The continuing explosive growth in mobile communication is demanding more spectrally
efficient radio access technologies than the prevalent second generation (2G) systems such as
GSM to handle just the voice traffic. We are already witnessing high levels of mobile
penetration exceeding 70% in some countries. It is anticipated that by 2010 more than half of
all communications will be carried out by mobile cellular networks. On the other hand, the
information revolution and changing life habits are bringing the requirement of communicating
on a multimedia level to the mobile environment. But the data handling capabilities
and flexibility of the 2G cellular systems are limited. The third generation (3G) systems
based on the more spectrally efficient wideband CDMA and a more flexible radio channel
structure are needed to provide the high bit rate services such as image, video, and access to
the web with the necessary quality and bandwidth. This has promoted the inception of a
global 3G standard that will bring higher capacities and spectral efficiencies for supporting
high data rate services, and the flexibility for mixed media communication. The 3G mobile
communication network referred to here as UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication
System) is based on the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) and is the
main 3G radio access standard in the world. UMTS has been deployed in Europe, and is
being deployed in the USA, Japan, Korea, and in many other parts of Asia around the same
frequency band of 2 GHz. The present book provides a detailed description of the WCDMA
air interface, the detailed radio planning, and the optimization and capacity improvement
mechanisms for the FDD-mode, the QoS classes, and the end-to-end parameter interworking
mechanisms, as well as an adequate coverage of the terrestrial and the core network
design, dimensioning, and end-to-end data transfer optimization mechanisms based on the
TCP protocol.