number of fixed line subscribers
and amounts to a higher than 60% penetration. The relative adoption of wireless versus fixed line
is even more dramatic in the developing world. For example, in India, wireless penetration is
more than four times that of fixed line.
It took less than 20 years for mobile subscribers worldwide to grow from zero to over one
billion users. This amazing growth demonstrates not only the strong desire of people around the
world to connect with one another and have access to information while on the move, but also
the tremendous strides that technology has made in fulfilling and further fueling this need. The
developments in RF circuit fabrication, advanced digital signal processing, and several
miniaturization technologies that made it possible to deploy and deliver wireless communication
services at the scale and scope that we see today are indeed quite remarkable.
Today, we are at the threshold of another major revolution in wireless. While mobile voice
telephony drove the past growth of wireless systems and still remains the primary application, it
is abundantly clear that wireless data applications will drive its future growth. In the past two
decades, the Internet transformed from being a curious academic tool to an indispensable global
information network providing a vast array of services and applications—from e-mail to social
networking and e-commerce to entertainment. As illustrated in Figure 2.1, the global growth in
wireless over the past decade was accompanied by a parallel growth in Internet usage.
Worldwide, over 1.5 billion people use the Internet today, and there are over 500 million
subscribers to Internet access
Figure, 2.1 Global growth of mobile, Internet, broadband, and fixed telephone line subscribers
from 1998–2009 [I].
services; of these over 400 million have broadband or high-speed connections to the Internet. In
the United States, more than 60% of households have broadband access to the Internet.
Users worldwide are finding that having broadband access to the Internet dramatically changes
how we share information, conduct business, and seek entertainment. Broadband access not only
provides faster Web-surfing and quicker downloading but also enables several multimedia
applications, such as real-time audio and video streaming, multimedia conferencing, and
interactive gaming.
2.1.1.2 First Generation Cellular Systems
The United States, Japan, and parts of Europe led the development of the first generation of
cellular wireless systems. The first generation systems were characterized by their analog
modulation schemes and were designed primarily for delivering voice services. They were
different from their predecessor mobile communications systems in that they used the cellular
concept and provided automatic switching and handover of on-going calls. Japan’s Nippon
Telephone and Telegraph Company (NTT) implemented the world’s first commercial cellular
system in 1979. Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT-400) system, deployed in Europe in 1981, was
the first system that supported automatic handover and international roaming. NMT-400 was
deployed in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, and Spain. Most NMT-400
subscribers used car phones that transmitted up to 15 watts of power.
The more successful first generation systems were AMPS in the United States and its variant
Total Access Communication Systems (ETACS and NTACS) in Europe and Japan. These
systems were almost identical from a radio standpoint, with the major difference being the
channel bandwidth. The AMPS system was built on a 30kHz channel size, whereas ETACS and
NTACS used 25kHz and 12.5kHz, respectively. Table 2.1 provides a quick summary of first
generation cellular systems.
Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS)
Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) AMPS was developed by AT&T Bell Labs in the late
1970s and was first deployed commercially in 1983 in Chicago and its nearby suburbs. The first
system used large cell areas and Omni-directional base station antennas. The system covered
2,100 square miles
Table 1.2 Major First Generation Cellular Systems

with only ten base stations, each with antenna tower height between 150 ft. and 550 ft. Most of
the early systems were designed for a carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR) of 18dB for satisfactory
voice quality, and were deployed in a 7-cell frequency reuse pattern with 3 sectors per cell.
Besides the United States, AMPS was deployed in several countries in South America,
Asia, and North America. In the United States, the FCC assigned spectrum to two operators per
market—one an incumbent telecommunications carrier and the other a new non-incumbent
operator. Each operator was assigned 20MHz of spectrum, supporting a total of 416 AMPS
channels in each market. Of the 416 channels, 21 channels were designated for control
information and the remaining 395 channels carried voice traffic. AMPS systems used
Frequency Modulation (FM) for the transmission of analog voice and Frequency Shift Keying
(FSK) for the control channel. Even after the deployment of second generation (2G) systems,
AMPS continued to be used by operators in North America as a common fallback service
available throughout the geography, as well as in the context of providing roaming between
different operator networks that had deployed incompatible 2G systems.
2.1.1.3 2G Digital Cellular Systems
Improvements in processing abilities of hardware platforms over time enabled the development
of 2G wireless systems. 2G systems were also aimed primarily toward the voice market but,
unlike the first generation systems, used digital modulation. Shifting from analog to digital
enabled several improvements in systems performance. System capacity was improved through
(1) the use of spectrally efficient digital speech codecs, (2) multiplexing several users on the
same frequency channel via time division or code division multiplexing techniques, and (3)
tighter frequency re-use enabled by better error performance of digital modulation, coding, and
equalization techniques, which reduced the required carrier-to-interference ratio from 18dB to
just a few dB. Voice quality was also improved through the use of good speech codecs and
robust link level signal processing. 2G systems also used simple encryption to provide a measure
of security against eaves dropping and fraud, which were a source of major concern with first
generation analog systems.
Examples of 2G digital cellular systems include the Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM), IS-95 CDMA, and IS-136 TDMA systems. GSM is by far the most widely deployed of
these systems; IS-95 is deployed in North America and parts of Asia; IS-54 (later enhanced to
IS-136) was initially deployed in North America but was later discontinued and replaced mostly
by GSM. IS-136 was a TDMA-based system that was designed as a digital evolution of AMPS
using 30kHz channels. The Personal Handy phone System (PHS) deployed in China, Japan,
Taiwan, and some other Asian countries is also often considered a 2G system. PHS is a cordless
telephone system like the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone (DECT) system but with
capability to handover from one cell to another, and operated in the 1880–1930MHz frequency
band. Table 1.3 provides a summary comparison of the various 2G digital cellular systems.
Besides providing improved voice quality, capacity, and security, 2G systems also enabled new
applications. Prime among these was the Short Messaging Service (SMS). SMS was first
deployed in Europe in 1991, and quickly became a popular conversational tool
Table 2.2 Major Second Generation Cellular Systems

among younger mobile subscribers. Today, over 2.5 billion SMS messages are sent each day in
the United States alone, and the service has been used for delivering news updates, business
process alerts, mobile payments, voting, and micro-blogging, among other things.
In addition to SMS, 2G systems also supported low data rate wireless data applications.
Original 2G systems supported circuit switched data services (similar in concept to dial-up
modems), and later evolved to support packet data services as well. Early wireless data services
included information services such as the delivery of news, stock quotes, weather, and directions,
etc. Limitations in data rate and available space for display in handheld devices meant that
specialized technologies, such as the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), had to be developed to
tailor and deliver Internet content to handheld devices.
GSM and Its Evolution
In 1982, many European countries came together under the auspices of the Conference of
European Posts and Telegraphs (CEPT) to develop and standardize a Pan-European system for
mobile services. The group was called the Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) and their main charter
was to develop a system that could deliver inexpensive wireless voice services, and work
seamlessly across all of Europe. Prior to GSM, the European cellular market was fragmented
with a variety of mutually incompatible systems deployed in different countries: Scandinavian
countries had NMT-400 and NMT-900, Germany had C-450, the United Kingdom had TACS,
and France had Radiocom.
By 1989, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) took over the
development of the GSM standard and the first version, called GSM Phase I, was released in
1990. Shortly thereafter, several operators in Europe deployed GSM. GSM quickly gained
acceptance beyond Europe and the standard was appropriately renamed as the Global System for
Mobile Communications. According to the Informa Telecoms and Media, an industry analyst,
GSM and its successor technologies today boast over 4.2 billion subscribers spread across 220
countries, a 90% global market share. The broad worldwide adoption of GSM has made
international roaming a seamless reality.
The GSM air-interface is based on a TDMA scheme where eight users are multiplexed on a
single 200kHz wide frequency channel by assigning different time slots to each user. GSM
employed a variant of FSK called Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) as its modulation
technique. GMSK was chosen due to its constant envelope property providing good power and
spectral efficiency characteristics.
Besides voice and SMS, the original GSM standard also supported circuit-switched data at
9.6kbps. By the mid-1990s, ETSI introduced the GSM Packet Radio Systems (GPRS) as an
evolutionary step for GSM systems toward higher data rates. GPRS and GSM systems share the
same frequency bands, time slots, and signaling links. GPRS defined four different channel
coding schemes supporting 8kbps to 20kbps per slot. Under favorable channel conditions, the
higher 20kbps rate can be used, and if all eight slots in the GSM TDM frame were used for data
transmission, in theory, GPRS could provide a maximum data rate of 160kbps. Typical
implementations of GPRS provided a user data rate of 20–40kbps.
Figure 1.2 provides a high-level architecture of a GSM/GPRS network. It is instructive to
review this architecture as it formed the basis from which later 3G systems and LTE evolved.
The original GSM architecture had two sub-components:
Base Station Subsystem: This is comprised of the base-station transceiver (BTS) units that the
mobile stations (MS) connect with over the air-interface and the base station controller (BSC),
which manages and aggregates traffic from several BTSs for transport to the switching core, and
manages mobility across BTSs connected

Figure,2.2 GSM network architecture.

directly to them. BSCs evolved to become Radio Network Controllers (RNC) in the 3G
evolution of GSM.
Network Switching Sub-system: This is comprised of the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and
subscriber data bases. The MSC provides the required switching to connect the calling party with
the called party and is interconnected with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The
MSC uses the Home Location Register (HLR) and Visitor Location Register (VLR) to determine
the location of mobile subscribers for call control purposes.
As shown in Figure 2.2, a GSM system may be upgraded to a GPRS system by introducing new
elements, such as the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) and Gateway GPRS Support Node
(GGSN), and upgrading existing network elements such as the BTS with a packet control unit
(PCU) for handling data. SGSN provides location and mobility management and may be thought
of as the packet data equivalent of MSC. GGSN provides the IP access router functionality and
connects the GPRS network to the Internet and other IP networks.
The GSM standard got a further boost in its data handling capabilities with the introduction of
Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution, or EDGE, in the early part of 1997. EDGE added
support for 8PSK modulation to boost the data rate. This allowed for a maximum per slot data
rate of 59.2kbps—a three-fold increase from GPRS speeds. Typical user rates for EDGE varied
from 80 to 120kbps.
2.1.1.4 3G Broadband Wireless Systems
Clearly, 2G digital cellular systems provided significant increase in voice capacity, improved
voice quality, and began support for data applications such as Internet access. The circuit-
switched paradigm based on which these systems were built made 2G systems very inefficient
for data, and hence provided only low-data rate support—tens of kilobits per second, typically—
and limited capacity.
Third generation (3G) systems were a significant leap over 2G, providing much higher data
rates, significant increase in voice capacity, and supporting advanced services and applications,
including multimedia. Work on 3G began in the early 1990s when the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) began invitation for proposals for 3G systems (known as
IMT-2000) and started identifying spectrum for it. The ITU’s objective was to create a globally
harmonized specification for mobile communication that would facilitate global interoperability
and provide the scale to lower cost. The ITU laid out the following data rate requirements as the
criterion for IMT-2000:
• 2Mbps in fixed or in building environments
• 384kbps in pedestrian or urban environments
• 144kbps in wide area vehicular environments
Besides high data rate, 3G systems also envisioned providing better Quality of Service (QoS)
control tailored for a variety of applications—from voice telephony and interactive games, to
Web browsing, e-mail, and streaming multimedia applications.
A number of proposals were submitted to the ITU over the past 10–15 years, and six have been
accepted so far. One of the more interesting aspects of the 3G proposals was the choice of
CDMA as the preferred access technique for the majority of 3G systems. Not only did the IS-95
camp propose evolution toward a CDMA-based 3G technology called CDMA2000, but the GSM
camp offered its own version of CDMA, called wideband CDMA (W-CDMA). So far, the ITU
has accepted and approved the following terrestrial radio interfaces for IMT-2000:
• IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread (IMT-DS): This standard is more commonly known as W-
CDMA and was proposed as the air-interface for the Universal Mobile Telephone Service
(UMTS) solution proposed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as the evolution
of GSM systems
. • IMT-2000 CDMA Multi-carrier (IMT-MC): This standard was proposed by the 3GPP2
organization and represents an evolution of the IS-95 systems. They are more commonly known
as IX-EV-DO.
• IMT-2000 CDMA TDD (IMT-TC): This standard is also proposed by 3GPP for operation in
unpaired spectrum using Time Division Duplexing technology. It is also known as UMTS-TDD
or TD-SCDMA (Time Division, Synchronous CDMA) and is mostly used in China.
• IMT-2000 TDMA Single Carrier (IMT-SC): This standard was proposed by the Universal
Wireless Consortium in the United States as a lower-cost evolution to 3G. Also called UWC-
136, this is essentially the EDGE standard developed by 3GPP.
• IMT-2000 FDMA/TDMA (IMT-FT): The Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT)
standard was also accepted as an IMT-2000 air-interface, primarily for indoor and pico-cell
applications.
• IMT-2000 IP-OFDMA: This standard, more commonly known as WiMAX or IEEE 802.16e,
was accepted by the ITU as a sixth air-interface in 2007.
Table 2.3 provides a quick summary of the major 3G system characteristics. A more detailed
discussion of the four major 3G technologies is provided in the following subsections.
2.1.1.4.1 CDMA 2000 and EV-DO
The 3G evolution of IS-95 standards was called CDMA2000 by the CDMA community. Though
most of the early work was done by Qualcomm and the CDMA development group, the official
standardization process moved to a collaborative standards body called the Third Generation
Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) in 1999. CDMA2000-1X was the first evolution of IS-95 toward
3G accepted as an IMT-2000 interface. The 1X term implies
 Table 2.3 Summary of Major 3G Standards

that it uses the same bandwidth (1.25MHz) as IS-95. The data capabilities were enhanced by
adding separate logical channels termed supplemental channels. Each link can support a single
fundamental channel (at 9.6kbps) and multiple supplemental channels (up to 307kbps). Strictly
speaking, this is less than the 3G requirements, and for this reason, one may refer to
CDMA2000-1X as a 2.5G system. The data rate can be increased up to 2Mbps through the use of
multiple carriers as in CDMA2000-3X. CDMA2000-1X theoretically doubles the capacity of IS-
95 by adding 64 more traffic channels to the forward link, orthogonal to the original set of 64.
The uplink was improved through the use of coherent modulation; and the downlink through the
addition of fast (800Hz) power control to match the uplink. Advanced antenna capabilities were
also integrated into the new standard through options for transmit diversity as well as
supplemental pilot options for beam-steering. A key to these upgrades is that they are backward
compatible. CDMA2000 and IS-95A/B could be deployed on the same carrier, which allowed
for a smooth migration.
In order to achieve higher data rates (up to 2Mbps) as well as improve overall system
throughput for packet data scenarios, the CDMA2000-1X standard was also evolved to
CDMA2000-1X-EVDO (Evolution, Data Only). As the name implies, the standard is applicable
to data traffic only and there is no support for voice or other real time services.
Though it uses a 1.25MHz channel bandwidth and shares radio characteristics with IS-95, it
cannot be deployed on the same carrier as CDMA2000-1X RTT or IS-95. This required service
providers to dedicate a single carrier to data services in order to deploy data.
EV-DO originally was developed as a High-Data Rate (HDR) solution by Qualcomm for use
in fixed and nomadic applications meeting the 2Mbps low mobility requirements of IMT-2000. It
was, however, later upgraded to meet the full mobility requirements and was indeed the first
system to provide real broadband-like speeds to mobile users. In fact, the first deployment of
EV-DO occurred in 2002, a full three years ahead of a similar system—HSDPA—being
deployed by GSM operators. According to the CDMA Development Group, as of July 2009, EV-
DO had over 120 million subscribers.
EV-DO is designed to be an asymmetric system providing downlink rates up to 2.4Mbps and
uplink rates up to 153kbps. The downlink is actually a TDMA link where multiple users are time
multiplexed. The system supports QPSK and 16QAM modulation and coding rates from 1/5 to
1/3. Depending on the modulation and coding scheme chosen, user rates can vary from 38.4kbps
to 2457.6kbps. EV-DO has the capability to adaptively change the modulation and coding based
on link conditions.
Enhancements to EV-DO were made in EV-DO Rev. A, which improved the peak user data
rates to 3.07Mbps and 1.8Mbps in the downlink and uplink, respectively, while providing a more
symmetric link. In commercial deployments, Rev A achieves average throughput of 450–
800kbps in the forward link and 300–400kbps in the reverse link.
2.1.1.2.4 UMTS WCDMA
Universal Mobile Telephone Service (UMTS) was originally developed by ETSI as the 3G
system for IMT-2000 based on the evolution of GSM. As GSM went global, in 1998, the 3GPP
was formed as a collaboration of six regional telecommunications standards bodies from around
the world to continue the development of UMTS and other standards of GSM heritage. 3GPP
completed and published the first 3G UMTS standard in 1999, and that standard is often called
UMTS Release 99. UMTS Release 99 is widely deployed around the world and enjoys broad
success. According to the trade groups 3G Americas and the UMTS Forum, as of May 2010,
UMTS networks have been deployed by 346 operators in over 148 countries [2] and has over
450 million users [3].
UMTS includes (1) a core network (CN) that provides switching, routing, and subscriber
management; (2) the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN); and (3) the User
Equipment (UE). The basic architecture is based on and backward compatible with the
GSM/GPRS architecture described in Figure 2.2, with each element enhanced for 3G
capabilities. The BTS becomes Node-B, BSC becomes the Radio Network Controller (RNC), the
NSS becomes CN, and the MS is called the UE.
 While UMTS retains the basic architecture of GSM/GPRS networks, the 3G air interface called
Wide-band CDMA (W-CDMA) is a radical departure from the 2G air interface. The W-CDMA
design was inspired by the success of IS-95 and builds on its basic features. It is a Direct
Sequence Spread Spectrum CDMA system where user data is multiplied with pseudo-random
codes that provide channelization, synchronization, and scrambling. W-CDMA is specified for
both FDD and TDD operations, although FDD is by far the most widely deployed. The system
operates on a larger 5MHz bandwidth, capable of supporting over 100 simultaneous voice calls,
and providing peak data rates from 384 to 2048kbps. Besides the channel bandwidth, other
notable distinguishing features of W-CDMA when compared to CDMA2000 include: (1) support
for multi-code use by a single user to increase data rate, (2) wider choice of spreading factors and
data rates, and (3) use of Alamouti space-time coding for transmit diversity.
2.1.1.5 HSPA
High-Speed Packet Access, or HSPA, is the term used to refer to the combination of two key
enhancements by 3GPP to UMTS-WCDMA: (1) High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)
introduced in Release 5 in 2002 and (2) High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) introduced
in Release 6 in 2004. HSDPA was first deployed by AT&T in late 2005 and quickly became
widely deployed around the world. As of February 2010, HSPA has been deployed by 303
operators in 130 countries, with many more being planned [2]. For the most part, HSPA was
deployed as a software upgrade to existing UMTS systems.
Since Internet usage patterns in the late 1990s showed that most of the applications demanded
higher throughput on the download, 3GPP UMTS evolution focused initially on improving the
downlink. HSDPA defined a new downlink transport channel capable of providing up to
14.4Mbps peak theoretical throughput. This downlink transport channel called the High-Speed
Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH), unlike previous W-CDMA channels, uses time division
multiplexing as the primary multi-access technique with limited code division multiplexing.
HSDPA has 16 Walsh codes, 15 of which are used for user traffic. A single user could use 5, 10,
or 15 codes to get higher throughputs, though this is often limited to 5 or 10 by UE
implementations. To achieve higher speed, this channel uses a 2ms frame length, compared to
frame lengths of 10, 20, 40, or 80ms used by W-CDMA channels. Practical deployments of
HSDPA provided typical user throughputs in the 500kbps to 2Mbps range.
CONCLUSION
Wireless Networks having few common limitations and challenges. Quality of Service, energy
limitations, power limitation, security and multitasking are various challenges in Wireless
Networks. The security of any wireless network should be checked frequently to detect attacks if
any by the adversaries nodes and should be defensive to deploy new security mechanism. There
are several security standards should be used as per the confidentiality concerns. Security
methods provided by EAP to support a variety of upper layer authentication methods each with
different benefits and drawbacks. Any one of these authentication methods can be the ideal
choice for a specific networking environment and security requirements.
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