Third generation personal communications physical layer: status and open issues

Summary form only given. Third generation (3G) personal communications systems are being developed in Europe, Asia, and North America. In Europe 3G concepts have been developed over the past decade within European Community funded projects such as RACE and ACTS; these projects have been staffed by both universities and corporations. European efforts have been managed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Fifteen 3G system proposals were delivered to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in June 1998. The ITU goal was (is) to select a single system standard for application throughout the world. To aid the ITU in the harmonization of the fifteen standards, two groups of manufacturers, standards organizations, and others were formed. The first of these groups, called the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), is developing a single standard based upon the GSM/MAP network architecture and the other, called the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), is developing a single standard based upon the ANSI-41 network architecture. This presentation summarizes the status of 3GPP physical layer as of June 1999, and identifies several research topics that could influence the standard or the deployment of the standard