3G Overview

Part 1 - UMTS
3G Motivations Why 3G ?

 Phenomenal growth of 2G - lack of capacity

 2G is technically inadequate for data (available data rates, data QoS guarantees, integration with
existing data networks, etc.)
 Operationally inadequate (billing is location and time based)
 One of the 3G targets: Merging Internet with mobile world

1G
2G (Digital
(Analog 3G (Wireless Data)
Telephony)
Telephony)
3G Motivations Why 3G ?
 2G optimized for voice  3G services may be
 3G designed for service plurality  Person to person
 Flexibility of handling both CS and  Content to person
PS through same air interface
 Business connectivity
 Management of different types of
PS  Person to person – peer to peer
 Advanced capabilities required for services (voice or data)
service plurality  Content to person – access of server
 High data rates ( 2Mbps in R99 to based information
28.8Mbps in R7. Practically 1 to
2Mbps – frequently limited by  Business connectivity – use of
cellular provider) WCDMA as a radio modem
 Low packet delay times (100ms in
R5, 50ms in R6)
 Seamless mobility for PS
applications
 QoS differentiation between PS
 Simultaneous voice and data
 Interworking with GSM/GPRS
3G Services Person to person: HD Voice (1/2)

 HD-Voice or Adaptive Multirate Wideband

(AMR- WB): better voice quality
 In traditional narrowband (NB) speech
transmission (e.g., GSM FR/EFR or AMR
NB), the important energy present above
3400 Hz is filtered out, which explains why
for instance “s” and “f” cannot be
distinguished in traditional telephone calls
[1]. Example of voice spectrum [1]
 Wideband speech (50,7000)Hz transmission
renders all unvoiced sounds related to user
emotion (like whispering) and is more
transparent to environmental noise.
 The additional low frequencies make the
speech sound more natural and increase
the effect of presence and closeness.
 Introduced in Release 5.
 Adopted by ITU-T for landline telecom
 Future landline and wireless system would
use same coder
 No transcoding

[1] GSMA, “Adaptive Multirate Wide Band”, Version 2.0, 21 February 2013
3G Services Person to person: HD Voice (2/2)

 AMR-WB shows excellent MOS*

 An extended 9-levels MOS scale is
adopted
 Better than AMR-NB (for the same rate)
 Better than 64kbps PCM
 Robust in noisy environment
 Improvements are result of
 Higher sampling frequency – better for
capturing the frequency content of
consonants
 Increased processing (more sophisticated AMR and AMR-WB comparison with older 3GPP codecs [2]
voice analysis algorithms)

MOS Quality Impairment

5 Excellent Imperceptible
4 Good Perceptible but not annoying
3 Fair Slightly annoying
2 Poor Annoying
1 Bad Very annoying
Classical MOS scale AMR-WB rates [1]

(*) MOS: Mean Opinion Score

[2] Anssi Rämö , “Voice Quality Evaluation of Various Codecs”, Nokia Research Center, Tampere, Finland
3G Services Person to person: Others

 Video telephony – supported as of Release  PS person to person services – large

5 as CS switched service (ITU-T H324M) revenue potential for operators
 Packet switched services  PS applications – very diverse QoS
 SMS Messaging requirements
 MMS Messaging
 Audio messaging (very cost effective,
one minute AM is only 35kB)
 Instant messaging
 Mobile email
 Video sharing
 Push to talk cellular
 VoIP
 Multi-player games
3G Services Content to person

 Web Browsing  Content download

 Accounts for more than 50% of mobile data  Application, ring tone, MP3,…
usage  Download may vary from few kilo bytes
 Progressive download to few megabytes
 Podcasting – users upload audio and video
content for free download by other web users
 Social media  All content to person services are highly
asymmetric in traffic demand.
 Audio and video streaming
 Becoming increasingly popular
 Less complicated from digital content rights
that downloadable media
 Less demanding from the mobile memory
standpoint