UMTS the next generation of mobile radio

Europe's third-generation mobile communication system will transform the capabilities of cellular networks. The authors describe some of the implications for users, network operators and would-be licence holders of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System)     

An all-IP approach for UMTS third-generation mobile networks

This article describes the UMTS all-IP approach for third-generation mobile systems, with emphasis on the core network architecture. Following the introduction of the core network nodes, we elaborate on application-level registration, circuit-switched call origination, packet-switched call origination, and packet-switched call termination.     

UMTS — the mobile part of broadband communications for the next century

This paper outlines the path from developing broadband ISDN/ATM systems towards the European vision of the next generation mobile system — Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS).The capabilities of UMTS in terms of services and features compared to the second generation mobile system GSM, and the network technologies behind N-ISDN and B-ISDN, are discussed with proposals for technical developments to satisfy the UMTS requirements. The UMTS radio interface aspects are described and considerations on the network requirements to support these radio aspects are discussed.The requirements within the network for control, switching and transport to support the mobility, service and interconnecting network aspects of UMTS are outlined in conjunction with the technical solutions currently under discussion and some latest thoughts on a potential high-level architecture     

Location management of correlated mobile users in the UMTS

In this paper, we propose concurrently searching for correlated mobile users in mobile communications networks. Previous work either focuses on locating a single mobile user or assumes that the locations of mobile users are statistically independent. We first propose a mobility model in which the movements of mobile users are statistically correlated. Next, we use the theory of Markov chain to derive the joint probability density function of the locations of mobile users. In addition, we propose a novel approach to discover the correlations among the locations of mobile users without explicitly calculating the joint probability density function. Our simulation results indicate that exploring the correlations among the locations of mobile users could significantly reduce the average paging delay and increase the maximum stable throughput.     

QoS tuning and resource sharing for UMTS WCDMA multiservice mobile

This paper studies the uplink of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System flexible physical layer. It recalls the semistatic approach of transport highlighting key parameters of its control and proposes an external analytic model of the mobile physical layer. This approach is adapted to radio resource management in a multiservice environment, accounting for the relationships between the link and the system levels. This paper clearly shows the impact of the rate matching mechanism on the transmission performances at link level for transport channels multiplexed in the uplink. It refines the power index notion useful at the system level as an indicator of resource consumption and transmission quality of the physical data and control channels. Integrating inter- and intramobile multiservice features with performance tables (considering environment influence, channel coding type, etc.) leads to a cost function of the transport format combinations; a valuable toot for the evaluation of the uplink multiservice cellular capacity. Several multiplexing cases are then studied under the joint aspects of quality tuning and resource consumption.     

Stubby monopole antenna for UMTS/WLAN dual-mode mobile phone

A novel stubby monopole antenna for mobile phone applications is presented. The antenna is easily fabricated by bending a single metal plate. Further, the antenna shows a wide operating bandwidth of about 6 GHz (about 1.7-7.8 GHz), making it easy to cover the UMTS band and the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands for mobile/WLAN dual-mode operation of a mobile phone     

Evaluation of radiation exposure by UMTS mobile phones

An overview of the radiated power by a UMTS mobile phone in everyday usage is given. Compared to GSM, the exposure is presently about a thousandfold lower in comparable situations. Both location and time dependence as well as the control of the output power have been investigated using operating networks in Germany.     

UMTS universal mobile telecommunications system: development ofstandards for the third generation

The standards for the universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) are being developed by the European Telecommunications Standardization Institute (ETSI), UMTS is a set of standards aimed at the global market. It will be a real third-generation global system for mobile communications, adding new features and introducing relevant technological innovations while evolving from both a global system for mobile communications (GSM) and integrated services digital networks (ISDNs), UMTS standardization is a market-driven process, and UMT standards are based on the carefully selected market requirements developed in close cooperation with the UMTS Forum and GSM Memorandum of Understanding Association (MoU), UMTS belongs to the IMT-2000 family and, while supporting existing services, will be capable of offering new and revolutionary services including multimedia and access to the Internet, offering a speed of 2 Mb/s for a single user at a radio-access network. This paper attempts to give an objective view of the UMTS standardization in Europe     

UMTS, the mobile multimedia vision for IMT 2000: a focus onstandardization

Cellular mobile telecommunications and the World Wide Web are growing at an exciting pace. In the year 1999 both GSM and the Internet reached more than 200 million registered users globally. Thus, it may be expected that users will demand the combination of mobility and multimedia services in a foreseeable time frame. Multimedia content increases and differentiates with the changing information society, and an even richer variety of audio, visual, and text-based information will be required in the future. UMTS, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, a member of the IMT-2000 family of third-generation systems, will provide these services. UMTS standardization has set a new paradigm of timely market-driven standardization in a global partnership of standardization bodies     

Wireless Internet access for mobile subscribers based on theGPRS/UMTS network

With the advent of IP technologies and the tremendous growth in data traffic, the wireless industry is evolving its core networks toward IP technology. Enabling wireless Internet access is one of the upcoming challenges for mobile radio network operators. The General Packet Radio Service is the packet-switched extension of GSM and was developed to facilitate access to IP-based services better than existing circuit-switched services provided by GSM. We illustrate how a visited mobile subscriber on a GPRS/UMTS network can access his/her home network via the gateway GPRS support node (GGSN). We also propose some implementation ideas on wireless Internet access for a remote mobile subscriber based on a GPRS/UMTS network     

A vision of UMTS/IMT-2000 evolution

A vision is presented for a fully IP-based mobile network which goes beyond UMTS/IMT-2000. A top-to-bottom design approach is introduced that is capable of offering new and innovative services and applications to both fixed and mobile users efficiently, cost effectively and in a user-friendly manner. Some issues and examples in the design steps following this new approach are discussed. It is clearly shown that the convergence of mobile and fixed networks will be achieved naturally through the use of an `all IP' based solution for both access and core networks     

Performance analysis of multiplexed medical data transmission for mobile emergency care over the UMTS channel

In this paper, a third-generation universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) solution for the delivery of biomedical information from an ambulance to a hospital is presented. The joint transmission of voice, real-time video, electrocardiogram signals, and medical scans in a realistic cellular multiuser simulation environment is considered, taking into account the advantages and particularities of UMTS technology for such transmission. The accomplishment of quality of service constraints for different services is investigated and quantitative results are provided in order to demonstrate the feasibility of using UMTS technology for emergency care services on high-speed moving ambulance vehicles.     

Efficient two-port antenna system for GSM=DCS=UMTS multimode mobile phones

The design of several two-port antenna systems for mobile phones is presented. All these structures are made up of two planar inverted-F antennas closely positioned on a small ground plane and radiating in the GSM900/DCS1800 and UMTS frequency bands. First, the antennas are simply associated at the top edge of the same printed circuit board. Thus, to improve their isolation and their total efficiency, a neutralisation effect is created by means of an optimised suspended line, which links the feeding strips of the radiators. The performance of these systems is measured and compared with theoretical results     

Topological planning and design of UMTS mobile networks: a survey

In this paper, we present a literature review on the topological planning problem of third generation (3G) cellular networks based on the universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) standard. After describing the UMTS architecture, we introduce each subproblem and present major works that have been done. The cell, the access and the core network planning problems have all been considered as well as a more global approach (when more than one subproblems are considered simultaneously). Both planning and expansion algorithms are also included in this review. The goal of this paper is to present and classify the different research works that have been done so that it can be used as a starting point for future research on topological design of UMTS networks. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A methodology for the performance evaluation of data querystrategies in universal mobile telecommunication systems (UMTS)

The anticipated emergence of third-generation mobile systems, referred to as universal mobile telecommunication systems (UMTS), raises the problem of reconsidering the design of the databases destined to contain the user information. In particular, it is expected that the key concepts of the new database architectures will be high distribution and fast updating of information. So far, the problem of determining the most appropriate distributed database (DDB) architectures for third-generation mobile systems has not been widely dealt with in literature. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating hierarchical DDB architectures by means of an analytical model of the data querying operation. This methodology allows for structural alternatives, differing on account of the number of levels and branches in the hierarchy, to be evaluated in terms of query loads and mean response times, according to a given user mobility characterization and a given search protocol operation. By way of illustration, the paper discusses a case study, concerning a query operation arising from a location updating procedure and applied to a hierarchical tree-like DDB in which some structural alternatives are considered     

Analysis of the evolution to an IP-based UMTS terrestrial radio access network

This article provides an overview of the various issues - and their solutions - the researchers faced when looking into the matter of introducing IP transport in the UMTS terrestrial radio access network. Starting with a synopsis of the framework provided by standardization (3GPP), we present more detailed solutions for several topics that were addressed in 3GPP such as the definition of an efficient protocol stack, the provisioning of QoS, and strategies for IP-ATM interworking. As a special case of the latter, the application of pseudo-wires as an innovative solution is put forward to allow interworking with dual-stacked nodes over an IP-only backbone.     

Fast handoff with reducing waste rate approach for wireless resources management in UMTS mobile networks

3G Wideband CDMA systems adopt the Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor code tree as the channelization codes management for achieving high data rate transmission in personal multimedia communications. It assigns a single channelization code for each accepted connection. Nevertheless, it wastes the system capacity when the required rate is not powers of two of the basic rate. One good solution is to assign multiple codes for each accepted connection but it causes two inevitable drawbacks: long handoff delay and new call setup delay due to high complexity of processing with multiple channelization codes, and high cost of using more number of rake combiners. Especially, long handoff delay may result in more call dropping probability and higher Grade of Service, which will degrade significantly the utilization and revenue of the 3G cellular systems. Therefore, we propose herein an adaptive efficient codes determination algorithm based on the Markov Decision Process analysis approach to reduce the waste rate and reassignments significantly while providing fast handoff. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach yields several advantages, including the lowest GOS, the least waste rate, and the least number of reassignments. Meanwhile, the optimal number of rake combiners is also analyzed in this paper. This research was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, ROC, under contract NSC-93-2213-E-324-018.     

Unified Mobility Manager: enabling efficient SIP/UMTS mobile network control

Internet telephony is viewed as an emerging technology not only for wireline networks, but also for third-generation wireless networks. Although IP end to end is considered the ultimate approach to future wireless voice services, there is still a long way to go before IP voice packets can be effectively transported over the air. Therefore, Internet telephony and today's circuit-switched wireless network will coexist for years to come, and it is essential to effectively perform interworking between these networks. This article proposes the Unified Mobility Manager (UMM) that achieves efficient interworking between traditional wireless networks and Internet telephony networks. The main characteristic of the UMM is that it combines UMTS HLR and SIP proxy functionality in one logical entity, which helps eliminate the performance degradation due to interworking between SIP and UMTS. This article identifies seven potential network architectures with and without the UMM and with varying degrees of IP penetration in the wireless core networks, and performs comparative analysis in terms of their call setup signaling latency. Our performance results show that for SIP originated calls, the architecture with the UMM can achieve better performance than existing UMTS networks without the UMM. Our results further show that when the backbone network is fully IP-enabled, dramatic performance gains can be accomplished with the UMM for PSTN originated calls as well as for SIP originated calls. The article also demonstrates that the UMM allows graceful migration from today's circuit-switched wireless networks to hybrid SIP/circuit-switched wireless networks, and toward the IMS architecture for all-IP UMTS networks in the future.     

Turbo-decoder quantization for UMTS

The use of turbo codes is proposed for high-rate data services in third generation wireless communication systems. Bit-true models are mandatory for hardware and software implementations. In this paper we present to the best of our knowledge the first investigation of a combined bit-width optimization of input data and internal data for an 8-state turbo-decoder based on parameters relevant for UMTS. Simulation results for AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels show that performance degradation can be held below 0.11 dB using a 4-bit input data quantization