IMT - 2000 : A Comparative Analysis of cdma 2000 and UTRA

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is currently reviewing Radio Transmission Technology (RTT) proposals for third or next generation (3G) mobile systems which is commonly referred to as the International Mobile Telecommunications in the year 2000 (IMT-2000)[1] standardization project. The project’s goal is to develop a global standard that will enable wireless subscribers to access services from almost anywhere. However, the deployment of 3G wireless systems is not waiting for the standards activity to be completed. Key manufacturers such as Northern Telecom, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Qualcomm and Nokia are already in the process of testing and in some cases rolling out 3G based services. Previous Capstone papers identified several service aspects for the IMT-2000 systems [2,3]. Market research indicates that the most important service aspects to the wireless business user are voice/data quality and coverage capabilities. Therefore, the IMT-2000 system must meet these criteria. In addition, IMT-2000 systems must be capable of supporting data rates of up to 2Mbps to keep pace with the growth in data. Nine Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) terrestrial proposals were submitted to the ITU for review on September 30, 1998. These proposals can be represented by the cdma2000 proposal submitted by the US Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) and the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) proposal submitted by the European Telecommunication Standards Institutes (ETSI) [4,5]. Both proposals meet the basic requirements set forth by the ITU. The goal of this paper will be to explore key differences between cdma2000 and UTRA proposal and what they mean in terms of system performance.