Course Outlines

• Detailed course considering practical 3G radio planning issues
• Practical sessions based around case study using "state of the art" 3G planning tool to design and test the 3G network
• Link budget analysis with variations due to clutter and multimedia service mix
• Consideration of the complexities of traffic modelling for multimedia services and utilising the 3G planning tool
• Consideration of cell planning issues such as site selection processes, Node B parameter selection and network dimensioning
• Consideration of the optimisation and tuning procedures including power allocation, network performance estimation and tuning
• Review of network enhancement methods for use within UMTS with an assessment of their benefit to coverage and capacity

• Introduction to spread spectrum and modulation, the structure and operation of the different WCDMA physical channels
• Transmitter hardware design, physical layer processing stages in the transmitter. Coding, interleaving, transport format combining and filtering.
• Transmitter RF design, structure and performance requirements for UE and Node B transmitter. Effects of codes and filtering on the transmitter linearisation options. Power ramp and power control issues.
• Receiver hardware design, key symbol rate functions such as channel decoding & interleaving. Rake receiver considered in detail.
• Receiver RF design, definition of Eb/No and Ec/No and relationship to receiver sensitivity and noise figure. 3GPP receiver specifications and derived RF Rx specifications. IF options, AGC and ADC considerations.

• Introduction to spread spectrum, WCDMA principles, and transceiver performance requirements.
• Examination of protocol architecture, operation of radio system, radio parameters and their configuration.
• Examination of the elements of the WCDMA link budget for a range of scenarios and mixes of multimedia services.
• Consideration of WCDMA site design including antenna subsystem issues such as beamwidth, bandwidth and tilting.
• Investigation into site RF issues such as mast head or cabin located RF components, design considerations for various site sharing options.
• Consideration of more general system design issues such as the use of transmit diversity, cell dimensioning and site transmission capacity

• Introduction to the principles and operation of the physical layer
• MAC layer structure and operation. Examples of operation for transport format combining and the random access process
• Detailed review of the RLC layer and its different operating modes. In-depth consideration of the Acknowledged Mode operation
• Details of structure and operation of RRC protocol with in-depth consideration of specifics such as RRC connection establishment, RAB establishment and measurement configuration
• Details of USIM and Idle mode operation in UE
• Non Access Stratum functions including both GSM and GPRS based protocols as well as detailed consideration of SIP and SDP protocols as part of the R5 IP Multimedia Subsystem

• Detailed introduction to the structure and operation of the WCDMA radio interface from physical layer to application layers.
• Principles behind the operation of the physical layer such as spreading and scrambling codes and the WCDMA modulation.
• Details of baseband processing functions such as rake receiver, rate matching, channel coding and decoding (including Turbo codes), interleaving and changes when operating in compressed mode.
• Review of layers 2, 3 and Non Access Stratum protocols including principles of operation of the radio interface as a whole.
• Consideration of system design issues such as the use of diversity and coverage and capacity trade-offs; fixed network design and operation.
• Handover and inter-working between GSM and WCDMA

• Introduction and review of WCDMA principles and operation
• Initial acquisition, design of matched filters, fast Hadamard processors
• Design and operation of rake receiver, searcher and channel estimation
• Symbol rate processing. Turbo decoder structure and operation, MAP decoder and reduced complexity versions
• TDD mode receiver including joint detection algorithms
• Measurement functions in WCDMA transceivers
• Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas, MxN channel estimation
• Interference cancellation and equalisation, optimal and sub-optimal methods
• High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), structure and operation of algorithms, hybrid ARQ
• Extensive hands on practical sessions for algorithm design and testing