HSPA EVOLUTION IN 3GPP RELEASE 7

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The Third Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) specifications included major
improvements in downlink data rates and capacity in release 5 with the introduction of high-
speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) in 2002. Similar technical solutions were applied to
the uplink direction as part of the release 6 with high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) at
the end of 2004. 3GPP release 7 in June 2007 completed a number of additional and
substantial enhancements to the end-user performance, to the cell throughput, and to the
network architecture. The detailed 3GPP release 7 solutions and their performance benefits
are summarized in this paper.

1.1 MOBILE TERMINAL POWER CONSUMPTION REDUCTION

WITH CONTINUOUS PACKET CONNECTIVITY
The technology evolution, in general, helps to decrease the mobile terminal power
consumption. Also, the fast and accurate power control in wide-band code division multiple
access (WCDMA) helps to minimize the transmitted power levels. The challenge in 3GPP
from release 99 to release 6 is still the continuous reception and transmission when the
mobile terminal is using HSDPA/HSUPA. 3GPP release 7 introduces a few improvements to
HSDPA/HSUPA that help to reduce the power consumption for packet services like browsing
and voice-over-IP (VoIP).

3GPP release 6 mobile terminal keeps transmitting the physical control channel even if there
is no data channel transmission. Release 7 mobile terminal cuts off the control channel
transmission when there is no data channel transmission, allowing it to shut down the
transmitter completely. This solution is called discontinuous uplink transmission, and it
brings clear savings in transmitter power consumption.

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1.2 PEAK DATA RATE INCREASE WITH MIMO AND HIGHER

ORDER MODULATION

The downlink peak data rate with release 6 HSDPA is 10.8 Mbps, with 3/4 coding and
14.4Mbps, without any channel coding. In theory, there are a number of ways to push the
peak data rate higher: larger bandwidth, higher order modulation, or multi-antenna
transmission with multiple input multiple output (MIMO). MIMO and higher order
modulation are included into HSPA evolution in release 7. 3GPP long term evolution (LTE)
also enables larger bandwidth, up to 20 MHz. The 3GPP MIMO concept, for HSDPA
operation in release 7, employs two transmit antennas in the base station and tworeceive
antennas in the terminal and uses a closed loop feedback from the terminal for adjusting the
transmit antenna weighting. The diagram of the MIMO transmission is shown in Fig. 1
Higher order modulation enables higher peak bit rate without increasing the transmission
bandwidth. Release 6 supported quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16 quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM) transmission in the downlink and dual-binary phase shift
keying (BPSK) in the uplink. Dual-channel BPSK modulation is similar to QPSK. The
release 7 introduces 64 QAM transmission for the downlink and 16 QAM for the uplink. 16
QAM can double the bit rate compared to QPSK by transmitting four bits instead of two bits
per symbol. 64 QAM can increase the peak bit rate by 50 percent compared to 16 QAM
because 64 QAM transmits six bits with a single symbol.

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Figure 1: 2×2 MIMO transmission concept.

The 64 QAM modulation improves the user data rate with 15–25 percent probability
depending on the scheduling (RR = round robin, PR = proportional fair). The rest of the time
the channel conditions are not good enough to enable the reception of 64 QAM modulation.
New HSDPA and HSUPA terminal categories were added in release 7. The HSDPA
categories 13 and 14 include 64 QAM, and categories 15 and 16, MIMO. The peak bit rate
with 64 QAM is 21.1 Mbps and with MIMO, 28.0 Mbps. The combination of 2x2 MIMO and
64 QAM modulation would push the theoretical peak data rate beyond 40 Mbps; however,
that combination is not included in release 7 but will be discussed for release 8. The HSUPA
category 7 is added in release 7 with 16 QAM capability, doubling the uplink peak rate to
11.5 Mbps.

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CHAPTER 2
CELL CAPACITY AND DATA RATE ENHANCEMENT WITH
ADVANCED MOBILE RECEIVERS

The introduction of HSDPA to release 5 included performance requirements with Rake

receiver using single antenna. Release 6 brought two types of enhanced receivers: enhanced
type 1, corresponding to a two-antenna Rake receiver and enhanced type 2, corresponding to
a one antenna chip equalizer. Release 7 brought further enhanced type 3, corresponding to a
two-antenna chip equalizer. The antenna diversity improves the signal to interference ratio
because the interference is partly uncorrelated in the different antennas. The chip equalizer
removes intra-cell interference caused by the multipath propagation leading to higher signal-
to-interference ratio. When the signal-to-interference ratio increases, user equipment (UE)
will report higher channel quality information (CQI) values back to the base station. The CQI
refers to the particular data rate the terminal expects to receive with the current signal
strength and multipath environment.
The advantage of such a relation between the advanced receivers and reported CQI values is
that no modifications are required to the base station algorithms to benefit from the advanced
receivers in mobile terminals. Note that 3GPP will not define the type of advanced receiver
one must use; only a reference receiver is used to set the performance requirements that a
mobile terminal must meet to declare it as enhanced Type 1-, 2-, or 3-compliant. The
advanced receivers in mobile terminals improve the single user data rates and cell capacities
due to increased average CQI reporting as discussed previously. The capacity improvements
are shown in Fig. 4, assuming finite transmission buffers. The simulation results are shown
with different number of codes in the network and with round robin and a proportional fair-
packet scheduler. More details about the HSDPA packet schedulers can be found in [2]. The
gain of the two-antenna equalizer receiver is 100–150 percent compared to the one-antenna
Rake and 50–80 percent compared to the one-antenna equalizer. The achievable macro cell
capacity is 4 Mbps with a two-antenna equalizer with a dedicated HSDPA carrier and
proportional fair scheduler. That capacity corresponds to the spectral efficiency of nearly 1
bps/Hz/cell.
The downlink MIMO transmission further improves the cell throughput. The more detailed
capacity evaluations can be found in [5].

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Additional downlink capacity enhancements can be achieved with inter-cell interference

cancellation in the receiver of the mobile terminal. Such enhanced receivers also are being
studied in 3GPP to improve the capacity and especially the cell-edge data rates. Those
receivers are called enhanced Type 3i.

Figure 2: Macrocell data rates per user with 64-QAM with 20 active users ina cell

2.1 LAYER 2 OPTIMIZATION WITH FLEXIBLE RLC AND MAC

SEGMENTATION

The WCDMA release 99 specification was based on the packet retransmissions running from
the radio network controller (RNC) to the mobile terminal on the layer 2. The layer 2 radio
link control (RLC) packets were required to be relatively small to avoid the retransmission of
very large packets in case of transmission errors. Another reason for the relatively small RLC
packet size was the requirement to provide sufficiently small step sizes for adjusting the data
rates for the release 99 channels. The RLC packet size in release 99 is not only small, but it is
also fixed for acknowledged mode data, and there are only a limited number of block sizes in
unacknowledged mode data. This limitation is
due to transport channel limitations.

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CHAPTER 3

SET UP TIME REDUCTION WITH ENHANCED FORWARD

ACCESS CHANNEL

Improved with the introduction of release 5 HSDPA and release 6 HSUPA. The end-user
performance can be further improved by minimizing the packet call set up time and the
channel allocation time. The expected packet call set up time with release 7 will be less than
one second.After the packet call has been established, user data can flow on HSDPA/HSUPA
in the Cell_DCH (dedicated channel) state.

Release 99 FACH can be used for signaling and for small amounts of user data. Release 5
and release 6 do not provide any improvements in FACH performance. The idea in release 7
enhanced FACH is to utilize the release 5 HSDPA transport and physical channels also in the
Cell_FACH state to improve the end-user performance. The concept is illustrated in Fig. 5.
The enhanced FACH concept offers the following performance benefits: • FACH data rates
can be increased from the current 32 kbps beyond 1 Mbps. The end user could get immediate
access to relatively high data rates without the latency of channel allocation. • The state
transition from Cell_FACH to Cell_DCH would be practically seamless. After the network
resources for the channel allocation are available, a seamless transition to Cell_DCH can take
place, because the physical channel is not changed.

Figure 3: Enhanced FACH concept

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3.1 VOICE-OVER-IP CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT

provide voice service in cellular networks. The introduction of third generation networks,
including WCDMA release 99, made it possible to run voice-over-IP (VoIP) over cellular
networks with reasonable quality, but with lower spectral efficiency than circuit-switched
voice. 3GPP releases 5 and 6 HSPA was originally designed to carry high bit-rate, delay-
tolerant data. A number of features have been introduced to 3GPP releases 6 and 7 to
improve the efficiency of low bit-rate, delay-critical applications, such as VoIP.

The VoIP capacity simulations are summarized in Fig. 6 in terms of maximum number of
simultaneous users per sector per 5-MHz carrier. The circuit-switched capacity with release
99 is estimated to be 60–70 users, whereas the VoIP capacity with HSPA release 7 increased
to 120 users.

The VoIP capacity assumes that IP header compression is used. 3GPP release 7 also allows
high-speed, shared-channel channel (HS-SCCH)-less operationin downlink to minimize the
interference from HS-SCCH.

Figure 4: Voice capacity evolution with release 7 VOIP

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CHAPTER 4
MULTICAST AND BROADCAST DATA RATE INCREASE
WITH SINGLE FREQUENCY NETWORK

Multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) was added to 3GPP as part of release 6.
3GPP release 6 can use soft combining of the MBMS transmission from the adjacent cells.
The soft combining considerably improves MBMS performance at the cell edge compared to
receiving the signal from a single cell only. Therefore, release 6 MBMS provides a very good
starting point for broadcast services from the performance point of view.

Even if the soft combining can be utilized in release 6, the other cell signals still cause
interference to the MBMS reception because the adjacent cells are not orthogonal due to
different scrambling codes. If the same scrambling code would be used in all cells, together
with a terminal equalizer, the other cells transmitting the same signal in a synchronized
network would be seen as a single signal with time dispersion. That solution provides
essentially a single frequency network with practically no neighboring cell interference. The
MBMS over a single frequency network (MBSFN) can enhance MBMS data rates and
capacity. The single frequency can be realized with network synchronization and by using the
same scrambling code for MBMS transmissions from multiple cells. The MBSFN is included
in 3GPP release 7.

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CHAPTER 5
FLAT ARCHITECTURE

Figure 5: Evolution toward flat architecture

3GPP networks more and more will be used for IP-based packet services. 3GPP release 6 has
four network elements in the user and control plane: base station, RNC, serving-GPRS
support node (SGSN), and gateway-GPRS support node (GGSN). The architecture in release
8 LTE will have only two network elements: base station in the radio network and access
gateway (a-GW) in the core network. The a-GW consists of the control plane mobility
management entity (MME) and the user plane system architecture evolution gateway
(SAEGW). The flat network architecture reduces the network latency and thus improves the
overall performance of IP-based services. The flat model also improves both user and control
plane efficiency. The evolution toward flat architecture is considered beneficial also for
HSPA. The architectural evolution in HSPA is designed to be backward compatible: existing
terminals can operate with the new architecture, and the radio and core network functional
split is not changed. The flat architecture itself does not require any specification changes but
with the RNC functionality in the base station, the amount of RNC identities must be
increased to permit networks larger than 4096 sites. This address space extension was
included in release 7 specifications and is not visible to the terminals. architectures are The
so-called direct tunnel solution allows the user plane to by pass SGSN. With the flat

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architecture with all the RNC functionality in the base station and using a direct tunnel
solution, only two nodes are required for user data operation. This achieves flexible
scalability and allows introducing the higher data rates with HSPA evolution with a minimum
impact on the other nodes in the network. This is important for achieving low cost per bit and
enabling competitive flat rate data charging offerings. Because the gateway in LTE has
similar functionality as a GGSN, we foresee that both HSPA and LTE base stations can be
connected to the same core network element.

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CHAPTER 5
ADVANTAGES

 It offers lower production costs compare to EDGE/UMTS.

 Users of HSPA service gets billed based on normal mobile subscription rates unlike WiFi service.
 It is easy to connect with HSPA unlike wifi where in users need to scan for wifi network in order to
connect.
 HSPA service with indoor DAS provides better performance compare to WiFi service.
 HSPA offers download speeds of 14 Mbps and upload speeds of 5.8 Mbps.
 It offers lower latency i.e. below 50 m sec.
 The next version of HSPA which is HSPA+ supports very high data rates due to use of MIMO and
high order modulation schemes and multi-carrier technology.

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DISADVANTAGES

 HSPA compliant UE does not get total bandwidth when it is far away from Node B (i.e. Base
Station).
 QoS (Quality of Service) in HSPA network depends on number of users.
 It is expensive to upgrade the whole system as well as to upgrade the UE.

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CONCLUSION

We have presented a detailed overview of the HSPA Evolution, which consists of a

number of enhancements.. HSPA can be built out using the existing GSM radio network sites
and is a software upgrade of the installed WCDMA networks. Together with dual-mode
terminals, this ensures nationwide coverage both for voice (GSM/WCDMA) and data
(HSPA/EDGE). Thanks to its heritage, HSPA offers operators a single network for multiple
services, with a sound business case built on revenues from voice, SMS, MMS, roaming
customers and mobile broadband.
For operators, technology choices made today will influence operations for many
years to come. 3GSM technologies are the future-proof choice – from an initial investment
standpoint, economies of scale and the ability to extend and continuously enhance the
solution. HSPA is the clear and undisputed choice for mobile broadband services.

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REFERENCES

[1] 3GPP, “Requirements for Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA) and Evolved UTRAN (E-
UTRAN),” 3GPP TR25.913 V7.0.0, Mar. 2007.
[2] H. Holma and A. Toskala, Eds., HSDPA/HSUPA for UMTS: High Speed Radio Access
for Mobile Communications, Wiley, 2006.
[3] 3GPP, “Continuous Connectivity for Packet Data Users,” 3GPP TR25.903 V7.0.0, Mar.
2007.
[4] 3GPP, “64 QAM for HSDPA,” 3GPP R1-063335, Nov.2006.
[5] H. Holma and A. Toskala, Eds., WCDMA for UMTS: HSPA Evolution and LTE, 4th ed.,
Wiley, 2007.
[6] J. Kurjenniemi et al., “Performance of WCDMA HSDPA Network with Different
Advanced Receiver Penetrations,” Wireless Personal Multimedia Commun., Aalborg,
Denmark, Sept. 17–22, 2005.
[7] 3GPP, “Further Discussion on Delay Enhancements in Rel7,” 3GPP R2-061189, Aug.
2006.
[8] 3GPP, “High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA); Overall Description,” 3GPP
TS25.308, V7.3.0, June 2007.
[9] H. Holma et al., “VoIP over HSPA with 3GPP Release 7,” PIMRC ’06, Sept. 2006.
[10] 3GPP, “HSDPA VoIP Capacity,” 3GPP R1-062251, Aug.
2006.

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