This paper describes the broadband radio access techniques for Universal Mobile Terrestrial Systems (UMTS)/Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA)/High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), Long Term Evolution (LTE), and LTE-Advanced. Major technical pillars are almost identical regardless of the radio access systems of the respective generations. However, the key techniques that provide distinct performance improvements have changed according to the system requirements in each generation. Hence, in this paper, we focus on the key techniques associated with the system requirements. We also describe the requirements, radio access technology candidates, and challenges toward the future 5G systems.

Due to universal frequency reuse, cell edge users in HSDPA suffer from serious inter-cell interference (ICI). In this letter we present a coordinated scheme for HSDPA which can mitigate ICI by interference avoidance in spatial domain. A system level simulation shows that our scheme can effectively improve the performance of the cell edge users.

The high-speed downlink packet access (HSPDA) system is expected to effectively support voice services when Release 7/8 features are adopted in the system. In this letter, we point out that a voice packet can be transmitted at a lower power level than normal in the HSDPA network. We propose a power allocation scheme that adjusts the transmission power of voice packets optimally and allocates the remaining transmission power to data services in order to improve data throughput. The proposed power allocation is analyzed with a Rayleigh fading channel model and compared to conventional fixed power allocation.

Currently deployed mobile networks including High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) offer only best-effort Quality of Service (QoS). In wireless best effort networks, the bandwidth variation is a critical problem, especially, for mobile devices with small buffers. This is because the bandwidth variation leads to packet losses caused by buffer overflow as well as picture freezing due to high transmission delay or buffer underflow. In this paper, in order to provide seamless video streaming over HSDPA, we propose an efficient real-time video streaming method that consists of the available bandwidth (AB) estimation for the HSDPA network and the transmission rate control to prevent buffer overflows/underflows. In the proposed method, the client estimates the AB and the estimated AB is fed back to the server through real-time transport control protocol (RTCP) packets. Then, the server adaptively adjusts the transmission rate according to the estimated AB and the buffer state obtained from the RTCP feedback information. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves seamless video streaming over the HSDPA network providing higher video quality and lower transmission delay.

Mutual interference among users can abruptly increase othercell interference and cause overload situation in coexisting WCDMA and HSDPA systems. Traffic overloading can degrade the performance of the systems. This letter proposes a new dynamic downlink load control (DDLC) algorithm to reduce performance degradation due to overload in the coexistence of WCDMA and HSDPA systems. With the proposed algorithm, the downlink load is controlled according to load states classified by two load-control thresholds, and traffic overloading is alleviated by dynamically adjusting the CQI values reported by users, based on the downlink load as well as channel variations. The proposed algorithm is simulated and results show that the DDLC scheme improves the performance of both WCDMA and HSDPA systems in terms of outage probability, total system throughput, and radio resource utilization.

In this paper, an efficient partial incremental redundancy (P-IR) scheme is proposed for an H-ARQ using block type low density parity check (B-LDPC) codes. The performance of the proposed P-IR scheme is evaluated in an HSDPA system using IEEE 802.16e B-LDPC codes. Simulation results show that the proposed H-ARQ using IEEE 802.16e B-LDPC codes outperforms the H-ARQ using 3GPP turbo codes.

In this paper, we propose and analyze a multi-level acknowledgement scheme for hybrid ARQ (H-ARQ) systems, which modifies the general ACK/NAK signals to represent multilevel information. For instance, the other signals except the ACK/NAK signals may be used for scheduling of retransmission in the H-ARQ scheme, which results in increasing the resolution of the uplink channel estimation signals. Simulation results demonstrate that when the retransmission interval is set to the optimal length, the proposed H-ARQ scheme shows a 0.5-2 dB gain with properly selected parameters.

In this paper, we consider a method to enhance the throughput of HSDPA systems in the mixed traffic scenario. A channel-dependent adaptive delay barrier (DB) function is proposed to maximize throughput of best-effort (BE) traffic while satisfying the delay latency of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) service. Simulations show that the proposed channel-adaptive DB function raises the throughput of BE traffic service by 30% compared to the conventional scheme, without degrading the capacity of VoIP service over HSDPA system.

We analytically evaluated the effects of the analog components on a high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) system standardized by 3GPP. We considered the phase noise of synthesizers, the imbalance of demodulators between in-phase and quadrature channels, and the filters. The components are represented by the appropriate equations. We applied adaptive modulation and coding methods for HSDPA systems and base station transmission of adequate data rate signals complying with quality estimated by mobile stations (MSs). The quality represents a data rate indicating that MSs can receive the signals. We estimated the quality using a conventional signal-to-interference measurement of the common pilot channel (CPICH) and found that the phase noise creates a mismatch relationship between the quality and the data rate, while the demodulator imbalance and filters create a suitable relationship. We confirmed this using analytic methods and computer simulation.

In this letter, we evaluate the capacity of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services over high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA), in which frame-bundling (FB) is incorporated to reduce the effect of relatively large headers in the IP/UDP/RTP layers. Also, a modified proportional pair (PF) packet scheduler design supporting for VoIP service is provided. The main focus of this work is the effect of FB on system outage based on delay budget in radio access networks. Simulation results show that VoIP system performance with FB scheme is highly sensitive to delay budget. We also conclude that HSDPA is attractive for transmission of VoIP if compared to the circuit switched (CS) voice that is used in WCDMA (Release'99).

Several multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques have been proposed for 3GPP WCDMA/HSDPA systems and several performance evaluation for the comparison purpose are in progress. Most MIMO candidates in HSDPA have been generally designed for point-to-point communication, which means that a single-user throughput is of their major concern. However, multiple users and user scheduling need to be considered in wireless packet transmission, so as to maximize system throughput. In this paper we propose an effective user scheduling technique in both space and time domains that offers three main benefits, which are the spatial-beamforming, uplink feedback signaling, and advanced receivers. Furthermore, user scheduling is combined with modified successive interference cancellation (SIC) reception, which allocates all transmit antennas to the best user with SIC or each transmit antenna to different users with minimum mean squared-error (MMSE). Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has higher user diversity gain than other MIMO candidates in terms of achievable throughput.

In this paper, we present laboratory and field experimental results using High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) test-beds in order to reveal the actual HSDPA performance based on key technologies such as base station (BS) scheduling, adaptive modulation and coding, hybrid automatic repeat request, and advanced receiver design. First, this paper evaluates the effects of advanced user equipment capabilities such as the maximum number of multi-codes, transmit diversity, receive diversity, and a chip equalizer. Increases in throughput of 60% and 85% due to using 10 and 15 codes were observed compared to 5 codes, respectively. The gain of 22% was obtained by applying closed-loop transmit diversity to the HSDPA network. Receive diversity improves the throughput in the region from low to high signal-to-interference ratio, and the gain of 45% was obtained by applying receive diversity to the conventional RAKE receiver. A throughput gain of approximately 17% due to the use of the chip equalizer was obtained and it was observed mainly in the high Ior/Ioc region and under multi-path conditions. Second, field experiments are conducted to elucidate the effects of multi-user diversity using a BS scheduling algorithm, and reveal that proportional fairness scheduling provides both the increase in sector throughput of 18% and a sufficient degree of fairness among users. The transmit control protocol (TCP)-level throughput performance is also investigated in order to reveal the actual end-user throughput. The results show that the throughput rate of approximately 90% of the throughput of the MAC-hs layer is achieved in the TCP layer in the laboratory experiments and in the field experiments.

While CDMA systems are proven to be excellent solutions for cellular communications, they suffer from severe multi-path interferences and are hard to support high-data-rate transmissions over frequency-selective fading channels. This letter introduces a novel downlink transmission method for next generation mobile communication systems. The proposed method can provide significantly improved performance in a hot-spot area while maintaining the backward compatibility with the 3rd generation CDMA systems.

A simple Minimum Rate Supporting Scheduler (MRSS) is proposed for HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). MRSS guides the user selection in order to provide, if any, a prespecified minimum rate for each user. The simulation results show that MRSS successfully supports to keep the minimum rate up to fairly high traffic load, where existing methods fail, with tolerable degradation in throughput.

This paper presents new High Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH) code management schemes on High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) for IP-based multimedia provisioning. The proposed management schemes simplify HS-DSCH code allocation while simultaneously increasing HS-DSCH code utilization. Applying the code management schemes, furthermore, we implement two scheduling algorithms for real-time packets to guarantee the quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. The Real-Time Code Allocation (RTCA) algorithm applies the functionalities of the radio management framework to decide the admission for a new real-time service. Once a new real-time session is established, RTCA allocates HS-DSCH codes to that session such that all real-time packets in the session are scheduled before their related deadlines. Based on the RTCA algorithm, the Real-Time Code Sharing (RTCS) algorithm implements the Early-Deadline-First (EDF) scheme for the schedulability analysis, increasing the schedulable probability for the real-time sessions and thus to improve the utilization of HS-DSCH codes. Experimental results show that RTCS outperforms RTCA in terms of packet drop rates, HS-DSCH code blocking rates and the number of code-domain reassignments.

This paper compares by computer simulation the achievable throughput performance employing fast packet scheduling algorithms focusing on the throughput of each user in High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Three packet scheduling algorithms are employed: the Maximum carrier-to-interference power ratio (CIR), Proportional Fairness (PF), and Round Robin (RR) methods. The simulation results elucidate that although the Maximum CIR method achieves an aggregated user throughput within a cell higher than that using the PF and RR methods, the PF method is advantageous because it enhances the user throughput for a large number of users with a lower received signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR), who are located outside the normalized distance of 0.6-0.7 from a cell site (this corresponds to the area probability of 50-60% within the cell) compared to the Maximum CIR method. It is also shown that when the PF method is employed, the probability of user throughput of greater than 2 Mbps in the vicinity of the cell site becomes approximately 45% (5%) for L = 1-path (2-path) fading channel, while it is almost 80% (50%) when using the Maximum CIR method. Finally, we show that the average user throughput in a 2-path Rayleigh fading channel is reduced by approximately 30% compared to that in a 1-path channel due to severe multipath interference (MPI) and that the average user throughput is strongly affected by the total traffic produced within a cell, which is directly dependent on the number of users within a cell and the data size per packet call.