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Basic Principles of WCDMA System WCDMA System Overview

Chapter 1 WCDMA System Overview

1.1 Development of Mobile Communications


Up till now the modern mobile communication has experienced two generations and
evolved into the third generation that is ongoing with pre-commercialization. Many
manufacturers have already carried out their commercial trials in Europe and Asia.
The first generation is the analog cellular mobile communication network in the time
period from the middle of 1970s to the middle of 1980s. The most important
breakthrough in this period is the concept of cellular networks put forward by the Bell
Labs in the 1970s, as compared to the former mobile communication systems. The
cellular network system is based on cells to implement frequency reuse and thus
greatly enhances the system capacity.
The typical examples of the first generation mobile communication systems are the
AMPS system and the later enhanced TACS of USA, the NMT and the NTT. The
AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) uses the 800 MHz band of the analog
cellular transmission system and it is widely applied in North America, South America
and some Circum-Pacific countries. The TACS (Total Access Communication System)
uses the 900 MHz band and includes two versions: ETACS (Enhanced TACS) in
Europe and NTACS (Narrowband TACS) in Japan. It is widely applied in Britain,
Japan and some Asian countries.
The main feature of the first generation mobile communication systems is that they
use the frequency reuse technology, adopt analog modulation for voice signals and
provide an analog subscriber channel every other 30 kHz/25 kHz. However, their
defects are also obvious:
1) Low utilization of the frequency spectrum
2) Limited types of services
3) No high-speed data services
4) Poor confidentiality and high vulnerability to interception and number
embezzlement
5) High equipment cost
6) Large volume and big weight
To solve these fundamental technical defects of the analog systems, the digital mobile
communication technologies emerged and the second generation mobile
communication systems represented by GSM and IS-95 came into being in the
middle of 1980s. The typical examples of the second generation cellular mobile
communication systems are the DAMPS of USA, the IS-95 and the European GSM
system.
The GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) is originated from Europe.
Designed as the TDMA standard for mobile digital cellular communications, it
supports the 64 kbps data rate and can interconnect with the ISDN. It uses the 900
MHz band while the DCS1800 system uses the 1800 MHz band. The GSM system
uses the FDD and TDMA modes and each carrier supports eight channels with the
signal bandwidth of 200 kHz.
The DAMPS (Digital Advanced Mobile Phone System) is also called the IS-54 (North
America Digital Cellular System). Using the 800 MHz bandwidth, it is the earlier of the
two North America digital cellular standards and specifies the use of the TDMA mode.
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The IS-95 standard is another digital cellular standard of North America. Using the
800 MHz or 1900 MHz band, it specifies the use of the CDMA mode and has already
become the first choice among the technologies of American PCS (Personal
Communication System) networks.
Since the 2G mobile communication systems focus on the transmission of voice and
low-speed data services, the 2.5G mobile communication systems emerged in 1996
to address the medium-rate data transmission needs. These systems include GPRS
and IS-95B.
The CDMA system has a very large capacity that is equivalent to ten or even twenty
times that of the analog systems. It also has good compatibility with the analog
systems. Currently some countries and regions such as USA, Korea and Hong Kong
have put the CDMA system into operation to provide services for subscribers. As the
narrowband CDMA technologies come into maturity at a time later than the GSM
technologies, their application far lags behind the GSM ones and currently they have
only found large-scale commercial applications in North America, Korea and China.
The major services of mobile communications are currently still voice services and
low-speed data services. With the development of networks, data and multimedia
communications have also witnessed rapid development; therefore, the target of the
3G mobile communication is to implement broadband multimedia communication.
The 3G mobile communication systems are a kind of communication system that can
provide multiple kinds of high quality multimedia services and implement global
seamless coverage and global roaming. They are compatible with the fixed networks
and can implement any kind of communication at any time and any place with
portable terminals.
Put forward in 1985 by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), the 3G
mobile communication system was called the FPLMTS (Future Public Land Mobile
Telecommunication System) and was later renamed as IMT-2000 (International
Mobile Telecommunication-2000). The major systems include WCDMA, cdma2000
and UWC-136. On November 5, 1999, the 18th conference of ITU-R TG8/1 passed
the Recommended Specification of Radio Interfaces of IMT-2000 and the TD-SCDMA
technologies put forward by China were incorporated into the IMT-2000 CDMA TDD
part of the technical specification. This showed that the work of the TG8/1 in
formulating the technical specifications of radio interfaces in 3G mobile
communication systems had basically come into an end and the development and
application of the 3G mobile communication systems would enter a new and essential
phase.

1.1.1 Standardization Organizations

The standardization of 3G mobile communication systems are in fact pushed forward


and implemented by two standardization organizations: 3GPP (3rd Generation
Partner Project) and 3GPP2.
Established in December 1998, the 3GPP is composed of the European ETSI, the
Japanese ARIB, the Korean TTA and the American T1. It adopts the WCDMA
technologies of Europe and Japan to construct a new radio access network and
smoothly evolves a core switching network from the existing GSM mobile switching
network to provide more diversified services. The UTRA (Universal Terrestrial Radio
Access) is used as the radio interface standard.
In January 1999, the 3GPP2 composed of the American TIA, the Japanese ARIB and
the Korean TTA also formally came into being. The cdma2000 and UWC-136
technologies are applied for radio access and the cdma2000 technologies adopt the
Qualcomm patents to a large extent. ANSI/IS-41 is used for the core network.
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One formal member of the above two standardization organizations is the China
Wireless Telecommunications Standard Group (CWTS) and two Chinese companies
(Huawei and Datang) are two independent members of the 3GPP organization.

1.1.2 3G Evolution Policies

In general, the evolution policies formulated by 3GPP and 3GPP2 are progressive.
This has the following benefits:
 Guaranteeing the existing investment and operators’ benefits
 Facilitating the smooth transition of the existing technologies
From the perspective of development, the process of evolution from the existing 2G
mobile communication systems to the IMT-2000 is a vital issue. It relates to the reuse
of the existing networks (the construction of new networks should not be the optimal
solution) and the development of multiple 2G digital network systems towards the
same standard.

1. Policies of evolution from GSM to WCDMA

The policies of evolution from GSM to WCDMA should be as follows: The present
GSM → HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data at the rates from 14.4 kbps to 64
kbps) → GPRS (General Packet Radio Service at the rate of 144 kbps) → Smooth
seamless evolution from the network service coverage ultimately to IMT-2000
WCDMA (DS).
1) HSCSD: High Speed Circuit Switched Data
HSCSD is a feature to allocate multiple full-rate voice channels to the HSCSD
structure. Its purpose is to provide the mixture of multiple services at different air
interface subscriber rates with the single physical layer structure. Its benefits lie in the
higher data rates (up to 64 kbps; the maximum data rate depends on the
manufacturers) and the use of the existing GSM data technologies by slightly
modifying the GSM system.
2) GPRS: General Packet Radio Service
The major benefits of GPRS are as follows:
 Standard radio packet switching Internet/Intranet access applicable to all the
places of GSM coverage
 Variable peak data rate that ranges from several bits per second to 171.2 kbps
(the maximum data rate depends on the manufacturers)
 Charging by the actual data volume: This charging method enables the
subscribers to pay the cost of the actual data volume transmitted while remaining
online all the days
 Support for the existing services and new application services
 Packetization over the radio interfaces to optimize the sharing of radio resources
 Packet switching technology to optimize the sharing of network resources
 Capability of extension to the future radio protocols
Based on the existing GSM part, the packet switching GPRS network architecture has
the new network function part:
3) WCDMA: Wideband Code Division Multi Access
The WCDMA has become a new mature technology aiming at the UMTS/IMT-2000. It
can satisfy all the requirements listed by the ITU to provide very effective high-speed
data services and high quality voice and image services. In the process of evolution
from GSM to WCDMA, only the core network part is smoothly evolved. As the change
of the air interface is revolutionary, so is the evolution of the radio access network
part.
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2. Policies of evolution from IS-95 to cdma2000

After the IS-95A (at the rates of 9.6/14.4 kbps) is evolved to the IS-95B (at the rate of
115.2 kbps) and ultimately to cdma2000 1X, the system can provide higher capacity
and a higher data rate (144kbps) and can support the burst mode as well as adding
new supplemental channels. The cdma2000 1X EV with enhanced technologies can
provide higher performances.
The IS-95B is different from the IS-95A in that multiple channels can be bound in the
IS-95B system. These two are basically the same in essence can they can coexist in
the same carrier. In contrast, the cdma2000 1X has greater improvements and its
system equipment can support 1X terminals and IS-95A/B terminals simultaneously.
Therefore, these three systems (IS-95A/IS-95B/1X) can coexist in the same carrier.
For the cdma2000 system, the gradual replacement method can be applied in the
transition from 2G systems to 3G systems. In other words, one carrier of the 2G
systems can be compressed to become a 3G carrier to provide the services of
medium and higher rates to the subscribers. As the 3G systems have more and more
subscribers, the number of carriers used in the 2G systems can be gradually reduced
while more carriers can be added to the 3G systems. Through this kind of smooth
upgrading, the network operators can not only provide various latest serves to the
subscribers but also well protect the investment of the existing equipment.
In the process of evolution to the 3G systems, the evolution of such wireless
equipment as BTS and BSC deserves special attention. The protection of operators’
investment has been fully taken into account in the formulation of the cdma2000
standard and many radio indices of the 3G systems are the same as in the 2G
systems. From the point of view of the BTS, the radio parts such as antenna, RF
filters and power amplifiers are all reusable while the baseband signal processing part
needs to be replaced.
There are currently two branches in the evolution to the cdma2000 1X EV: 1) The
cdma2000 1X EV-DO that only supports data services; and 2) the cdma2000 1X EV-
DV that supports both data services and voice services. For the cdma2000 1X EV-DO
that only supports data services, the HDR put forward by Qualcomm has been
determined; while for the cdma2000 1X EV-DV that supports both data services and
voice services, there are several proposals at present (one of them is the LAS-CDMA
technology submitted by China) and these are presently in the process of review.

3. Policies of evolution from DAMPS to UWC-136

The first step of evolution from IS-136 (DAMPS) to UWC-136 is to implement the
GPRS-136 and the second step is to implement UWC-136 (Universal Wireless
Communications). The EDGE-based technologies have been decided for UWCC and
TIA TR-45.3, this means that the GPRS network architecture will be used to support
the 136+ high-speed data transmission. The GPRS-136 is the official name of the
136+ packet switched data service and its high-layer protocols (L3 protocols and
above) are fully the same as those of the GPRS system, considering the economical
aspect of the implementation. It provides the same capacity as the GPRS of GSM
and its subscribers can have access to two forms of data networks: IP and X.25. Its
major purpose is to reduce the technical difference between TIA/EIA-136 and GSM
GPRS so that the subscribers can roam between GPRS-136 and GSM GPRS
networks. One of the policies for the American TIA to develop the 3G systems is to
implement convergence of the 3G systems with the GSM system that also uses the
TDMA access mode. This is quite beneficial for the economics of global roaming and
products and it also implements the coordination protocol between UWCC and ETSI.
What’s more important, it enables the TDMA to player a more important role in the 3G
systems.

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1.2 Types and Differences of 3G Systems

1.2.1 Origin of the Multiple Systems

Currently the 3G research work of ITU is mainly undertaken by 3GPP and 3GPP2.
The goal of ITU in terms of 3G is to establish the ITM-2000 family and implement
global roaming between different 3G systems.
Family concept
1) Network part
In one intermediate meeting of ITU-T SG11 in March 1997, the ITM-2000 Family
Concept put forward in Europe was passed. This concept was based on the existing
networks and involved at least two major standards: GSM MAP and IS-41.
2) Radio interface part
In the ITU-R TG8/1 meeting in September 1997, the discussion on the radio interface
family concept started. In a special meeting of TG8/1 in January 1998, the concept of
suite was put forward and applied and this put the family concept out of use. This
means that there may be more than one radio interface standard but the concept of
more than one standard is not yet accepted, rather, these different standards are
expected to ultimately form a unified standard.
The following two factors have caused various technical differences:
1) Relationship with 2G
The network part must be compatible with 2G, that is, the 3G networks are gradually
evolved from the 2G networks. There are two major 2G core networks: GSM MAP
and IS-41.
Radio interfaces: The American IS-95 CDMA and IS-136 TDMA operators emphasize
on the backward compatibility (evolutional) while the European GSM and Japanese
PDC operators emphasize on the backward incompatibility of the radio interface
(revolutionary).
The correspondence between the core networks and the radio interfaces is shown in
Figure 1-1 below:

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Core networks 2G/3G access networks

IS-136

UWC-136
IS-41core network
IS-95CDMA

cdma2000

GSM
GSM core network
W-CDMA

TD-SCDMA

PDC core network PDC

Figure 1.1 Correspondence between the core network and the radio access
network interface

3) The important role of frequency spectrum on technical selection


In terms of frequency spectrum, the key issue is that the ITM-2000 frequencies
allocated by ITU have already been applied to the PCS service in USA. Because the
USA requires the sharing of frequency spectrum with 2G systems, the backward
compatibility of the radio interfaces is especially emphasized and technically the USA
requires gradual evolution. In contrast, most of the other countries have new IMT-
2000 frequency bands that feature very large flexibility. What’s more, the intellectual
property rights play a very significant role, for example, Qualcomm has its own patent
declaration. Competition is also a major factor to contribute to the technical
differences.

1.2.2 RTT Technical Proposal

The eighth research group of ITU-R, i.e. the TG8/1 Task Group is responsible for
promoting the assessment and merge of IMT-2000 Radio Transmission Technology
(RTT). Up till September 1998, there have been up to 16 RTT proposals including the
MSS (Mobile Satellite Service). They all come from 16 RTT assessment groups of
IMT-2000 and are listed as follows:
1) UTRA WCDMA (Europe)
2) DECT (Europe)
3) cdma2000 (USA)
4) UWC-136 (USA)
5) WIMS WCDMA (USA)
6) WCDMA/NA (USA)
7) WCDMA (Japan)
8) TD-SCDMA (China)
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9) Global CDMA (Synchronous, Korea)


10) Global CDMA (Asynchronous, Korea)
11) LEO satellite system SAT-CDMA
12) ESA wideband satellite system SW-CDMA
13) CDMA/TDMA hybrid bandwidth satellite system SW-CTDMA
14) ICO RTT
15) INMARSAT satellite system Horizons
16) Iridium LLC satellite system INX
Among these proposals, the first ten are RTT proposals for the IMT-2000 terrestrial
system and the last six reflect the efforts of incorporating the MSS (Mobile Satellite
Service) into the IMT-2000.
These proposals reflect the concern of many countries as to the future mode of IMT-
2000 and their basic wishes to exercise effective influence. However, as viewed from
the market basis, backward compatibility and overall features, the UTRA WCDMA of
ETSI and the cdma2000 of USA are the most competitive; therefore, the key to the
merge of RTT lies in the progress of effectively merging these two proposals.

1.2.3 Technical Merge

IMT-2000 includes both the Terrestrial Mobile Service (TMS) and the Mobile Satellite
Service (MSS). The suggestion of one globally uniform and better-merged 3G mobile
communication standard is conducive to whether operators, manufacturers,
subscribers and policy planning & management bodies, so it is warmly welcomed by
all countries in the world.
As far the sixteen RTT candidate schemes are concerned, the ultimate result of
merging terrestrial mobile communications will bring the biggest competitiveness to
the WCDMA (DS) of ETSI and the cdma2000 of USA TIA in terms of the FDD mode;
while for the TDD mode, the TD-CDMA put forward by ETSI UTRA and the D-SCDMA
put forward by China CATT will be the major objects of further integration. At the end
of March 1999, Ericsson and Qualcomm reached a series of agreements on the IPR
and this act cleared way the obstacles from intellectual property rights for promoting a
global CDMA standard. At the end of May 1999, the Operator Harmonization Group
(OHG) composed of 31 global major operators and 11 major manufacturers put
forward a merge proposal of the IMT-2000. This proposal played a positive role in
promoting the unification of the major parameters (chip rate, pilot structure, core
network protocol based on GSM-MAP and ANSI-41). All the participants unanimously
agreed that the chip rate should be 3.84Mcps for FDD-DS-CDMA and 3.6864Mcps for
FDD-MC-CDMA, which is also called FDD-cdma2000-(MC). In June 1999, the 17th
meeting of TG8/1 was held in Beijing. In this meeting, a framework agreement was
reached on Recommendations Rec, IMT and RSPC of the technical specifications of
radio interfaces. 3GPP, 3GPP2 and the Standards Development Organizations
(SDOs) were encouraged to support the above OHG proposal and TG8/1 Task Group
was appointed to carry out more detailed work of the MSS proposal.
The 18th meeting of ITU TG8/1 was held in Helsinki, Finland in November 1999, and
the Recommended Specification of Radio Interfaces of IMT-2000 was adopted. This
meant that the TG8/1's work in formulating the technical specifications of radio
interfaces in the 3G mobile communication systems had basically come to an end
and the development and application of 3G mobile communication systems would
enter the essential phase. TD-SCDMA, WCDMA and cdma2000 were determined as
the ultimate three technical systems.

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1.2.4 Comparison Among the Three Major Technical Systems

1. WCDMA

Formulated by the European standardization organization 3GPP, WCDMA is widely


supported by the global standardization organizations, equipment manufacturers,
component suppliers and operators. It will become one of the mainstream future 3G
systems.
The core network evolves on the basis of and can thus be compatible with the
existing GSM/GPRS networks.
It can be based on the TDM, ATM and IP technologies to evolve towards the all-IP
network architecture.
Logically, the core network comprises two parts: The circuit domain and the packet
domain to complete the circuit-switched services and the packet-switched services
respectively.
Based on the ATM technology, the UTRAN uniformly processes voice and packet
services and evolves towards the IP network architecture.
MAP and GPRS tunneling technologies are the core of the mobility management
mechanism in the WCDMA system.
The air interface adopts the WCDMA technologies with the signal bandwidth of 5 MHz
and the chip rate of 3.84 Mcps. It uses the AMR voice encoding scheme and supports
the synchronous/asynchronous Node B operation mode. Besides, the following
modes are applied in the WCDMA system: Uplink/downlink closed loop power control
plus outer loop power control; open loop (STTD & TSTD) and closed loop (FBTD)
transmit diversity; pilot-assisted coherent demodulation; convolutional coding and
Turbo coding; QPSK modulation in both the uplink and the downlink.

2. cdma2000 system

The cdma2000 system is a 3G standard put forward on the basis of the IS-95
standard. Its standardization work is currently undertaken by 3GPP2.
Circuit Switched (CS) domain: Adapted from the 2G IS95 CDMA network, the circuit
domain has introduced a service platform based on the WIN infrastructure.
Packet Switched (PS) domain: A packet network based on the Mobile IP technology.
Radio Access Network (RAN): Based on the ATM switch platform, it provides
abundant adaptation layer interfaces.
The air interface adopts the cdma2000 technologies and is compatible with the IS95.
The signal bandwidth is N× 1.25MHz (N = 1, 3, 6, 9, 12) and the chip rate is
N× 1.2288Mcps. It uses the 8K/13K QCELP or 8K EVRC voice coding mode and its
BTS needs to run in the GPS/GLONESS synchronous mode. The following modes
are applied in the cdma2000 system: Uplink/downlink closed loop power control plus
outer loop power control; OTD and STS transmit diversion in the forward direction to
improve the anti-fading capacity of channels and the signal quality of the forward
channels; pilot-assisted coherent modulation in the reverse direction to improve the
demodulation performance; convolutional coding and Turbo coding; BPSK in the
uplink and QPSK in the downlink.

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3. TD-SCDMA system

The TD-SCDMA standard is put forward by the Chinese Wireless Telecommunication


Standard (CWTS) Group and now it has been merged into the specifications related
to the WCDMA-TDD of 3GPP.
The core network evolves on the basis of and can thus be compatible with the
existing GSM/GPRS networks.
It can be based on the TDM, ATM and IP technologies to evolve towards the all-IP
network architecture.
Logically, the core network comprises two parts: The circuit domain and the packet
domain to complete the circuit-switched services and the packet-switched services
respectively.
Based on the ATM technology, the UTRAN uniformly processes voice and packet
services and evolves towards the IP network architecture.
MAP and GPRS tunneling technologies are the core of the mobility management
mechanism in the WCDMA system.
The air interface adopts the TD-SCDMA mode.
The TD-SCDMA features 3S: Smart antenna, Synchronous CDMA and Software
radio.
The key technologies used in TD-SCDMA include Intelligent Antenna + Joint
Detection, Multi-slot CDMA + DS-CDMA, Synchronous CDMA, Channel
Coding/Decoding and Interleaving (the same as in 3GPP) and Baton Handover.
A comparison of the above three systems is given in the table below.

Table 1.1 Comparison among the three major technical systems


System WCDMA cdma2000 TD-SCDMA
Using countries Europe and Japan USA and Korea China
Inheritance
GSM Narrowband CDMA GSM
from
Synchronous Asynchronous/synchr
Synchronous Synchronous
mode onous
Chip rate 3.84Mcps N×1.2288Mcps 1.28Mcps
Signal
5MHz N×1.25MHz 1.6MHz
bandwidth
cdma2000 compatible
Air interface WCDMA TD-SCDMA
with IS-95
Core network GSM MAP ANSI-41 GSM MAP

1.3 3G Frequency Spectrum


ITU has allocated 230 MHz frequency for the 3G mobile communication system IMT-
2000: 1885 MHz ~ 2025MHz in the uplink and 2110v~ 2200 MHz in the downlink. Of
them, the frequency range of 1980 MHz ~ 2010 MHz (uplink) and that of 2170 MHz ~
2200 MHz (downlink) are used for mobile satellite services. As the uplink and the
downlink bands are asymmetrical, the use of dual-frequency FDD mode or the single-
frequency TDD mode may be considered. This plan was passed in WRC92 and new
additional bands were approved on the basis of the WRC-92 in the WRC2000
conference in the year 2000: 806 MHz ~ 960 MHz, 1710 MHz ~ 1885 MHz and 2500
MHz ~ 2690 MHz, as shown in Figure 1-2 below.
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800 850 900 950 1000 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 2050 2100 2150 2200 2250

ITU identifications IMT 2000 IMT 2000 IMT 2000 MSS IMT 2000 MSS

Europe GSM GSM 1800 DECT IMT 2000 MSS IMT 2000 MSS

Cellular IMT 2000


China GSM GSM 1800, PCS MSS IMT 2000MSS

Japan, PDC PHS IMT 2000 MSS IMT 2000MSS


Korea (w/o PHS)
PCS
North America Cellular A D B EF C A D B EF C MSS Reserve MSS

New IMT-2000 terrestrial bands

Previous IMT-2000 terrestrial bands

Figure 1.2 Frequency spectrum allocation of WRC-2000

The European Union (EU) also attached great importance to 3G mobile


communication systems and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute
(ETSI) started the research work of 3G mobile communication standardization as
early as over ten years ago and it established a UMTS (Universal Mobile
Telecommunication System) Forum that was composed of operators, equipment
manufacturers and telecommunication management organizations. In 1995, the
technical proposal for frequency spectrum division was submitted formally to the ITU.
In Europe, the allocation of frequency spectrum is as follows: 1900 MHz ~ 1980MHz,
2010 MHz ~ 2025MHz and 2110 MHz ~ 2170MHz, totaling 155 MHz.
The situation in North America is rather complex, as shown in Figure 1-2. The 1850
MHz ~ 1990 MHz band among the 3G low bands has already allocated for PCS use
and it has been divided into two 15 MHz and two 5 MHz bands. Since the PCS
service has already occupied the frequency spectrum of IMT-2000, the uplink band of
the adjusted IMT-2000 even needs to be shared together with the downlink band of
PCS. This kind of arrange is not suitable for the high-transmit and low-receive
configurations of ordinary base stations.
In Japan, the frequency band of 1893.5 MHz ~ 1919.6 MHz has already been
allocated for PHS use and the 3G bands totaling 135 MHz (2 × 60 MHz + 15 MHz)
are still available: 1920 MHz ~ 1980MHz, 2110 MHz ~ 2170 MHz, 2010 MHz ~ 2025
MHz). At present, Japan is endeavoring to clear the conflicts with the frequencies for
3G mobile communications.
Korea has the same allocated frequency as in ITU Recommendations, i.e., 170 MHz.
The WCDMA FDD mode uses the following frequency spectrum (bands other than
those specified by 3GPP may also be used): Uplink 1920 MHz ~ 1980 MHz and
downlink 2110 MHz ~ 2170 MHz. Each carrier frequency has the 5M band and the
duplex spacing is 190 MHz. In America, the used frequency spectrum is 1850 MHz ~
1910 MHz in the uplink and 1930 MHz ~ 1990 MHz in the downlink and the duplex
spacing is 80 MHz.
The frequency spectrum used by the WCDMA TDD mode (including the high bit rates
and the low bit rates) is as follows (bands other than those specified by 3GPP may
also be used):
1) Uplink 1900 ~ 1920MHz and 2010 ~ 2025MHz
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2) America: Uplink 1850 MHz ~ 1910 MHz and downlink 1930 MHz ~ 1990 MHz.
3) America: 1910 MHz ~ 1930 MHz in both the uplink and the downlink
In special cases (such as the boundary area of two countries), the TDD mode and the
FDD mode may coexist in the same frequency band and 3GPP TSG RAN WG4 is
currently researching this situation.
There is only the FDD mode in the cdma2000 system and currently there are a total
of seven band classes, of which Band Class 6 is the 1920 MHz ~1980 MHz/2110
MHz ~ 2180 MHz band stipulated in IMT-2000.
In China, according to the present radio frequency division, mobile services, fixed
services and spatial services are using the 1700 MHz ~ 2300 MHz band, which is
currently serving plenty of microwave communication systems and a certain number
of wireless location devices. In December 1996, the State Radio Regulatory
Committee of P. R. China re-planned and adjusted some terrestrial radio service
frequencies of 2 GHz to adapt to the needs of cellular mobile communication
development and radio access. However, the frequency spectrum still conflicts with
the 3G mobile communication systems, that is, the 1.9 MHz band for public cellular
mobile communications and the radio access band have both taken up some of the
IMT-2000 bands.
Therefore, the 3G mobile communication systems have to share the limited frequency
resources with the existing radio communication systems. With the development of
technologies and services, the planning and adjustment of IMT-2000 bands must be
well done to stimulate the operators, scientific research organizations/institutions,
manufacturers and other bodies to actively develop the 3G mobile communication
systems, so as to meet both the short-term and the long-term frequency spectrum
needs in China mobile communication development.
The occupation of the IMT-2000 frequency spectrum in China is illustrated in the
following figure.
1850 1900 1950 2000 2050 2100 2150 2200 2250

ITU IMT 2000 MSS IMT 2000 MSS


1885 MHz 2025 MHz 2110 MHz 2170 MHz

1920 MHz 2010 MHz

1880 MHz 1980 MHz

China TDD FDD MSS


MSS TDD FDD MSS

2170 MHz

1850 1900 1950 2000 2050 2100 2150 2200 2250

Figure 1.3 Occupation of the IMT-2000 frequency spectrum in China

The bands allocated for IMT-2000 in China are listed below:


1) Basic operating bands

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Basic Principles of WCDMA System WCDMA System Overview

FDD mode: 1920 MHz ~ 1980MHz/2110 MHz ~ 2170 MHz


TDD mode: 1880 MHz ~ 1920 MHz/2010 MHz ~ 2025 MHz
2) Supplementary operating bands
FDD mode: 1755 MHz ~ 1785 MHz/1850 MHz ~ 1880 MHz
TDD mode: 2300 MHz ~ 2400 MHz, shared together with the wireless location
services; both are major services and the sharing standard is to be specially
formulated.
3) Operating band for satellite mobile communication systems
1980 MHz ~ 2010 MHz/2170 MHz ~ 2200 MHz.

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