Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), which is considered as 3rd Generation Mobile Technology of 3GPP variant.

When it comes to UMTS Objectives, which are aligned with the requirements set up by ITU (International Telecommunications Union) as part of IMT-2000.

Key objectives of UMTS include:

• Integration of mobile services, i.e., UMTS should provide a wide range of telecommunications services to mobile users globally. UMTS to provide these services through a flexible, modular service creation environment, which also allows service providers to differentiate their service offerings.
• Choice of mobile station and service, i.e., Users to be able to find a mobile station which has particular functionality they require, and to obtain the set of services they want from a single source, thereby satisfying all their mobile telecommunications needs with a single mobile station, subscription and billing arrangement. Users will be free to own one or more mobile stations and to obtain a mix of services from several service providers if they wish.
• Terminal flexibility, which means UMTS mobile stations should be flexible and adaptive in order to support different air interfaces, and to provide functionality for telecommunication services.
• Global terminal mobility, which means UMTS to support global terminal mobility i.e., global roaming. A user will be able to take his/her own terminal out of his/her normal service area to other localities, and other regions of the world, to obtain access to whatever UMTS mobile telecommunications services are provided in that locality or region.
• Speech quality, i.e., UMTS has an objective of speech quality comparable to the fixed network, where practical.
• Satellite coverage, Satellites will provide access to UMTS where the terrestrial component is not available, or when satellite access is selected by the user or the network operator.
• UMTS Spectrum, it is an objective of UMTS to exploit the frequency bands identified as part of ITU-2000 recommendations i.e., 1,885 MHz — 2,025 MHz and 2,110 MHz — 2,200 MHz, including the bands: 1,980 MHz — 2,010 MHz and 2,170 MHz — 2,200 MHz identified for the satellite component.
• High bit rate services, UMTS to provide high bit rate services up to initially 2 Mbit/s.
• Control of theft, fraud and abuse, the structure of UMTS and its telecommunications services should minimize the opportunity for fraud and theft of mobile stations, and facilitate its prosecution.
• Security, ensuring that information generated by or relating to a UMTS user or subscriber, is adequately protected against misuse or misappropriation. It is also necessary to ensure that the resources and services provided by a UMTS service provider or network operator are adequately protected against misuse or misappropriation.
• Migration and evolution, to allow a cost-effective introduction of UMTS, a migration path to exist, whereby portions of existing systems and networks may be exploited for the implementation of UMTS. Furthermore, UMTS shall allow the easy introduction of technology advancements and service applications without undue impact on existing users and terminal equipment.
• Mobile station type approval, in order to facilitate global terminal mobility, it is an important objective that mobile station type approval made in one country (or region) should be accepted in other countries (or regions)

Photo by Edz Norton on Unsplash

There are multiple frequency bands that are identified for the operation of UMTS. UMTS supports two modes of operations i.e., FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) mode, wherein uplink and downlink transmissions use two separate frequencies as in the case of previous generation mobile system i.e., GSM. While, TDD (Time Division Duplex) mode uses same radio frequency for both uplink and downlink communications but at different time intervals.

Services:

When it comes to telecommunications services offered by UMTS, all the services that are available in GSM i.e., Basic telecommunication services including bearer and tele services along with supplementary services and network features are supported in UMTS.

In addition to these services, UMTS offers additional features as mentioned here.

Personalization of Mobile Equipment — Personalization features work by storing information in the Mobile Equipment (ME), which limits the Identity Modules (IM) with which it will operate. There are five personalization categories, which include

Network Personalization, allows a Mobile Equipment to be personalized to a particular network, for example to prevent the use of stolen mobile equipment’s on other networks.

Network subset personalization, is a refinement of network personalization, which allows network operators to limit the usage of mobile equipment to a well-defined subset of identity modules.

Service Provider personalization, which allows a service provider to associate a mobile equipment with the service provider.

Corporate personalization, is a refinement of service provider personalization, which allows companies to prevent the use of mobile equipment’s they provide for their employees or customers with other identity modules without that corporate personalization.

SIM/USIM Personalization, is an anti-theft feature. When a mobile equipment is SIM/USIM personalized for a particular SIM, it will refuse to operate with any other SIM/USIM. Hence if the mobile equipment is stolen the thief will not be able to use it with another SIM/USIM.

Mobile Station Application Execution Environment (MExE) — MExE provides a standardised execution environment in an UE/MS, and an ability to negotiate its supported capabilities with a MExE service provider, allowing applications to be developed independently of any UE/MS platform.

Noise suppression for the AMR Codec — Noise Suppression for the AMR codec is an optional feature designed to enhance speech quality in a range of environments where there is significant (acoustic) background noise.

The Virtual Home Environment (VHE) — The concept of VHE is such that users are consistently presented with the same personalised features, User Interface customisation and services in whatever network and whatever terminal, wherever the user may be located.

Open Service Access (OSA) — In order to be able to implement future applications/end user services that are not yet known today, a highly flexible Framework for Services is required. The aim of OSA is to provide a standardised, extendible and scalable interface that allows for inclusion of new functionality in the network in future releases with a minimum impact on the applications using the OSA interface.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) — The MMS will allow users to send and receive messages, exploiting the whole array of media types available today such as text, images, audio, video, while also making it possible to support new content types as they become popular. Multimedia technology is rapidly developing new capabilities, such as multimedia messages, games, presentations and services that are now considered to be a part of everyday life.

Presence Service — The presence service results in presence information of a user, and information on a user’s devices, services and services components being managed by the network. The presence service provides access to presence information to be made available to other users or services.

Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) — The MBMS is a unidirectional point to multipoint bearer service, in which data is transmitted from a single source entity to multiple recipients. It is anticipated that other services will use these bearer capabilities.

Push Service — The Push Service introduces a means to transmit push data from a push initiator to a push recipient (e.g. a UE) without a previous user action.

Global Text Telephony (GTT) — Text telephone systems were implemented mainly for distant conversation with deaf, hard-of-hearing, speech-impaired and deaf-blind users.

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) — IP has opened up a whole range of communication applications, which may allow operators to develop totally new value-added applications as well as, to enhance their existing solutions.

3GPP system to Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Interworking — The growth of public WLANs provides an opportunity for appropriately-equipped UEs to access HPLMNs and VPLMNs via the WLANs.

3GPP Generic User Profile (GUP) — The fact of having several domains within the 3GPP mobile system (e.g. Circuit-Switched, Packet-Switched, IP Multimedia Subsystem), and access technologies (e.g. GERAN, UTRAN and WLAN) introduces a wide distribution of data associated with the user.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) — Digital Rights Management (DRM) enables the consumption by Users of protected content, by allowing Content Providers to express Permissions, e.g., the ability to preview DRM Content, and by specifying how Devices should observe these Permissions.

Speech recognition framework for automated voice services — A 3GPP speech recognition framework enables the use of conventional codecs, to distribute in the network, the speech engines that process speech input or generate speech output.

Personal Network Management (PNM) — Personal Network Management (PNM) allows the users to manage their devices and Personal Networks.

UMTS to support a wide range of applications with different quality of service profiles. Hence a modular approach is considered in defining the network parts of UMTS. The modular approach should also make UMTS possible to implement efficiently in different environments.

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