All about HSPA, HSDPA, HSUPA and HSPA+

What is the difference between HSPA+ from Etisalat Easyblaze and HSDPA from MTN Fastlink? I am sure, you will want to know the answer to this. Read on .... 

High Speed Packet Access

High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile telephony protocols, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), that extends and improves the performance of existing WCDMA protocols. A further 3GPP standard, Evolved HSPA (also known as HSPA+), was released late in 2008 with subsequent adoption worldwide beginning in 2010.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)

The first step required to upgrade WCDMA to HSPA is to improve the downlink by introducing HSDPA. The improved downlink provides up to 14 Mbit/s with significantly reduced latency. The channel reduces the cost per bit and enhances support for high-performance packet data applications.
HSDPA is based on shared channel transmission and its key features are shared channel and multi-code transmission, higher-order modulation, short Transmission Time Interval (TTI), fast link adaptation and scheduling along with fast Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ).
The upgrade to HSDPA is often just a software update for most WCDMA networks, and as of May 2008 90 percent of WCDMA networks have been upgraded to HSDPA.
A majority of deployments provide up to 7.2 Mbit/s in the down-link, and 14 Mbit/s is ready as soon as the devices are available in the market. In 2006, it was reported that most of the HSDPA-capable UEs then deployed were "Category 12" devices, supporting only up to 1.8 Mbps.
Voice calls are usually prioritized over data transfer.
Singapore's three network providers M1, StarHub and SingTel provide up to 28 Mbit/s throughout the entire island. The Australian provider Telstra provides up to 14.4 Mbit/s nationwide and up to 42Mbit/s in selected areas. The Croatian VIPnet network supports a downlink speed of 7.2 Mbit/s, as does Rogers Wireless in Canada which also supports 21 Mbit/s in the Toronto area. In South Korea, a nationwide 7.2 Mbit/s coverage is now established by SK Telecom and KTF. In Hong Kong, PCCW, CSL and Hutchinson 3 provide 21 Mbit/s coverage and SmarTone-Vodafone provides up to 28.8 Mbit/s. In New Zealand, Telecom supports 21 Mbit/s HSDPA. In Portugal all the mobile phone operators support 21.6 Mbit/s HSDPA (Vodafone now supports 42Mbit/s in selected areas). In India all service providers viz Bharti Airtel, Aircel, BSNL, MTNL, Vodafone IN, Idea, BPL, MTS and Tata DoCoMo provide speed of 21.1 Mbit/s nationwide while Reliance ADAE provides speeds up to 28.8 Mbit/s nationwide. Sri-Lankan company Dialog Mobile also provides 7.2 Mbit/s while Mobitel Pvt Ltd provides 28 Mbit/s.

[edit] High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)

Main article: HSUPA

The second major step in the WCDMA upgrade process is to upgrade the uplink, which is introduced in 3GPP Release 6. Upgrading to HSUPA is usually only a software update. Enhanced Uplink adds a new transport channel to WCDMA, called the Enhanced Dedicated Channel (E-DCH). An enhanced uplink creates opportunities for a number of new applications including VoIP, uploading pictures and sending large e-mail messages. The enhanced uplink increases the data rate (up to 5.8 Mbit/s), the capacity, and also reduces latency. The enhanced uplink features several improvements similar to those of HSDPA, including multi-code transmission, short Transmission Time Interval (TTI), fast scheduling and fast Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ).
In Singapore, Starhub announced a 1.9 Mbit/s HSUPA Service as part of its new MaxMobile plan on 1 August 2007. In Finland, Elisa announced on 30 August 2007 1.4 Mbit/s HSUPA to most large cities with plans to add the service to its whole 3G network within months. (The same announcement contained a promise of covering 25% more of Finland by the end of the year, which actually took two more years to accomplish). 3 Italia and Ericsson announced on 16 July 2008 the successful tests of HSUPA 5.8 Mbit/s in the live network of 3 Italia.

Evolved High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+)

HSPA+, or Evolved High-Speed Packet Access, is a technical standard for wireless, broadband telecommunication. HSPA+ was first defined in the technical standard 3GPP release 7.
HSPA+ provides an evolution of High Speed Packet Access and provides data rates up to 84 Megabits per second (Mbit/s) to the mobile device and 22 Mbit/s from the mobile device. Technically these are achieved through the use of a multiple-antenna technique known as MIMO (for “multiple-input and multiple-output”) and higher order modulation (64QAM) or combining multiple cells into one with a technique known as Dual Cell.
The 84 Mbit/s and 22 Mbit/s represent theoretical peak speeds. The actual speed for a user will be lower. In general, HSPA+ offer higher bitrates only in very good radio conditions (very close to cell tower) or if the terminal and network both support either MIMO or Dual cell, which effectively use two parallel transmit channels with different technical implementations.
HSPA+ will support up to 168 Mbit/s theoretical peak rates. This is achieved by using multiple carriers with MultiCell and MIMO together simultaneously. Newly standardised releases even offer up to 672 Mbit/s theoretical peak rates to the mobile device defined in 3GPP Release 10 using advanced antenna techniques.
The technology also delivers significant battery life improvements and dramatically quicker wake-from-idle time - delivering a true always-on connection. HSPA+ should not be confused with LTE, which uses a new air interface.

Dual-Cell HSDPA (DC-HSDPA)

Dual-Cell HSDPA, part of 3GPP Release 8, is the natural evolution of HSPA by means of carrier aggregation. An HSPA+ network can theoretically support up to 28Mbit/s and 42 Mbit/s with a single 5 MHz carrier for Rel-7 (MIMO) and Rel-8 (Higher Order Modulation + MIMO), in good channel conditions with low correlation between transmit antennas. Alternatively DC-HSPA can be used from Release 8 where the MAC scheduler can allocate two HSPA carriers in parallel and double the bandwidth from 5 MHz to 10 MHz. Besides the throughput gain from double the bandwidth, some diversity and joint scheduling gains can also be achieved. This can particularly improve the QoS (Quality of Service) for end users in poor environmental conditions that cannot benefit from MIMO and Higher Modulation only. From Release 9 onwards it will be possible to use DC-HSDPA in combination with MIMO used on both carriers. The support of MIMO in combination with DC-HSDPA will allow operators deploying Release 7 MIMO to benefit from the DC-HSDPA functionality as defined in Release 8.

Dual-Cell HSUPA (DC-HSUPA)

Similar enhancements as introduced with DC-HSDPA in the downlink for UMTS Release 8 are being standardized for UMTS Release 9 in the uplink, called Dual-Cell HSUPA. DC-HSUPA will have similar limitations, for instance that the carriers have to belong to the same Node-B and have to be adjacent. Furthermore, it is assumed that at least 2 carriers are configured simultaneously in the downlink and have the same duplex distance to the uplink. The dual carrier transmission will only be applied to HSUPA UL physical channels and DPCCH. The standardisation of Release 9 was completed in December 2009.

Multi-carrier HSPA (MC-HSPA)

While the aggregation of more than two carriers has been studied, the 3GPP specification does not yet allow this option. Nevertheless it seems likely that such option will be added at a later state of the technology.

 


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