RSCP and Ec/No

The CPICH-Common pilot channel is continuously transmitted from the NodeB. It carries no information and can be thought of as a beacon constantly transmitting the Scrambling Code of the cell. WCDMA cells are identified by their SC just like BCCH in the GSM. It is this beacon that is used by the phone for its cell measurements for network acquisition and handover purposes (Ec, Ec/Io). In a WCDMA network the User Equipment (UE) receives signals from many cells So Io is the Sum total of all of these signals. (dbm) Note :Sometimes Io is referred to as No, RSSI Now RSCP is the Received Signal code power of particular CPICH in dbm. Ec=Energy per Chip From the previous two measures we can calculate a signal quality for each CPICH (SC) received. Ec/Io = (Energy per chip / Noise spectral density) = RSCP/RSSI Now lets understand relation between Ec/Io and Eb/No