The Latest Step in Cellular

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The Latest Step in Cellular

• Justin Champion
• 3292 JJC1_at_staffs.ac.uk

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Content

• What we will look at
• Where from

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Handover 2.5 to 3G

• Although one of the things which was recognised
  quickly in 1G was the lack of a Global standard
• 2G attempted to fix this with GSM
• Which is dominant throughout the world, but not
  the only technology
• The same was true for 2.5G with multiple
  standards being developed Globally
• CDMA2000
• EDGE
• This was actually an enhancement of GPRS
• The dream situation was to have a single standard
  which worked globally
• A single device anywhere on the planet, fully
  interoperable

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3G Reality

• Unfortunately in reality there was always going
  to be differences
• Different areas of the radio spectrum were used
  for different things
• This was still true even within GSM and they had
  to use Quad band phones to allow them to work
  everywhere
• Differing infrastructure already in place
• If 3G was based purely on GSM as the dominant
  technology then operators of CDMA would need to
  invest more, GSM operators a lot less
• Modulation method
• Agreement was needed on how best to transfer and
  receive the signals
• Local Influence
• Mostly manufacturers who had invested large
  amounts in a single technology

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3G Standard

• The Standard which we now as 3G is based on
  IMT-2000
• This was developed and agreed by the
  International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
• These are a group which is based on Geneva and
  operate as a part of the united nations
• Each country can then contribute a member to
  represent them in the meetings
• ITU is broken into sub groups looking at all
  types communication standards the group which
  looked at 3G was ITU-T (telecommunications)
• http//www.itu.int/home/index.html

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3G Standard

• The IMT-2000 among many other items defined
  standard throughputs for different kinds of
  access
• 2Mbps in fixed or in-building environments
• 384 kbps in pedestrian or urban environments
• 144 kbps in wide area mobile environments
• Variable data rates in large geographic area
  systems (satellite)
• Every possible item within a mobile
  infrastructure was also defined as the standard
• Only by doing this can they be sure of
  interoperability between the operators

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3G Standard

• Out of these IMT-2000 standards came three
  implementations
• UMTS - Europe
• CDMA2000 - America
• TD-SCDMA China
• To add to the confusion
• The specification group for UMTS was called 3GPP
• Developing the standards for the UMTS system
  which is built upon GSM
• Developed by ETSI
• The specification group for CDMA2000 was 3GPP2
• Developed the standards building upon the US CDMA
  networks, specifically the CDMA-2000 standard

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3G Standard

• Despite this what was now available at least as a
  standard was an improved air interface to mobile
  devices
• In theory they would now operate at 2 Mbps, which
  makes the mobile quicker than a lot of ISP ADSL
  connections to the home
• The hope for this was to build upon the
  developments of 2.5G and offer the end user even
  more services
• Companies who were making use of the technology
  to get an even quicker response time
• Downloading 500 Kilobytes of email
• GPRS 1 minute 11 seconds
• UMTS (3G) 1 Second

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GSM Based 3G

• The technology which followed on from GPRS within
  the GSM infrastructure
• Was Universal Mobile Telecommunication System
  (UMTS)
• This was the next step in the evolution of GSM
• UMTS built upon the infrastructure changes which
  took place from GSM and GPRS
• This basically meant that the upgrade was
  reasonably quick and cheap as everything was not
  thrown away and was built upon
• UMTS standardised in the areas of
• Radio
• Core Network
• Terminals
• Services

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UMTS and Data services

• The development of 3G communications has given
  many things to the cellular infrastructure
• The data rate has increased from GPRS
• Although 2 Mbps is advertised and this is
  possible to achieve
• In reality as with a lot of technologies it will
  rarely be achieved
• If your computer application requires this sort
  of throughput, then 3G cellular at the moment
  would not be the correct solution to the problem
• The actual throughput you receive will depend on
  a number of factors
• It even depend on the type of cell you are
  attached to
• Within GPRS there was only a single kind of cell
• Within UMTS there are different cells which offer
  differing throughput rates

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UMTS Cells

• Types of Cells
• Macro Cell
• These cover a large area and will give slow
  access
• 144 Kbps max speed of 500 Km/h
• Micro Cell
• These should cover a medium area
• 384 Kbps max speed 120 Km/h
• Pico Cell
• Less than 100 metres
• 2 Mbps max speed of 10 Km/h
• Difficult to predict
• Actual distances and bandwidth depend on local
  conditions

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UMTS Updates

• The Use of UMTS involved some updates to
  infrastructure
• Everything which had been installed as a part of
  GPRS was still used for the same role
• The base stations needed to have a hardware and
  software upgrade
• UMTS uses a different modulation technique called
  Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA)
• The software within the base station needed to be
  updated to allow the use of this and the new
  packet requirements
• Some of the components were renamed as well

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UMTS Coverage

• The actual coverage as well will have an effect
• There was some changes which need to be done to
  base stations within UMTS
• This is due to the way that the air interface is
  modulated meaning a change of hardware was
  required
• Although the UMTS services are being rolled out
  they are not covering every part of the UK
• If you go to the operators website they will show
  you where is covered and where is not
• This is the map for Vodafone Jan 2007 for
  Stafford
• Eventually all of the UK will be covered
• In the event of communicating and your chosen
  service is not available you will connect to
  another service

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UMTS Data Services

• To make use of these new services the devices
  themselves have changed
• Although the physical size can not change much
  due to usability issues
• The amount of items which can be put into the
  device has changed
• This increased computing power within the device
  has allowed additional services to the devices
• A range of current UMTS based devices can be seen
  here
• http//www.umtsworld.com/industry/3gphones.htm
• The use of the Internet to drive the technology
  to the handset has also given additional services
• Although the screens are most the wrong size,
  increasingly websites have mobile versions of the
  website i.e. news.bbc.co.uk
• Not all of the services which are tried will be
  successful but they are tried and then if not
  they move on
• Who would have guessed that Crazy Frog would have
  made 14 million from the ring tone alone ?
• http//www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-15124
  82_1,00.html, 2005
• Although it has to be said that UMTS is not
  needed for this technology

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UMTS Data Services Packet Switched

• One of the items which was discussed for GPRS was
  the change over to packet switched communications
• Packet switched is a lot more efficient in
  sharing a medium
• The problem is that you can not guarantee that a
  packet will be delivered in a timely manner
• This is not always important, sometimes it just
  does not matter
• Email is a perfect example of this, all that
  matters is that the packet arrives eventually
• Within UMTS all communications will be packet
  switched, not just the data communications
• The voice communications will also be packet
  switched as these are more efficient and free the
  air interface for increased data communications

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UMTS Data Services QOS

• UMTS added to the infrastructure Quality of
  Service
• What this allows is that a packet can be tagged
  as to the level of importance it has
• On this basis its priority when being forwarded
  is then based on this level of service required
• A live video stream from a device is a good
  example, where in the event of a large number of
  delays the quality of the transmission will be
  ruined
• Not normally a problem but consider if this was
  ruined by a large amount of email being sent on
  the network
• Email has no requirements for delivery times, if
  there is a 5 second delay in the delivery it is
  not the end of the world

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UMTS Data Services - QOS

• UMTS offers four levels of QOS
• Each communication will be allocated one of these
  classes

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Data Services

• The use of UMTS has given real and usable data
  services to handsets and devices which attach to
  the network
• Still the largest use of data services within the
  networks is the growth of messaging services
• The development of GPRS and UMTS has allowed for
  these messaging services to develop and provide
  more
• But the oldest and simplest Text messaging is the
  most popular
• Below are the growth figures for handset Internet
  usage

http//www.text.it/mediacentre/wap_figures.cfm
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Messaging services

• As we discussed in a previous lecture the
  development of messaging services within 2G was
  massive
• Short Message Service (SMS)
• This then gave the operators an idea of how much
  money could be made from non voice services
• Actually SMS was not a data service and was a
  part of the Teleservices
• Which was the voice part of the system
• The growth of SMS was not planned for in the
  network and was not expected
• SMS was simply intended to replace the pager
  network
• The advantage that SMS took off was the ability
  to send a message between users
• The communications were two way
• The user did not even have to be on the same
  network as long as there was a connection
  agreement between them
• To exchange the messages
• Only the sender had to pay for the message
• The fact that all of the European operators used
  the same technology also allowed for easy
  expansion
• This was not true in other parts of the world

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Messaging services

• Usage Figures
• The first message was sent on the 3rd December
  1992 to the Vodafone network
• Since then the growth has been beyond any sort of
  expectation

http//www.text.it/mediacentre/sms_figures.cfm
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Messaging services

• The messaging network though has grown and has
  taken advantage of the advances in the data
  services of the operators
• In addition there was improvements in the
  developments of handsets and the services which
  they operated as well
• Two new services were released to enhance the
  limits of SMS
• 160 characters, mainly intended for the ASCII
  character set
• Although this can change, but not upwards 160 is
  the maximum
• Enhanced Messaging Service
• Allowed additional data to be sent beyond SMS
• Text formatting
• Simple graphics to be transferred
• Multimedia Messaging Service
• This service allowed for full multimedia to be
  embedded into a message
• Allowing the enhancement of the message, with
  audio graphics, video, actually whatever you
  wanted
• The same as the internet all that mattered was
  the fact that the recipient could interpret the
  data

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Messaging services

• Enhancing the message

EMS
MMS
SMS
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Messaging services

• MMS Multimedia Standards
• The following are the current standards
• The standards can be expanded in the future
• This is a list of base requirements for devices
  to be given the title of MMS compatible
• Pictures
• JPEG, GIF, PNG, SVG-Tiny (2D Vector Graphics)
• Movies
• MPEG-4
• Sound
• SP-MIDI
• Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR)
• Text
• ASCII Text
• UTF 8/16
• Future Use
• Allows unlimited expansion

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Messaging services

• MMS Delivering a possibly large message
• SMS was delivered in a single packet
• MMS can have a theoretical unlimited message size
• In reality the operators/devices will control the
  size of the messages
• This indicates that the message can not be
  delivered in a single packet
• MMS Transport
• MMS packets will be transferred using the WAP
  protocol using bearer service rather than
  teleservices as with SMS
• This gives security in the messages
• Access to the Internet to move MMS message if
  needed to the Internet
• MMS Delivery continued
• MMS message will be transferred in the spare
  capacity
• The media will be trickled to your device
• You will only be informed of a message once all
  of the data is in the device
• If you device does not have the storage to
  display a movie, then the data can be streamed
  into your device
• Reducing the overhead for storage, but increasing
  the overhead for the network.
• This will not be available until 3G (UMTS in
  Europe)
• MMS is not platform dependent
• Meaning that any mobile system can use this
  technology

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Data Services

• Although the original usage of MMS was limited
  this is slowly growing
• Orange announced in Dec 2007 that there was a 37
  increase in MMS usage
• (http//www.smstextnews.com/2007/12/mms_up_37_in_t
  he_uk_since_may_.html, 2008)
• The final usage of 3G data services at the moment
  is not known
• Although one consideration might be that there is
  no Killer application for UMTS
• It may be like the Internet where there is no
  single application which everyone uses instead it
  is a lot of applications with the benefits of
  them all
• In the end this will be a better result as
  devices will then remain general rather than
  customised to specific needs
• By keeping the handsets generalised this allows
  for the development of new and as yet recognised
  services to be introduced to the market
• A lot of the new popular technologies are
  developed and become popular without any
  advertising pushed towards them
• SMS and youtube being the perfect examples

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Data Services

• From a computing point of view though
• The 3G data services open the devices to a large
  amount of freedom
• The handheld devices which are attached to the
  network have a large amount of capabilities now
• These can be used by developers
• Growth can be seen in video usage
• Games
• General Internet Usage
• Email reception
• We can use the technology to develop new
  applications
• These could be for entertainment i.e. a games
• Announced in Dec 2007
• Possibly 17 billion per year by 2011
• http//www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Mobile/news.asp?c2
  886
• Business Types applications
• Enhancing what they do
• Or extending

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Conclusion

• What we have looked at today
• Why the 3G standard
• 3G communications
• Messaging Services
• Data service and what can be done with them