Ultra mobile broadband gathers momentum

Stuart Corner
Monday, 02 April 2007 06:54

Business IT - Technology

Ultra mobile broadband (UMB), the next evolution of the CDMA2000 cellular technology promising data rates up to 280Mbps, is gathering momentum with the staging of the first UMB seminar by a number of global equipment makers at the US CTIA wireless show in the US.

UMB is the CDMA2000 equivalent of the 3GPP group's Long Term Evolution (LTE) of 3G WCDMA: which is being increasing seen in the longer term as the main competitor to WiMAX, rather than the current 3G technology. There is also a degree of convergence between the three as all use orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) modulation technologies.

According to Wikipedia, "UMB is the brand name for the project within 3GPP2 to improve the CDMA2000 mobile phone standard for next generation applications and requirements. The system employs OFDMA technology along with advanced antenna techniques to provide peak rates of up to 280Mbps. Goals for UMB include significantly improving system capacity, greatly increasing user data rates throughout the cell, lowering costs, enhancing existing services, making possible new applications, and making use of new spectrum opportunities. The technology will provide users with concurrent IP-based services in a full mobility environment. The UMB standardisation is expected to be completed in mid 2007, with commercialisation taking place around mid-2009."

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has announced a line-up of wireless industry leaders that support UMB and that participated in its first UMB seminar. They are Alcatel-Lucent, Hitachi, Huawei, LGE, Motorola, Nortel, Qualcomm and ZTE.

According to Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. "UMB is a compelling OFDMA solution designed from the ground up to deliver high-speed broadband data, and optimised to support VoIP services under highly mobile conditions. The advanced features, together with a scalable IP architecture, enable UMB to support a large selection of IP-based, concurrent and converged services that require low latency and improved spectral efficiency."

According to Charlie Chen, senior vice president, marketing and product management, Huawei USA. "One of the key differentiators we see with UMB is the ability to support a significant number of VoIP users simultaneously while maintaining high data capacity...As wireless services evolve toward more concurrent multimedia services, VoIP becomes critical to offering features like social multimedia networking, video telephony, low-delay gaming and other rich media services.