Testing the Latest HSPA Evolution: How Fast Can It Get?

Abstract:
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) was successfully introduced in most UMTS networks world wide. In this paper we shed some light on the most recent steps of evolution, which are being trialed currently, and also commercialized in the first networks: for the uplink this is the support of 2 ms Transmission Time Intervals for HSUPA, and for the downlink HSPA+, the Rel.7 extension, which introduces among other features Higher Order Modulation (HOM) and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output). We present performance results in different scenarios. The paper concludes with an outlook to the next steps of the WCDMA technology, which allow further increase of the peak data rate and spectral utilization, with multicarrier HSPA as the most promising technique.