Product Description

Highly regarded as the book on the air interface of 3G cellular systems WCDMA for UMTS has again been fully revised and updated. The third edition now covers the key features of 3GPP Release 6 ensuring it remains the leading principal resource in this constantly progressing area.

By providing a deep understanding of the WCDMA air interface, the practical approach of this third edition will continue to appeal to operators, network and terminal manufacturers, service providers, university students and frequency regulators.

• Explains the key parts of the 3GPP/WCDMA standard
• Presents network dimensioning, coverage and capacity of WCDMA
• Introduces TDD and discusses its differences from FDD

Key third edition updates include:

• Covers the main 3GPP Release 6 updates
• Further enhances High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) chapter with a number of new simulation results
• Explains High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) study item
• Introduces the new services including their performance analysis : Push–to–Talk over Cellular (PoC), streaming, See What I See (SWIS) and multiplayer games
• Presents a number of new WCDMA field measurement results: capacity, end–to–end performance and handovers
• Includes completely updated antenna beamforming and multiuser detection sections featuring new simulation results
• Introduces TD–SCDMA and compares it to Release TDD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342077 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 478 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
As the mobile phone revolution brings video, photos and Web pages to our handsets, telecommunications experts from around the globe have been collaborating to develop standards to underpin third-generation phone systems. This book is an in-depth assessment of WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), the main third-generation air interface. WCDMA will be deployed in Europe and Asia at the same frequency band, (around 2GigaHerz) and it is expected to spawn a whole host of new gadgets. It will allow mobile phone companies to launch an array of new services. The authors all work for Nokia, one of the companies leading the move to wideband communications, and as might be expected, this is a comprehensive assessment of the technology.

It explains how WCDMA differs from today's digital interfaces, its main features, the background to it becoming a global standard, and gives valuable advice on getting the best performance from 3G networks. It also examines other technologies which could be used to provide multimedia phone services, such as EDGE, the evolution of GSM for high data rates.

WCDMA for UMTS: Radio Access for Third Generation Mobile Communications is aimed at technology and communications students, technical people working for device manufacturers and service providers and frequency regulators. It includes a comprehensive glossary and lots of diagrams which should make it an invaluable desk reference for anyone working in the rapidly evolving telecoms world. --Shan Ni Ceallaigh

IEEE Vehicular Technology Society News
Mobile wireless systems have become the ubiquitous means of mass telecommunications over the past 15 years. The early 'first generation', analogue systems were optimised for voice communications only but the proliferation of differing standards, particularly within Europe led to the development of a common digital based approach. The resulting 'second generation' system, GSM, now dominates the world mobile market; however this system, too, was designed and optimised primarily for voice services, albeit with the option for low speed data over the voice channel. Over recent years, the growth in demand for access to Internet based multi-media enabled mobile telecommunications system.

What is now emerging, globally, is a range of proposals under the generic title IMT2000 for a terrestrial system based on five radio interfaces standards and three core network technologies - all of which should provide for full inter-working of services and applications in all continents!

Next generation mobile wireless clearly embrace a wide range of technical disciplines and are influenced in no small part by the underlying commercial and political aspirations of the many parties world-wide committed to its successful implementation. Indeed it so difficult for any individual to remain expert in all the necessary areas.

Within Europe the adopted approach is know as UMTS. A new radio interface based on WCDMA (Wide Band Code Division Multiple Access) is currently in the final stages of standardisation for a first release (r'99) and the initial UMTS system will be based on a GSM core network as enhanced to support the soon to be publicly launched GPRS packet data system.

The standardisation work for UMTS is being carried out under the auspices of 3GPP, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project and the editors and chapter contributors of this new book, all of whom are with Nokia, are to be congratulated on providing a detailed description of the WCDMA air interface and its utilisation and in providing a set of references to the appropriate 3GPP Technical Specifications.

Chapter 1 introduces the third generation air interfaces, the spectrum allocation, the time schedule, and the main differences from second-generation air interfaces. Chapter 2 presents example UMTS applications, concept phones, and the quality of service classes. Chapter 3 introduces the principles of the WCDMA air interface, including spreading, the Rake receiver, power control, and handover. Chapter 4 presents the background to WCDMA, the global harmonisation process, and the standardisation. Chapters 5-7 give a detailed presentation of the WCDMA standard, while chapters 8-11 cover the utilisation of the standard and its performance.

Chapter 5 describes the architecture of the radio access network, interfaces within the radio access network between base stations and radio network controllers and the interface between the radio access network and the core network. Chapter 6 covers the physical layer (layer 1), including spreading, modulation, user data and signalling transmission diversity and handover measurements.

Chapter 7 introduces the radio interface protocols, comprising the data link layer (layer 2), and the network layer (layer 3). Chapter 8 presents the guidelines for radio network dimensioning, gives an example of detailed capacity and coverage planning and addresses GSM co-planning. Chapter 9 covers the radio resource management algorithms that guarantee the efficient utilisation of the air interface resources and the quality of service; these algorithms are for power control, handover, admission and load control.

Chapter 10 presents packet access in WCDMA and includes the results of dynamic system simulations. Chapter 11 analyses the capacity and coverage of the WCDMA interface at rates up to 2 Mbps. Chapter 12 introduces the time division duplex (TDD) mode of the WCDMA air interface and its differences from the frequency division mode (FDD). A brief overview of the characteristics of multi-carrier CDMA, one of the alternative air interfaces proposed IMT2000 is given in chapter 13.

Whilst not a book for the novice, the WCDMA for UMTS does achieve its objective in presenting a detailed description of the FDD operating mode. The TDD mode, which in the opinion of this review will have a very significant part to play in the future of UMTS, particularly given the asymmetric nature of multi-media traffic and the unpaired spectrum allocations available both now and likely as extension bands for UMTS, does not receive all the attention it deserves and, inevitably, the standardisation activities have moved on in both this area and that for packet access since the book was published. And for those seeking an overview of the complete UMTS system, the text does not address the core network for UMTS.

That said, this is the first book published to describe the UMTS air interface and I would certainly recommend it as the starting point for anyone seeking a way in to the 3GPP Technical Publications.

From the Back Cover
Highly regarded as the book on the air interface of 3G cellular systems WCDMA for UMTS has again been fully revised and updated. The third edition now covers the key features of 3GPP Release 6 ensuring it remains the leading principal resource in this constantly progressing area.

By providing a deep understanding of the WCDMA air interface, the practical approach of this third edition will continue to appeal to operators, network and terminal manufacturers, service providers, university students and frequency regulators.

• Explains the key parts of the 3GPP/WCDMA standard
• Presents network dimensioning, coverage and capacity of WCDMA
• Introduces TDD and discusses its differences from FDD

Key third edition updates include:

• Covers the main 3GPP Release 6 updates
• Further enhances High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) chapter with a number of new simulation results
• Explains High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) study item
• Introduces the new services including their performance analysis : Push–to–Talk over Cellular (PoC), streaming, See What I See (SWIS) and multiplayer games
• Presents a number of new WCDMA field measurement results: capacity, end–to–end performance and handovers
• Includes completely updated antenna beamforming and multiuser detection sections featuring new simulation results
• Introduces TD–SCDMA and compares it to Release’99 TDD

Customer Reviews

Great theory with more than 3GPP and Nokia studies to boot
As a UTRAN designer/troubleshooter for some of the worlds leading operators and vendors, I have found this book invaluable as a theoretical reference. My only complaints are that it always takes best case estimates when radio is a fickle medium which requires worst case calculations, also that the features are described in a manner that is not easily understandable. It is more a collection of articles than a complete reference, with topics scattered around. As with all books on the subject, it relies too heavily on precis from the 3GPP specs and then does not apply this to SW/HW involved.

Improves with each edition
At the time of writing, this is the third edition of this book. It has improved with each edition - the first edition wasn't really a book, more a collection of white papers hastily stuck together to get it on the market. The second edition was more cohesive, and in this third edition it's finally becoming a book that you could read from beginning to end (if you really wanted to .. it is pretty heavy going at times), although it still retains some of the white paper feel. It's still one of the two essential WCDMA references (the other is Juha Korhonen's book, which is more readable but has slightly less depth).

Also note that this third edition includes a chapter on HSDPA, which makes it fairly essential reading for those in the industry working on 3G/3.5G technologies.

Quite a good review of UMTS, but not a tutorial
This is a fascinating book, packed with detail about UMTS. It covers a wide range of topics from the standards and air interfaces to the details of protocols, and physical properties of the technology. However, it is often very confusing, the style is "difficult" and it is often very hard to answer a simple question such as "how does a mobile phone start a call?" or "how does handover work?". It suffers from having mulitple authors, no coherent line of discussion, and very varied levels of presentation. If you don't know much about UMTS it will be hard to get much from this. If you do, then you probably don't need it. It is also mainly about FDD, and rather little about TDD, or interworking.