Network engineering issues in the UMTS development perspective

The evolution of mobile communications is inducing several new issues belonging to the system engineering disciplines. This paper tries to underline some of the most important problems starting from the novel requirements and the application characteristics expected for Third Generation Mobile System. Based on these new service peculiarities, the radio resource control and the architectural solutions to be chosen for the Mobile Core Network are becoming key issues to be investigated for the forthcoming configurations. Particularly, the service acceptance control and the perspective of integration with the IP (Internet Protocol) context are of great importance for the definition of the radio control functions and the specification of the switching and mobility control features respectively. The paper presents some basic considerations on the cellular planning issues arising in W-CDMA (Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access) systems, by underlying the most significant innovative elements that are to be introduced in the planning process from the mobile operator viewpoint.