impACTS in Mobile Communications: 3rd Generation Systems

The requirement for R&D in advanced mobile and personal communications services and networks, in the framework of the European Community programmes, has been widely recognised for many years, and the ACTS Programme has played an essential role as a catalyser of know-how and as a vehicle for early consensus building. The specific objectives that are addressed by the current ACTS mobile projects include the development of third generation platforms for the cost effective transport of broadband services and applications, aiming at responding to the needs of seamless services provision across various radio environments and under different operational conditions. Since the scope of future mobile communications encompasses multimedia, far beyond the capabilities of current mobile/wireless communication systems, the objective is to progressively extend mobile communications to include multimedia and high performance services, and enable their integration and inter-working with future wired networks.
Third generation mobile communication systems aim also at integrating all the different services of second generation systems. They will provide a unique opportunity for competitive service provision to an expected 85% of the population, and cover a much wider range of broadband services (voice, data, video, multimedia) that remain consistent and compatible with the technology developments taking place within the fixed telecommunications networks. The progressive migration from second to third generation systems, expected to start in 2002, will therefore encourage new customers while ensuring that existing customers perceive a service evolution that is relatively seamless, beneficial, attractive and natural.

Reflecting Europe's future . . . in UMTS
Source of photo: Cellnet

UMTS, from the ACTS Programme perspective, is conceived as a multi-function, multi-service, multi-application digital mobile system that will provide personal communications at rates ranging from 144 kBit/s up to 2 Mbit/s according to the specific environment, will support universal roaming, and will provide for broadband multimedia services. UMTS is designed to have a terrestrial and a satellite component with a suitable degree of commonality between them, extending to the radio interface. Europe's R&D effort concentrates on the development of technical guidelines regarding, in particular, interworking between UMTS and ATM technology deployed in fixed networks not ignoring the growing importance of IP, the compatibility of UMTS and fixed-network architecture, the allocation of intelligent functionality (UPT - Universal Personal Telecommunications, and IN - Intelligent Network), the level of integration of the satellite component of UMTS, and the multi-service convergence philosophy of the UMTS radio interface. On the other hand, MBS (Mobile Broadband Systems), including their W-LAN (Wireless Local Area Network) dimension, are an extension to the wired B-ISDN, with the ability to provide radio coverage restricted to a small area (e.g., sports arenas, factories, television studios, etc.) allowing communication between MBS mobile terminals and terminals directly connected to the B-ISDN at rates up to 155 Mbit/s. Their integration to UMTS is also being addressed by the current work.