High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)-Enhanced Data Rates for UMTS Evolution

The increasing demand for capacity in order to provide high data-rate multimedia services in wireless environments necessitates enhanced radio transmission techniques and network protocol functionality. Such techniques have to be added to already existing mobile cellular networks, e.g., as provided by Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). For 3rd generation UMTS networks based on WCDMA, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is being introduced to meet this demand and to improve spectral efficiency. This technique is based on well-known Link Adaptation (LA) by using various modulation and coding schemes and with this realising several different data rates for downlink transmission. Moreover, fast scheduling techniques based on shortened radio frames enable efficient and flexible sharing of the radio resources among different users and services. This article gives a detailed overview on the integration of HSDPA in UMTS networks and provides a detailed performance evaluation for a realistic scenario comprising a multi-cellular environment with various types of applications.