High-Speed Downlink Packet Access

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is an enhanced 3G (third-generation) mobiletelephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data-transfer speeds and capacity. As of 2013 HSDPA deployments can support down-link speeds of up to 42.3 Mbit/s. HSPA+ offers further speed increases, providing speeds of up to 337.5 Mbit/s with Release 11 of the 3GPP standards.[1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Technology
o o o o o o

1.1 High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel 1.2 Hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ) 1.3 Fast packet scheduling 1.4 Adaptive modulation and coding 1.5 Dual-Cell 1.6 Other improvements

2 User Equipment (UE) categories 3 Roadmap 4 Adoption

o

4.1 Marketing as mobile broadband

5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Technology[edit]
High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel[edit]
For HSDPA, a new transport layer channel, High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH), has been added to UMTS release 5 and further specification. It is implemented by introducing three new physical layer channels: HS-SCCH, HS-DPCCH and HS-PDSCH. The High Speed-Shared Control Channel (HS-SCCH) informs the user that data will be sent on the HS-DSCH, 2 slots ahead. The Uplink High Speed-Dedicated Physical Control Channel (HS-DPCCH) carries acknowledgment information and current channel quality

indicator (CQI) of the user. This value is then used by the base station to calculate how much data to send to the user devices on the next transmission. The High Speed-Physical Downlink Shared Channel (HS-PDSCH) is the channel to which the above HS-DSCH transport channel is mapped that carries actual user data.

Hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ)[edit]

Data is transmitted together with error correction bits. Minor errors can thus be corrected without retransmission; see forward error correction. If retransmission is needed, the user device saves the packet and later combines it with retransmitted packet to recover the error-free packet as efficiently as possible. Even if the retransmitted packets are corrupted, their combination can yield an error-free packet. Retransmitted packet may be either identical (chase combining) or different from the first transmission (incremental redundancy). Since HARQ retransmissions are processed at the physical layer, their 12 ms round-trip time is much lower compared to higher layer retransmissions.

Fast packet scheduling[edit]

The HS-DSCH downlink channel is shared between users using channel-dependent scheduling to make the best use of available radio conditions. Each user device continually transmits an indication of the downlink signal quality, as often as 500 times per second. Using this information from all devices, the base station decides which users will be sent data in the next 2 ms frame and how much data should be sent for each user. More data can be sent to users which report high downlink signal quality. The amount of the channelisation code tree, and thus network bandwidth, allocated to HSDPA users is determined by the network. The allocation is "semi-static" in that it can be modified while the network is operating, but not on a frame-by-frame basis. This allocation represents a trade-off between bandwidth allocated for HSDPA users, versus that for voice and non-HSDPA data users. The allocation is in units of channelisation codes for Spreading Factor 16, of which 16 exist and up to 15 can be allocated to the HSDSCH. When the base station decides which users will receive data in the next frame, it also decides which channelisation codes will be used for each user. This information is sent to the user on one of up to 4 HSSCCHs, which are not part of the HS-DSCH allocation previously mentioned, but are allocated separately. Thus, for a given 2 ms frame, data may be sent to a number of users simultaneously, using different channelisation codes.

Adaptive modulation and coding[edit]

The modulation scheme and coding are changed on a per-user basis, depending on signal quality and cell usage. The initial scheme is quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), but in good radio conditions 16QAM and 64QAM can significantly increase data throughput rates. With 5 Code allocation, QPSK typically offers up to

1.8 Mbit/s peak data rates, while 16QAM offers up to 3.6 Mbit/s. Additional codes (e.g. 10, 15) can also be used to improve these data rates or extend the network capacity throughput significantly.

Dual-Cell[edit]
Dual Cell (DC-)HSDPA, known also as Dual Carrier, is the natural evolution of HSPA by means of carrier aggregation in the downlink.[2] UMTS licenses are often issued as 10 or 15 MHz paired spectrum allocations. The basic idea of the multicarrier feature is to achieve better resource utilization and spectrum efficiency by means of joint resource allocation and load balancing across the downlink carriers. An advanced HSPA network can theoretically support up to 28 Mbit/s and 42.2 Mbit/s with a single 5 MHz carrier for Rel7 (MIMO with 16QAM) and Rel8 (64-QAM + MIMO), in good channel conditions with low correlation between transmit antennas. An alternative method to double the data rates is to double the bandwidth to 10 MHz (i.e. 25 MHz) by using DC-HSDPA. Additionally, some diversity and joint scheduling gains can also be expected[3] with improved QoS for end users in poor environment conditions where existing techniques such as MIMO spatial multiplexing cannot be used to increase data rates. In 3GPP a study item was completed in June 2008. The outcome can be found in technical report 25.825.[4] New HSDPA User Equipment categories 21-24have been introduced that support DC-HSDPA. DC-HSDPA can support up to 42.2 Mbit/s, but unlike HSPA, it does not need to rely on MIMO transmission. From Release 9 onwards it will be possible to use DC-HSDPA in combination with MIMO used on both carriers.[5] This will allow theoretical speed of up to 84.4 Mbit/s. 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. While in Release 8 DC-HSDPA can only operate on adjacent carriers, Release 9 also allows that the paired cells can operate on two different frequency bands. Future releases will allow the use of up to four carriers simultaneously.

Other improvements[edit]
HSDPA is part of the UMTS standards since release 5, which also accompanies an improvement on the uplink providing a new bearer of 384 kbit/s. The previous maximum bearer was 128 kbit/s. As well as improving data rates, HSDPA also decreases latency and so the round trip time for applications. In later 3GPP specification releases HSPA+ increases data rates further by adding 64QAM modulation, MIMO and Dual-Cell HSDPA operation, i.e. two 5 MHz carriers are used simultaneously.

User Equipment (UE) categories[edit]

HSDPA comprises various versions with different data speeds. In 2009 the most common devices are category 6 (3.6 Mbit/s) and category 8 (7.2 Mbit/s) with retail prices around 60 euros without subscription.

The following table is derived from table 5.1a of the release 11 of 3GPP TS 25.306[6] and shows maximum data rates of different device classes and by what combination of features they are achieved. The per-cell perstream data rate is limited by the Maximum number of bits of an HS-DSCH transport block received within an HS-DSCH TTI and the Minimum inter-TTI interval. The TTI is 2 ms. So for example Cat 10 can decode 27952 bits/2 ms = 13.976 MBit/s (and not 14.4 MBit/s as often claimed incorrectly). Categories 1-4 and 11 have interTTI intervals of 2 or 3, which reduces the maximum data rate by that factor. Dual-Cell and MIMO 2x2 each multiply the maximum data rate by 2, because multiple independent transport blocks are transmitted over different carriers or spatial streams, respectively. The data rates given in the table are rounded to one decimal point.

3GPP Release

Max. number of Category HS-DSCH codes

Modulation[note
1]

MIMO, MultiCell

Code rate at Max. data max. data rate rate[note 2] [Mbit/s][note 3]

Release 5

16-QAM

.76

1.2

Release 5

16-QAM

.76

1.2

Release 5

16-QAM

.76

1.8

Release 5

16-QAM

.76

1.8

Release 5

16-QAM

.76

3.6

Release 5

16-QAM

.76

3.6

Release 5

10

16-QAM

.75

7.2

Release 5

10

16-QAM

.76

7.2

Release 5

15

16-QAM

.70

10.1

Release 5

10

15

16-QAM

.97

14.0

Release 5

11

QPSK

.76

0.9

Release 5

12

QPSK

.76

1.8

Release 7

13

15

64-QAM

.82

17.6

Release 7

14

15

64-QAM

.98

21.1

Release 7

15

15

16-QAM

MIMO 2x2

.81

23.4

Release 7

16

15

16-QAM

MIMO 2x2

.97

28.0

Release 7

19

15

64-QAM

MIMO 2x2

.82

35.3

Release 7

20

15

64-QAM

MIMO 2x2

.98

42.2

Release 8

21

15

16-QAM

Dual-Cell

.81

23.4

Release 8

22

15

16-QAM

Dual-Cell

.97

28.0

Release 8

23

15

64-QAM

Dual-Cell

.82

35.3

Release 8

24

15

64-QAM

Dual-Cell

.98

42.2

Release 9

25

15

16-QAM

Dual-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.81

46.7

Release 9

26

15

16-QAM

Dual-Cell +

.97

55.9

MIMO 2x2

Release 9

27

15

64-QAM

Dual-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.82

70.6

Release 9

28

15

64-QAM

Dual-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.98

84.4

Release 10

29

15

64-QAM

Triple-Cell

.98

63.3

Release 10

30

15

64-QAM

Triple-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.98

126.6

Release 10

31

15

64-QAM

Quad-Cell

.98

84.4

Release 10

32

15

64-QAM

Quad-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.98

168.8

Release 11

33

15

64-QAM

Hexa-Cell

.98

126.6

Release 11

34

15

64-QAM

Hexa-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.98

253.2

Release 11

35

15

64-QAM

Octa-Cell

.98

168.8

Release 11

36

15

64-QAM

Octa-Cell + MIMO 2x2

.98

337.5

Release 11

37

15

64-QAM

Dual-Cell + MIMO 4x4

.98

168.8

Release 11

38

15

64-QAM

Quad-Cell + MIMO 4x4

.98

337.5