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The development of GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA and LTE is in stages known as
3GPP releases. Hardware vendors and software developers use these releases as part
of their development roadmap.
In wireless cellular systems, mobiles have to share a common medium for transmission.
There are various categories of assignment, the main four include:
In addition, they can employ enhanced error detection and correction schemes
including FEC (Forward Error Correction). This enables the system to be more resilient
to noise and interference and therefore they have a greater spectral efficiency when
compared to FDMA system.
Transmission Mode: - FDD Mode. A separate uplink and downlink channel are
utilized, enabling a device to transmit and receive data at the same time (assuming the device
incorporates a duplexer). The spacing between the uplink and downlink channel is referred to as
the duplex spacing.
Normally the uplink channel (mobile transmit) operates on the lower frequency. This
is done because higher frequencies suffer greater attenuation than lower frequencies
and therefore it enables the mobile to utilize lower transmit levels.
TDD mode enables full duplex operation using a single frequency band and time division
multiplexing the uplink and downlink signals. One advantage of TDD is its ability to
provide asymmetrical uplink and downlink allocation. Depending on the system, other
advantages include dynamic allocation, increased spectral efficiency, as well as the improved
use of beamforming techniques - this is due to having the same uplink and downlink frequency
characteristic.
Spectrum usage: - GSM The table illustrates the main frequency bands defined for GSM.
However, this does not guarantee that the spectrum is available since there may be regulatory
issues, as
well as limitations in some handsets and base stations.
The initial GSM band was referred to as P-GSM (Primary GSM). This was mainly defined to
replace the TACS system which was also in the 900MHz band. Other 900MHz bands which
were added include E-GSM (Extended GSM) and R-GSM (Railways GSM) bands, providing
more channels and support of a railway-based variant. Finally, other bands away from the
900MHz band are also available; however, the support for 450MHz and 480MHz is limited. The
terms DCS (Digital Cellular Service) and PCS (Personal Communications Service) are
typically used in Europe and North America respectively to identify the higher frequency
deployment options. It was expected that these frequencies would offer a better re-use in built
up areas and therefore provide additional capacity.
Spectrum usage: - UMTS: - like GSM, has a number of frequency bands defined.
In addition to the previous UMTS FDD bands, various UMTS TDD bands are also defined. The
table illustrates the main TDD bands, however the majority of these have never been
implemented.
Spectrum usage: - LTE: - The LTE Radio interface, namely the E-UTRA (Evolved - Universal
Terrestrial Radio Access), is able to operate in many different radio bands. FDD requires two
center frequencies, one for the downlink and one for the uplink. These carrier frequencies are
each given an EARFCN (E-UTRA Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number) which
ranges from 0 to 65535. In contrast, TDD only has one EARFCN.