HSPA, HSDPA, HSUPA: confused?

How often have we been into this situation? We step into a mobile phone store and you are bombarded with features and tech jargon. The moment we decide to step into 3G enabled world these terms are thrown at us.. HSPA, HSDPA, HSUPA.. What do they really mean and how are they really related?

Evolution of Mobile Broadband
One of the most important features of a 3G mobile service is the high speed data access. As the market expands, requirement also increases, thereby bringing in the necessity for new standards. Most of the data access traffic is downlink oriented or just like in an internet access biased towards the end user. Improving this will result in a better user experience.

HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA
HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3G mobile communications protocol in which the networks can offer higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Currently HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit/s. Its true that most of the traffic is downlink oriented, still,there are a few applications that will benefit from an improved uplink. Typical examples are large pictures, movies etc. The 3G service which provides an enhanced uplink is the HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access). So whats HSPA then? HSDPA and Enhanced Uplink are together known as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA)! Another term you might encounter in the near future is HSPA+ (also called Evolved HSPA). This is an upcoming wireless broadband standard which is expected to provide data rates up to 42 Mbps in the downlink and 11 Mbps in the uplink. A post on HSPA+ is already there in this blog.

So be armed with the knowledge next time you step into a phone store!!!!

Evolving HSPA : HSPA+

An evolution of HSPA has been specified based on the studies, which added multiple input/ multiple output (MIMO) antenna capability and 16QAM (Uplink)/ 64QAM (Downlink) modulation. The improvements in the radio access network for continuous packet connectivity will help the evolving architecture - HSPA+ - achieve uplink speeds of 11Mbps and Downlink speeds of 42Mbps. HSPA+, also known as Evolved High-Speed Packet Access is a wireless broadband standard defined in 3GPP release 7. The 3GPP roadmap from HSPA to HSPA+ and then to LTE has been well defined in standards development work with the final closing of Release 8.

HSPA+
HSPA+ is a simple upgrade to HSPA networks existing today. HSPA+ provides a performance advantage for the GSM-HSPA operators providing OFDMA equivalent performance in 5X5 MHz spectrum allocations
with only incremental investment.HSPA+ doubles the data capacity over HSPA and over WCDMA, it offers more than double voice capacity. Lower latency is being projected as one of the key advantages. Higher order modulation schemes are utilized to enhance the data rates. HSPA+ networks are likely to co-exist with LTE networks during the initial years, after which the oprerators may want to shift to the next level of efficiency. The discontinuous transmit/receive feature allows the device to gate off the control channels when there is no user data to send. Similarly the receiver is turned off at certain agreed intervals when there is no downlink information to the device. Such a synchronized operation allows the device to shut off its transmitter and receiver blocks completely, which significantly improves the device battery life for voice over HSPA services.

HSPA+ thus provides an excellent technology evolution path from HSPA, enabling operators to maximize their return on existing investments.