RRC connection establishment [Under UMTS]

Next step after PLMN and cell selection is network registration or attach. Registration procedure
is NAS/MM responsibility, for which NAS requests RRC connection. RRC connection
establishment require following signaling exchanges:

If you remember, CCCH use transparent RLC mode. So message "RRC Connection Request" is
passed transparently to MAC. To send this message, MAC/PHY invokes "random access"
procedure over PRACH. Before we look at this procedure, let us look at interface between MAC
and PHY.

For every transport channel, PHY need to know the characteristics of transport. This brings us to
a important concept of "Transport Format (TF)" [3GPP TS 25.302]. Let us explore this in next
article.