Lucent Technologies will deploy a 3G UMTS trial network in the Atlanta market for Cingular Wireless. The UMTS network will operate in Cingular Wireless’ 1900 MHz spectrum, and will include testing of High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), a technology that will ultimately support data speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps according to the company. The network also will be designed to support VoIP in the future.
Lucent’s UMTS solution can support HSDPA with a software-only upgrade to its existing equipment.
Lucent will also supply its Merlin U520 UMTS Wireless PC Modem Cards – jointly developed by Lucent and Novatel Wireless — which support speeds of up to 384 kbps. http://www.lucent.com/
- In February 2003, researchers at Bell Labs announced a “turbo decoder chip�? for 3G data terminals that supports the evolving High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standard. HSDPA is an evolutionary enhancement to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) spread-spectrum technology, also known as wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA). The chip uses a highly parallel architecture and a new compression technique that enables it to operate at a low clock frequency and yet still achieve high data rates. Lucent said the new chip is fast enough not only to support first-generation HSDPA systems, which will offer transmission speeds between 5 and 10 Mbps, but also future Multiple-Input/Multiple-Output (MIMO) HSDPA systems, which are expected to achieve peak data rates up to 20 Mbps. Design work for the device was done by a Bell Labs research team in Sydney, Australia.