High-Speed Packet Access

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High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is a collection of mobile telephony protocols that extend and improve the performance of existing UMTS protocols. Two standards, HSDPA and HSUPA, have been established and a further standard, HSPA+, is soon to be released.

Overview

The two existing standards (HSDPA and HSUPA) in the family provide increased performance by using improved modulation schemes and by refining the protocols by which handsets and base stations communicate. These improvements lead to a better utilization of the existing radio bandwidth provided by UMTS.

The number of commercial 3.5G networks--also known as High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, or HSDPA, networks--launched worldwide grew by 69 percent in 2007. There are now 174 commercial HSDPA networks in 76 countries. An additional 38 networks are committed to rollouts, which will bump the total to 211 HSDPA networks in 90 countries. Commercial HSDPA networks are widely available in Western Europe (61 networks), Southeast Asia (35), Eastern Europe (34), the Middle East and Africa (20), and the Americas and the Caribbean (16). Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of existing commercial HSDPA networks support downlink speeds of 3.6 Mbit/s or more, while more than a fifth (21 percent) support the peak downlink speed of 7.2 Mbit/s.^[1]

Many HSPA rollouts can be achieved by a software upgrade to existing 3G networks, giving 3.5G a headstart over WiMax, which requires dedicated network infrastructure. Rising sales of HSPA-enabled mobiles--aided by more-generous-than-expected operator subsidies of the hardware--are helping to drive the 3.5G market.^[2]

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)

Main article: HSDPA

HSDPA provides improved theoretical down-link performance of up to 14.4 Mbit/s. Existing deployments provide up to 7.2 Mbit/s in down-link. Up-link performance is a maximum of 384 kbit/s. The Round-trip delay time is around 150 ms.

For operational reasons, service providers may cap this rate to lower rates than the maximum 3.6 Mbit/s that most HSDPA handsets support. Voice calls are usually prioritized over data transfer. The Croatian VIPnet network supports the speed of 7.2 Mbit/s in down-link as does Rogers Wireless in Canada. In South Korea, a nationwide 7.2Mbit/s coverage is now established by SK Telecom and KTF. In Hong Kong, PCCW also provide 7.2Mbit/s coverage.

See full list of HSDPA networks committed and in service

High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)

Main article: HSUPA

HSUPA provides improved up-link performance of up to 5.76 Mbit/s theoretically. In Singapore, Starhub announced a 1.9 Mbit/s HSUPA Service as part of its new MaxMobile plan in 1 Aug 2007 [1]. In Finland, Elisa announced on 30.8.2007 1.4 Mbit/s HSUPA to most large cities with plans to add the service to its whole 3G network within months [2]. 3 Italia and Ericsson announced on 16.07.2008 the successful tests of HSUPA 5.8 Mbps in the live network of 3 Italia [3]

See full list of HSUPA networks committed and in service

Evolved High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+)

Main article: HSPA+

HSPA+ is defined in 3GPP release 7 . It introduces simpler IP centric architecture for the mobile network bypassing most of the legacy equipment. HSPA+ boosts peak data rates to 42 Mbit/s on the downlink and 22 Mbit/s on the uplink.

References

Official HSPA website

See also

• Global mobile Suppliers Association
• LTE

Literature

• Martin Sauter: Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society, John Wiley, September 2006, ISBN 0-470-02676-6

External links

• 3.5G driving rapid mobile broadband growth.