Quick HSPA Overview

WCDMA Release '99 enables peak rates of 384kbps with latency of 100-200ms and can adequately support various voice and data services. However new services such as mobile video-streaming, voice-over-IP, real time gaming, etc. require even higher data rates and especially reduced latency making the need for a new radio interface essential.

A straightforward and cost effective upgrade of the existing UMTS networks was made possible with the 3GPP Releases 5 (High Speed DL Packet Access – HSDPA) and 6 (High Speed UL Packet Access – HSUPA), together known as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA). The two technologies aim at increasing the achieved peak data rates beyond 10Mbps in the DL and up to 3-4 Mbps in the UL whilst providing reduced latency. Apart from the performance improvement, HSPA provides an increase in the capacity and spectral efficiency allowing support of both high rate symmetric and asymmetric services.

The HSPA deployment is performed on top of the WCDMA network through the introduction of additional software and hardware to the existing network elements (i.e. Node B’s), potentially keeping the required cost relatively low. The same carrier for both WCDMA and HSPA can be used, although a separate carrier provides a greater increase in capacity. HSPA support has already been introduced for laptop computers in the form of data cards and there are also several HSDPA enabled 3G mobile phones in the market place.

Technical details about HSDPA and HSUPA can be found in How Does HSDPA Work? and How Does HSUPA Work?.

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