High Speed Packet Access
Encyclopedia
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.
HSPA increases peak data rates and capacity in several ways:
By July 2010, HSPA had been commercially deployed by over 200 operators in more than 80 countries.
Many HSPA rollouts can be achieved by a software upgrade to existing 3G networks, giving HSPA a headstart over WiMAX
, which requires a dedicated network infrastructure. A rich variety of HSPA enabled devices - more than 1000 available by July 2010 - together with ease of use is leading to rising sales of HSPA-enabled mobiles and is helping to drive the adoption of HSPA.
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.
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.
release 7 and 8 of the WCDMA specification. Evolved HSPA provides data rates up to 84 Mbit/s in the downlink and 22 Mbit/s in the uplink (per 5 MHz carrier) with multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) technologies and higher order modulation. On 21 July 2010, T-Mobile USA announced HSPA+ service to 50 markets with plans to increase this to 100 markets (185 million people) by the end of the year.
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.
specification does not yet allow this option. Nevertheless it seems likely that such option will be added at a later state of the technology.
Mobile telephony
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Mobile phones connect to a terrestrial cellular network of base stations , whereas satellite phones connect to orbiting satellites...
protocols
Communications protocol
A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...
, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), that extends and improves the performance of existing WCDMA
W-CDMA (UMTS)
W-CDMA , UMTS-FDD, UTRA-FDD, or IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread is an air interface standard found in 3G mobile telecommunications networks. It is the basis of Japan's NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service and the most-commonly used member of the UMTS family and sometimes used as a synonym for UMTS...
protocols. A further 3GPP
3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...
standard, Evolved HSPA
Evolved 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....
(also known as HSPA+), was released late in 2008 with subsequent adoption worldwide beginning in 2010.
Overview
HSPA supports increased peak data rates of up to 14 Mbit/s in the downlink and 5.76 Mbit/s in the uplink. It also reduces latency and provides up to five times more system capacity in the downlink and up to twice as much system capacity in the uplink, reducing the production cost per bit compared to original WCDMA protocols.HSPA increases peak data rates and capacity in several ways:
- Shared-channel transmission, which results in efficient use of available code and power resources in WCDMA
- A shorter Transmission Time Interval (TTI), which reduces round-trip time and improves the tracking of fast channel variations
- Link adaptation, which maximizes channel usage and enables the base station to operate at close to maximum cell power
- Fast scheduling, which prioritizes users with the most favorable channel conditions
- Fast retransmission and soft-combining, which further increase capacity
- 16QAM and 64QAM (Quadrature Amplitude ModulationQuadrature amplitude modulationQuadrature amplitude modulation is both an analog and a digital modulation scheme. It conveys two analog message signals, or two digital bit streams, by changing the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation analog...
), which yields higher bit-rates - MIMO, which exploits antenna diversity to provide further capacity benefits.
By July 2010, HSPA had been commercially deployed by over 200 operators in more than 80 countries.
Many HSPA rollouts can be achieved by a software upgrade to existing 3G networks, giving HSPA a headstart over WiMAX
WiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...
, which requires a dedicated network infrastructure. A rich variety of HSPA enabled devices - more than 1000 available by July 2010 - together with ease of use is leading to rising sales of HSPA-enabled mobiles and is helping to drive the adoption of HSPA.
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
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
three network providers M1
MobileOne
M1 Limited is a telecommunications company in Singapore. Launched in April 1997, it was Singapore's second mobile operator after SingTel and supervene by StarHub, Singapore's third mobile operator....
, StarHub
StarHub
StarHub Limited is a full-fledged telecommunications company providing a full range of services over mobile, internet and fixed platforms in Singapore...
and SingTel provide up to 28 Mbit/s throughout the entire island. The Australian
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
provider Telstra
Telstra
Telstra Corporation Limited is an Australian telecommunications and media company, building and operating telecommunications networks and marketing voice, mobile, internet access and pay television products and services....
provides up to 14.4 Mbit/s nationwide and up to 42Mbit/s in selected areas. The Croatian
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
VIPnet
VIPnet
Vipnet is the first private mobile network operator in Croatia. It has been operating a GSM network since July 1999.Since its arrival, Vipnet has broken the monopoly of CRONET and introduced many new services unknown before - SMS, prepaid and others...
network supports a downlink speed of 7.2 Mbit/s, as does Rogers Wireless
Rogers Wireless
Rogers Wireless is a wireless telecommunications provider offering mobile phone and data services throughout Canada using Global System for Mobile Communications and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System technology. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
which also supports 21 Mbit/s in the Toronto area. In South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, a nationwide 7.2 Mbit/s coverage is now established by SK Telecom
SK Telecom
SK Telecom Co., Ltd. or Sunkyoung Telecom is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator, controlled by the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebol. As a part of SK Group, SK stands for Sun Kyung.SK Telecom is a provider of mobile service in Korea, with 50.5% of the market share as...
and KTF
KTF
KTF was a South Korean telecommunications firm, now merged into Korea Telecom, specializing in cellular, or mobile, phones. Since 1999, it has also developed extensive overseas operations. The company is credited with developing customised ring back tones...
. In Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, PCCW
PCCW
PCCW Limited is the holding company of HKT Group Holdings Limited, Hong Kong's premier telecommunications provider in the Information and Communications Technologies industry. PCCW also holds a majority interest in Pacific Century Premium Developments Limited...
, CSL and Hutchinson 3
Hutchison 3G
3 is a brand name under which several UMTS-based mobile phone networks and Broadband Internet Providers are operated in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom...
provide 21 Mbit/s coverage and SmarTone-Vodafone
SmarTone-Vodafone
SmarTone Mobile Communications Limited is a mobile phone operator in Hong Kong. It provides mobile phone service on GSM-900, GSM-1800 and W-CDMA with the brand SmarTone...
provides up to 28.8 Mbit/s. In New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Telecom
Telecom New Zealand
Telecom New Zealand is a New Zealand-wide communications service provider , providing fixed line telephone services, a mobile network, an internet service provider , a major ICT provider to NZ businesses , and a wholesale network infrastructure provider to other NZ CSPs...
supports 21 Mbit/s HSDPA. In Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
all the mobile phone operators support 21.6 Mbit/s HSDPA (Vodafone now supports 42Mbit/s in selected areas). In India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
all service providers viz Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel Limited , commonly known as Airtel, is an Indian telecommunications company that operates in 20 countries across South Asia, Africa and the Channel Islands. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G services depending upon the country of operation...
, Aircel
Aircel
Aircel group is a mobile phone service provider in India. It offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM cellular phone coverage throughout India. The Aircel group is a joint venture between Maxis Communications Berhad of Malaysia and Sindya Securities & Investments Private Limited, whose current...
, BSNL
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is a state-owned telecommunications company headquartered in New Delhi, India. It is the largest provider of fixed telephony and fourth largest mobile telephony provider in India, and is also a provider of broadband services...
, MTNL
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited is a state-owned telecommunications service provider in the metro cities of Mumbai and New Delhi in India. The company was a monopoly until 1992, when the telecom sector was opened to other service providers. Transparency makes us different- is the motto of the...
, Vodafone IN
Vodafone Essar
Vodafone Essar, formerly Hutchison Essar, is a cellular operator in India that covers 23 telecom circles in India. It is based in Mumbai. On July 2011, Vodafone Group agreed terms for the buy-out of its partner Essar from its Indian mobile phone business. The UK firm paid $5.46 billion to its...
, Idea
Idea cellular
Idea Cellular, usually referred to as Idea, is an Indian wireless telecom company based in Mumbai, India. Idea is the 3rd largest mobile services operator in India, in revenue terms, and recorded of over 98.4 million customers as of August 2011....
, BPL, MTS and Tata DoCoMo
Tata DoCoMo
TATA DoCoMo, referred to as DoCoMo , is a Tata Teleservices Limited owned cellular service provider on the GSM and CDMA platform-arising out of the Tata Group's strategic joint venture with Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo in November 2008...
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
Mobitel (Sri Lanka)
Mobitel Ltd. is a mobile phone network in Sri Lanka. It is wholly owned by Sri Lanka Telecom . The network offers a variety of services and currently operates a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSPA network utilising 3.5G technology. Mobitel was the first 3.5G operator in Sri Lanka and South Asia. It covers...
provides 28 Mbit/s.
High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)
The second major step in the WCDMA upgrade process is to upgrade the uplink, which is introduced in 3GPP3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...
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
StarHub
StarHub Limited is a full-fledged telecommunications company providing a full range of services over mobile, internet and fixed platforms in Singapore...
announced a 1.9 Mbit/s HSUPA Service as part of its new MaxMobile plan on 1 August 2007. In Finland, Elisa
Elisa Oyj
Elisa Oyj is a Finnish telecommunications company founded in 1882 that was known until July 2000 as HPY. Elisa Oyj employs about 3000 people and in 2007 had revenue of about €1.57 billion...
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
Hutchison 3G
3 is a brand name under which several UMTS-based mobile phone networks and Broadband Internet Providers are operated in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom...
and Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
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+)
Evolved HSPA (also known as: HSPA Evolution, HSPA+, I-HSPA or Internet HSPA) is a wireless broadband standard defined in 3GPP3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...
release 7 and 8 of the WCDMA specification. Evolved HSPA provides data rates up to 84 Mbit/s in the downlink and 22 Mbit/s in the uplink (per 5 MHz carrier) with multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) technologies and higher order modulation. On 21 July 2010, T-Mobile USA announced HSPA+ service to 50 markets with plans to increase this to 100 markets (185 million people) by the end of the year.
Dual-Cell HSDPA (DC-HSDPA)
Dual-Cell HSDPA, part of 3GPP3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...
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 3GPP3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations, known as the Organizational Partners...
specification does not yet allow this option. Nevertheless it seems likely that such option will be added at a later state of the technology.
Further reading
- Martin Sauter: Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society, John Wiley, September 2006, ISBN 0-470-02676-6
External links
- GSMworld.com, Official HSPA website
- Linkedin.com, Public HSPA Discussion Forum
- Nomor Research: White Paper "Technology of High Speed Packet Access", nomor.de
- 3.5G driving rapid mobile broadband growth, news.com
- Nomor Research: White Paper "Dual-Cell HSDPA and its Evolution, nomor.de
- High Speed Packet Access Evolution – Concept and Technologies (Ericsson White Paper), ericsson.com
- Nomor 3GPP Newsletter 2009-03: Standardisation updates on HSPA Evolution, nomor.de