What exactly is HSDPA?

Abstract

Hardly has 3G, in the form of wideband-CDMA, left the starting blocks than new enhancements are being added. In fact, the 3GSM 2004 Congress held in Cannes in February was filled with talk of HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) and how it will transform the infant 3G services. It is expected that this new technology will allow 3G to compete more successfully with some of the other high-speed data systems that are now widely available. With W-CDMA offering peak data rates up to 2 Mbit/s, 3G needs to have some means of capturing the data market. HSDPA will do just that, enabling 3G to make a real impact on the market and allowing the new technology to offer higher data speeds while providing an improved quality of service (QoS). In this way, it even has the potential to rival and overtake services offered today by terrestrial broadband providers. A further advantage of HSDPA is that users can download packet data while simultaneously conducting a voice call. HSDPA is a packet-based data service used within the W-CDMA downlink. It allows data transmission speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s, and with further stages of its implementation planned for the future it will be possible to attain rates of up to 20 Mbit/s. All of this can be implemented using the standard W-CDMA bandwidth of 5 MHz.