Overview about fundamentals of 3G

Evolution to UMTS
UMTS Network
UMTS can be considered as an evolution of GSM. While UMTS has its own
radio access network

Known as UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network), usually UMTS

and GSM/EDGE

Have a shared Core Network.

Generally UMTS networks are built up on existing GSM networks and both
networks co-exist.

UMTS networks in general have lesser coverage due to the fact that most
of them operate at higher frequency bands. This is not a big issue as
UMTS-GSM handover is possible.

UMTSUniversal Mobile
Telecommunications System
Provides mainly Speech, Video, R99 data and HS services
Please note that the network below has a common core network for both
3G and 2G.

Fig1: UMTS/GSM Network

Why do we need 3G? Is 2G not enough?

3G gives much higher data rates compared to2G.2G was mainly designed
keeping in

Mind the requirements for Speech traffic.3G has been developed mainly to
cater to data services, in addition to Speech traffic. Multiplexing of
services with different QOS requirements on a single connection is
possiblewith3G.

Why does 3G have less coverage compared to

GSM900?
GSM900 works at a lower frequency band than 3G, which usually works at
the2GHz band. Lower frequency signals are attenuated less, which gives
them greater propagation capability.

Why WCDMA is called Wideband CDMA?

WCDMA has a higher bandwidth of 5 MHz compared to IS-95 (cdma One),
which has

Only 1.25MHz.

What are the frequency bands used in 3G?

FDD-Frequency Division Duplexing is mainly used for UMTS. Hence, for
uplink and downlink, we have different frequency bands.

ULUplink (mobile to base station) 1920-1980MHz

DL-Downlink (base station to mobile) 2110-2170MHz

QOS Classes in 3G
CSIBConversational, Streaming, Interactive, Background