UMTS: Universal Mobile

Telecommunications System

Presented By:
PRADEEP NYATI
INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
4th YEAR 8th SEM
 Aim of Presentation
 To attain a general understanding of UMTS systems
 GSM Evolution Towards UMTS
 UMTS: FDD/TDD
 UMTS Network Elements and Architecture
UE: User Equipments
UTRAN:UMTS Terrestrial Radio Accesses Network
CN: Core Network
 Major Interfaces in UMTS
 UMTS Protocol Stack
 Handover
 UMTS advantages
 UMTS: A Brief Overview
 UMTS is the recent telecomm Standard system (3G)
developed from the existing GSM system,one can say that
its a resultant of R&D done on various levels of 1st and
2nd generation GSM system.
 UMTS is the third generation solution developed and
adopted by ETSI (European Technical Standards
Institute).
 UMTS is a 3G ,GSM successor standard i.e. downward-
compatible with GSM.
 It increases the network speeds to 2Mbps per mobile user and
establishes a global roaming standard.
 It is a universal Mobile telecom system designed to provide

seamless telecomm services with enhancement in quality, data,

rate, reliability, connectivity , system interfaces adaptability
,current and next generation technologies …and so on.
 It is also referred to as wideband code division multiple access
(W-CDMA). It is an air interface standard found in 3g mobile
telecommunication system. It uses DS-CDMA channel access
method to achieve high speed. 
 GSM Evolution Towards UMTS
Evolution of GSM towards UMTS can be explained in terms of
“generations”:
 GPRS
General Packet Radio Service
The GPRS is a very important step of 2.5 generation.
It offers packet switching of packet data along with the
conventional circuit switching of voice data.
With eight time slots we achieve a maximum data rate
of 172.2kbit/s.
The billing is friendly, the data rates are high and call
setup time is very low.
 UMTS Modes

UMTS

UMTS-FDD UMTS-TDD
 UMTS FDD
• Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
Frequency Division Duplex Mode

• This mode uses W-CDMA(wideband CDMA)

• FDD uses different frequencies for uplink and downlink. For

uplink it uses between 1920-1980mhz and for downlink it

uses between 2110-2170 mhz.

• 15 slots with 2,560 chips per slot form a radio frame with a
duration of 10ms.

• QPSK modulation (Quadrature phase shift keying)

 UMTS TDD
•Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Time Division

duplexing mode.

•15 slots with 2,560 chips per slot form a radio frame with a
duration of 10ms.

•The TDD frame can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, i.e., the

frame can contain same number of uplink and downlink slots or
any arbitrary number.

•Compare to license for FDD, TDD is quite chip.

•The coverage per cell is less than FDD.

UMTS Architecture
Overview
 UMTS System Architecture

Uu Iu

Node B MSC/
GMSC
RNC VLR

External Networks
Node B
USIM
Cu Iur
Iub HLR

ME
Node B
RNC SGSN GGSN
Node B

UE UTRAN CN

12
 User Equipment UE
The UE consist of USIM(UMTS subscriber identity
module ) and mobile equipment (ME).
The UE acts as a counterpart of several nodes :
•As the counter part of node B , UE performs signal
quality measurements, inner loop power control.
•As the counter of RNC, UE has to cooperate during
handover and code selection, performs encryption and
decryption.
•As the counter part of CN , UE has to implement
mobility management and requests for certain services
from network.
Mobile Equipment
The function of radio
transmission and radio
communication is under
mobile equipment.

UMTS Subscriber Identity

Module
The smartcard that holds the
subscriber identity,
authentication and encryption
keys
Etc
 Core Network Architecture
Home Location Register (HLR)
Home Location Register (HLR) stores the
permanent as well as temporary
information about all the users registered
with the network.

Visitor Location Register (VLR)

A VLR stores the data about the users who
are being serviced currently.

Mobile Switching Centre (MSC)

The traffic of the mobile stations is routed
through a switch called Mobile Switching
Center (MSC)
 Core Network Architecture
Contd..
SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node) :-
SGSN is responsible for packet routing, Mobility management Logical
Link Management and authentication.
GGSN (gateway GPRS support node):-
It converts the packet coming from the SGSN into proper packet data
protocol (PDP) format (i.e. X.25 or IP) before sending to the outside data
network and vice versa.
GMSC (Gateway mobile switching center):-
Connection originating or terminating from external telephone (PSTN)
are handled by a dedicated gateway Gateway Mobile
Switching Center (GMSC)
 UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access
Network UTRAN
Node B
•Acts as the radio basestation (BTS in
GSM)
•Converts the data flow between the
Iub and Uu interfaces

RNC
•RNC calculates the traffic within
each cell and decides, if additional
transmissions are acceptable or not.
• Encrypts all data arriving from fixed
network before transmission over
network.
•Selects CDMA codes used by UE.
 Major Interfaces in UMTS
• There are four major new interfaces defined
in UMTS
• Iu
The interface between UTRAN
and the CN
• Iur
The Interface between different
RNCs
• Iub
The interface between the Node
B and the RNC
• Uu
The air interface
UMTS Protocol Stack
 UMTS Protocol Stack Contd..
The UMTS signaling protocol stack is divided into an Access Stratum (AS)
and a Non-Access Stratum (NAS). The Non-Access Stratum architecture
evolved from the GSM/GPRS upper layers and is divided into Circuit
Switched (CS) and Packet Switched (PS) protocols.

The Access Stratum consists of 3 layers:

Layer 3 –
The Radio Resource Control (RRC) layer handles establishment, release, and
configuration of radio resources.
Layer 2 –
Consists of two sub layers. The Radio Link Control (RLC)
 UMTS Protocol Stack contd..
sub layer provides segmentation, reassembly, duplicate
detection, and other traditional Layer 2 functions. The
Medium Access Control (MAC) sub layer multiplexes data
and signaling onto the appropriate channels and controls
access to the Physical Layer.

Layer 1 –
The Physical Layer transfers data over the radio link.
 HANDOVER
The whole process of tearing down the existing connection in the current cell and establishing a new connection in the appropriate cell is called handover.

Hard handover :-Handover where a connection is broken before a new radio connection is established between the user equipment and the radio access network. Inter frequency handover, i.e., changing the carrier frequency is a hard handover. Inter system handover are also hard handover in UMTS. A hand over to satellite system is also hard handover.
 HANDOVER Contd..
Soft handover:-
Soft handover are the CDMA specific handover types
in UMTS and available only in FDD mode. It occurs
when the mobile station is in the overlapping
coverage area of two adjacent cells. In the uplink
direction the signals received at the base station are
routed to the same rake receiver. In the downlink
direction the situation is slightly different as the base
station uses different scrambling codes to separate the
different sectors it serves.
 UMTS Advantages
Fast access
UMTS support 2Mbit/s data rates .This provide video
telephony and video conferencing.
Packet transmission and data rate on demand
Present cellular systems use circuit switched technology
for data. UMTS integrates packet and circuit data
transmission with the benefits of:
  - virtual connectivity to the network at all times.
- alternative ways of billing.
 UMTS Advantages Contd..
Mobility and Coverage
  UMTS is global system, comprising both terrestrial and satellite
components. So a subscriber is able to roam from a private
network into a micro-cellular public one, then into a wide area
macro cellular network, and then to a satellite mobile one, with
minimal break in communication.
UMTS is being standardised to ensure an efficient and effective
roaming and handover between satellite and terrestrial networks.