Congestion Control in WCDMA with Respect to Different Service Classes

Joachim Sachs, Thomas Balon, Michael Meyer

Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH Ericsson Allee 1, 52134 Herzogenrath, Germany e-mail:
{Joachim.Sachs | Michael.Meyer}@eed.ericsson.se

Abstract – In the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) the radio resource
management functions are jointly handled in two different protocol layers, the Radio Resource
Control (RRC) and the Medium Access Control (MAC). Congestion control functions are performed in
the RRC layer. Therefore congestion control requires strong interactions between the radio interface
protocol layers, including measurement reports which are transmitted, as well as reconfiguration
procedures. In a simulation environment different radio resource reconfiguration procedures are
evaluated for congestion control. One aspect is the method which is used to detect congestion. The
system performance is presented for a mix of traffic with different service classes. It is demonstrated
how during a congestion, different service classes can be differentiated. This provides improved
quality of service provisioning for the users according to their service requirements. By choosing the
best congestion indicator, a good trade-off can be found between quick congestion resolution and
quality of service control on one hand, and efficient utilization of the radio resources on the other
hand.

I. INTRODUCTION

The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is the European 3rd generation mobile
telecommunication system. In a global co-operation of standards organisations it is being
standardised at the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), where a technical specification is
being developed on the basis of an evolved GSM core network and the UMTS Terrestrial Radio
Access (UTRA). The resulting specification is contributed to ITU for the International Mobile
Telecommunications 2000 (IMT-2000) standards family. Requirements for UMTS are to support
multimedia services with data rates of up to 384 kbit/s for wide-area coverage and up to 2 Mbit/s for
indoor and low-range outdoor coverage. Furthermore, UMTS has to provide a high service flexibility
to support both circuit- and packet-switched services with a wide range of applicable data rates.
Additionally, it must be possible to use multiple services simultaneously. Hence, UMTS will make
many data services available to mobile users, especially those currently known from the Internet.
The paired frequency bands of UMTS – 1920-1980 MHz in uplink and 2110-2170 MHz in downlink –
use the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode which is based on Wideband Code Division Multiple
Access

(WCDMA) technology. In contrast to Time Division Multiple Access technology, the radio resources in
WCDMA are not as easily “countable”. This property is also referred to as soft-capacity, meaning that
the balance of capacity, quality and coverage can be shifted towards improving any of these
characteristics for the price of reducing the other ones. For this reason, congestion control
mechanisms in WCDMA are challenging to define, since there are no hard limits imposed by the
system owing to the soft-capacity property. In this paper different congestion control mechanisms
will be discussed and analysed. This comprises the methods of how congestion is detected, how
radio resources are reassigned and which protocol sequences are involved. In section II the UMTS
Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) is described, including the properties of the WCDMA
channel and the protocols which are involved in the congestion control process. In section III a
simulation scenario is presented and results on congestion control mechanisms are provided in
section IV. Eventually, a conclusion is drawn in section V.
II. UTRAN

A.

WCDMA Channel

The physical layer that is used in the paired frequency bands of UMTS is based on WCDMA [1].
Variable data rates can be provided on the transport channels by using codes with different
spreading factors. This implies that transport channels with higher data rates have a reduced
spreading gain. In order to balance the reduced spreading gain and still achieve the required ratio of
received energy per bit to the effective noise power, Eb/N0, the output power level has to be
increased. On dedicated channels, this is achieved by fast power control. 1600 power control
commands per second are transmitted from the receiver to the transmitter, so that the transmitter
can adapt its transmit power accordingly. When multiple users are transmitting at the same time,
each user increases the interference level for all other users. Therefore the radio link quality depends
not only on the radio channel attenuation, but also on the traffic load caused by all mobile terminals
in the same and neighbouring cells. In this sense, the common shared resource is power. An increase
in interference forces each mobile terminal to also increase the transmit power. This in turn increases
the interference for other users and they will react in the same way. In general, this converges to a
certain transmit power for all users. However, when the traffic load becomes too high this can lead to
a

Wireless’99 | 4. ITG-Fachtagung "Mobile Kommunikation" October 6 - 8, 1999, Munich, Germany

congestion situation. If some users reach the limit of their transmit power they cannot follow the
power control process any longer. Therefore they perceive a lower Eb/N0 and an increased error rate
on the channel.

B.

UMTS Radio Access Bearers

The UTRAN provides radio access bearers for data services. They offer a bearer transport between
the mobile user equipment and the core network. These radio access bearer services can be
configured very flexibly in order to support the quality of service requirements of a data service. A
given radio access bearer is defined by a set of parameters, like maximum bit rate, bit error rate and
transmission delay. Four quality of service classes are defined for UMTS: ½ Conversational Class, ½
Streaming Class, ½ Interactive Class, ½ Background Class.

The Conversational Class is used for conversational real time applications, like e.g. voice over IP or
video conferencing. Requirements are a low transmission delay, a low jitter and a low round trip
delay. The Streaming Class is used for real time streaming applications, e.g. audio or video streaming.
The requirements on the transmission delay are less stringent then for the Conversational Class.
However, the timing relations between data packets have to be preserved and therefore the jitter
must be low. The Interactive Class is used for best effort data services which are following a request-
response pattern. Examples for such services are WWW traffic or telnet. Requirements are a low
residual error rate and a low round trip delay. The Background Class is used for best effort data
services with no requirements on delay. Examples are file transfer and e-mail. For each radio access
bearer a link is established and all radio interface protocols are configured with appropriate
parameters.

C.

UTRAN Radio Interface Protocols

The UTRAN radio interface is layered in three protocol layers: ½ the physical layer (L1), ½ the data link
layer (L2), ½ the network layer (L3).

The relationship of the radio interface protocol architecture is depicted in Fig. 1. The radio resource
management functions are split into two parts which are handled in two protocol layers. The Radio
Resource Control (RRC) layer is responsible for assigning a pool of radio resources to each radio
access bearer and reconfiguring the radio resources. The Medium Access Control (MAC) manages
this pool of radio resources instantaneously. So to speak, MAC has short-term control over the radio
resources and RRC defines the long-term guidelines for MAC.

Radio Resource Assignment R R C R R C

RLCRLC

Measurement Report

RLC retransmission control

L1L1

UTRANUE

Control

Measurements (Interference Level)

Control

Measurements

Control

Measurements

Control

Measurements

MACMAC

Control

Control

1.

3.

2.
4.

5.

5.

6.

Figure 1 Radio interface protocol reconfiguration

1) L1 – Physical Layer (PHY)

The tasks of the physical layer comprise to perform forward error correction (FEC), error detection
and interleaving. Further tasks are the multiplexing of transport channels, spreading, modulation and
radio frequency processing. The physical layer is also responsible for frequency and time
synchronisation and closed-loop power control. The power control dynamically adapts the
transmitter power to the channel conditions, so that the receiver always receives the signal at the
correct power level. For that the receiver informs the transmitter with power control commands at a
rate of 1600 signals per second. Another function of the physical layer is to measure transmission
values, e.g. transmit power, interference power, signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), block error rate.
These values are indicated to the Radio Resource Control layer, which uses them for radio resource
management. For the physical layer, a set of Transport Formats (TF) – the so-called Transport Format
Set (TFS) – is assigned to each transport channel. A Transport Format can be described as a
combination of channel encoding, interleaving, bit rate and mapping onto a physical channel. The
Transport Format Set specifies those Transport Formats which a radio access bearer can use on a
transport channel. The physical layer multiplexes one or more transport channels onto physical
channels. When transport channels are multiplexed not all possible combinations of Transport
Formats of the different transport channels may be applied by the physical layer at a certain point in
time. An authorised combination of Transport Formats that may be applied simultaneously is
referred to as a Transport Format Combination (TFC). The set of Transport Format Combinations that
can be applied by the physical layer is called Transport Format Combination Set (TFCS). It is a subset
of all possible Transport Format Combinations. For example, a transport channel 1 (TC1) and
transport channel 2 (TC2) shall have the following Transport Format Sets: ½ TC1: TFS1 = {0, 8, 16, 32}
kbit/s, ½ TC2: TFS2 = {16, 32} kbit/s. Then a resulting TFCS could be: ½ TFCS = {16, 24, 32, 40} kbit/s,

Wireless’99 | 4. ITG-Fachtagung "Mobile Kommunikation" October 6 - 8, 1999, Munich, Germany

thus excluding the combinations of using 32|16 kbit/s and 32|32 kbit/s. The physical layer is
configured by RRC when a radio access bearer is setup or reconfigured. The TFSs and TFCS are then
assigned by RRC. A detailed description of the physical layer can be found in [1] and [6].

2) L2 – Medium Access Control Protocol (MAC)

The MAC layer is a sublayer of the data link layer. It provides logical channels to the RLC layer. Logical
channels describe “what type” of information is transported. The MAC layer maps logical channels
onto transport channels. Transport channels are provided by the physical layer to the MAC layer, and
they describe “how” information is transported. Furthermore, MAC is responsible for the
instantaneous radio resource management. This is achieved by selecting the Transport Format for
each transport channel, taking into account the instantaneous source rate. In this process MAC also
has to prioritise between data flows of the same user equipment. MAC is limited to the TFSs and
TFCS which have been assigned to it by RRC. MAC multiplexes packet data units from RLC onto the
transport channels. The instantaneous radio resource management is handled every transmission
time interval, e.g. 10 ms. Furthermore, MAC is responsible for managing common transport
channels, which are not considered in the analysis of this paper. For further information refer to [5].

3) L2 – Radio Link Control Protocol (RLC)

The RLC layer is a sublayer of the data link layer. There is one RLC connection per radio access bearer.
Higher layer data is segmented into packet data units of sizes which are suitable for the radio
transmission. On the receiving side the original data format is reassembled. The RLC layer provides
three different data transfer modes to the higher layer. The acknowledged data transfer mode is a
guaranteed service. All higher layer data is transferred error-free over the radio interface. This is
achieved by retransmissions of erroneous RLC packet data units. This mechanism is also referred to
as automatic repeat request (ARQ). An efficient radio access bearer configuration can be achieved by
finding a good balance between forward error correction in the physical layer and ARQ in the link
layer. In unacknowledged data transfer mode, no retransmissions are performed. The transmission
delay is reduced, but the delivery of higher layer data cannot be guaranteed. In transparent data
transfer mode, no specific protocol information is added to the packet data units and therefore the
protocol overhead is minimized. No retransmissions are performed. The RLC connection is configured
by RRC when a radio access bearer is setup or reconfigured [4].

4) L3 – Radio Resource Control Protocol (RRC)

The RRC protocol is located in the control plane of the network layer. It handles the control plane
signalling between the user equipment (UE) and the core network. It is also responsible for the
management of radio resources, comprising establishment, reconfiguration and release of radio
access bearers. It is the task of RRC to control the requested quality of service and perform
congestion control. Several radio access bearers can be assigned to the same user equipment. The
task of RRC is to manage the available radio resources among all radio access bearers of all mobile
terminals within the cell. The radio resource management procedures are performed in the RRC
entity on the UTRAN side of the radio link. The appropriate information is then transmitted to the
RRC entities in the mobile terminals. The other radio link protocols are then configured accordingly
by the RRC entities. RRC controls the parameters and settings of the underlying protocol layers RLC,
MAC and PHY, thus selecting the radio access bearer processing [3]. It signals to MAC and PHY the
Transport Format Set and Transport Format Combination Set for the transport channels. Additionally,
the RLC data transfer mode is assigned.

D.

Congestion Control

In contrast to other mobile communication systems, the radio network controller in UMTS does not
permanently control the actual uplink data rates of the mobile terminals. As described in the
previous section, the RRC in the network assigns a pool of radio resources to the radio access bearers
and MAC manages these resources instantaneously. Thus, the mobile stations choose their data rates
– within the limitations given by RRC – independent from the radio network controller. Due to the
movement of the mobile stations, the characteristics of the radio channel and the traffic transmitted
by all applications, overload situations may occur in a system. In such a situation the interference in
the system increases rapidly, leading to a reduced quality of service or call dropping. A fast detection
of an overload situation can be based on several measurements, e.g.: ½ in the sender by monitoring
the transmit power and the power control commands, ½ in the receiver by monitoring the
interference power, the signal-to-interference ratio or the block error rate.

The congestion can be resolved by reducing the interference level. This can be achieved by reducing
the allowed data rates of one or several radio access bearers. As stated before, the radio network
controller in UMTS does not permanently control the data rates of the radio access bearers.
Therefore several steps are necessary to react to congestion. First the congestion needs to be
detected by measurements, which have to be signalled to the RRC layer. If the RRC entity in the
UTRAN recognises congestion it reconfigures the radio resources

Wireless’99 | 4. ITG-Fachtagung "Mobile Kommunikation" October 6 - 8, 1999, Munich, Germany

in order to resolve the congestion. There are several possibilities to reconfigure the radio resources
for one or more mobile terminals [3]: ½ Limiting the TFCS of the transport channels. This is achieved
by sending the RRC message Transport Format Combination Control from the UTRAN to the user
equipment. The TFCs in the TFCS can thus be temporarily restricted, excluding too high data rates.
The advantage of that method is that the message does not need to be acknowledged from the user
equipment, since all TFCs are still valid and the message size is comparatively small. Even if the
message is lost, the unlimited TFCS can still be used. However, this method is not as flexible as when
a completely new TFCS is used. ½ Assigning a completely new TFCS to a user equipment. This is
achieved by sending the RRC message Transport Channel Reconfiguration from the UTRAN to the
user equipment, containing the new TFCS. The message needs to be confirmed by a Transport
Channel Reconfiguration Complete message, before the new TFCS becomes valid. ½ Reconfiguring
the whole radio access bearer. In difference to the previously described transport channel
reconfiguration, this method includes a complete reconfiguration of all the protocol entities of the
radio access bearer. The RRC message Radio Access Bearer Reconfiguration is send from the UTRAN
to user equipment. The message needs to be confirmed by a Radio Access Bearer Reconfiguration
Complete message, before the new radio access bearer becomes valid. If the congestion detection is
based on a measurement from the user equipment, a measurement report has to be transmitted
from the RRC entity in the user equipment to the RRC entity in the UTRAN prior to any of the above
mentioned congestion control schemes. In the presence of radio access bearers with different quality
of service configurations, the congestion control is performed according to the service class. For
example, only radio access bearers for Background Class traffic and Interactive Class traffic are
reconfigured, while real time services keep their configuration.

III. SIMULATION SCENARIO

A simulator is used in order to analyse the performance of congestion control algorithms in UMTS.
The simulator comprises all protocols of the radio interface, RRC, RLC, MAC, a WCDMA channel
model and traffic sources generating e.g. IP traffic. The UMTS core network and external packet data
networks are not considered. Objective of the simulations is to analyse congestion control methods,
including the influence of the protocols which are involved. Hereby users with different types of
applications and thus different service requirements are assumed. The RRC layer is responsible for
connection establishment, connection release and the radio access bearer reconfiguration in case of
congestion. It handles measurement reports from the physical layer and transmits them, if necessary,
from the user equipment to
the UTRAN. During connection establishment RRC assigns a Transport Format Combination Set to the
user equipment according to the requirements of the application. The congestion control mechanism
triggers the reconfiguration of the transport channel when a congestion situation occurs. This
reconfiguration is done by assigning new TFCSs to the mobile terminals as described in the previous
section. After the reconfiguration, the reduced data rate leads to a lower interference level. RLC is
responsible for the segmentation of higher layer datagrams into RLC packet data units of size 10
bytes on the transmitting side and the corresponding reassembly at the receiving side. A selective
repeat ARQ mechanism is used. The MAC layer selects the Transport Format Set out of the Transport
Format Combination Set according to the RLC queue length. The physical layer includes a WCDMA
channel model and the signalling of measurement reports to the RRC layer. The WCDMA channel
model calculates a Eb/N0 value at the receiver for each transport channel. The Eb/N0 is then
mapped to a block error rate, which has been derived from dedicated physical layer simulations.
These simulations include the effects of multipath fading and closed loop power control, which are
therefore included in the block error rate. The calculation of the Eb/N0 is based on the received
signal power, the spreading factor and the interference caused by all other active mobile terminals.
In an iterative process, the transmit power of all active mobile terminals is adapted until each
reaches its target Eb/N0 unless this is prohibited by the transmit power range. This process is
performed once at the beginning of each transmission time interval of 10 ms and the Eb/N0 is then
assumed to be constant over that transmission time interval. The target Eb/N0 is chosen as 3 dB
corresponding to a block error probability of roughly 13% and the transmit power is upper bound by
27 dBm. The delay for physical layer processing and transmission has been set to 15 ms. For the
simulations a single cell system is assumed with a certain number of active mobile terminals which
are initially randomly distributed within the cell. Two classes of mobile terminals are distinguished
according to their type of application:

Class A: This type of UE has a single delay sensitive real-time connection. The Transport Format is set
to a data rate of 16 kbit/s. The generated traffic consists of constant rate IP packets with a packet size
of 100 bytes. This type of traffic is generated e.g. by a voice over IP traffic source. Class B: This type of
UE has a single best effort connection that is not delay sensitive, e.g. a WWW session. The Transport
Format Set is chosen to allow variable data rates between 8 and 32 kbit/s. The IP packet size is 1000
bytes. In the simulation scenario a mixture of mobile terminals of both classes are assumed, where
25% of the terminals are of class A and the remaining 75% of class

Wireless’99 | 4. ITG-Fachtagung "Mobile Kommunikation" October 6 - 8, 1999, Munich, Germany

B. The session arrival and session duration are exponentially distributed and the call duration has a
mean value of 120 s. In the scenario as it has been chosen, the two service classes A and B are
differentiated in the congestion control mechanism. The users of class A have only one TF in the TFS
that provides a single data rate of 16 kbit/s, so the data rate for those users cannot be reduced. For
the users of class B the TFS contains TFs for several data rates. In this way, the users in class A –
having a harder service requirement – can maintain their service level for a higher traffic load by
reducing the quality of service for the users in class B. Nevertheless, during the time it takes to
resolve the congestion the quality of service of the mobile terminals of class A is also reduced.
Therefore a fast and efficient congestion control mechanism is required to achieve a high cell
capacity, while still maintaining a good quality of service according to the service class. Note, that in
this example, no priority scheduling in the MAC layer can be applied for service differentiation of
uplink traffic, since each mobile terminal has only one single data connection of either class A or B. In
downlink, the same network node is responsible for the transmission to all mobile terminals within a
certain area and thus the knowledge about the traffic volume and service classes can be exploited for
scheduling.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

For the simulation results presented in Fig. 2-4 a congestion control mechanism is applied comprising
the following steps, as indicated in Fig. 1: In the UTRAN the interference level at the receiver is
measured (1). When a certain threshold is surpassed a measurement report is signalled to the RRC
entity (2). RRC makes a decision on reassigning new TFCSs for one or more mobile terminals (3)
which are then sent to the user equipment (4). On UTRAN and UE side, the radio bearers are
reconfigured accordingly (5) and a confirmation is sent (6). The mean IP throughput for mobile
terminals of class A versus the number of active mobile terminals is depicted in Fig. 2 for different
interference thresholds. It can be seen that up to a mean load of approximately 12 mobile terminals
all users of class A can keep their requested data rate and only with still further increasing load in the

Figure 2 Mean application data rate per UE for class A

cell a degradation of the service is perceived. The reason for the degradation is, that in a growing
number of cases the mobile terminals are not able to transmit at the power which is necessary to
achieve the required Eb/N0 against the larger interference introduced by other users. Consequently,
the block error rate increases which leads to a higher number of retransmissions in the RLC layer and
the IP throughput decreases. In contrast to the mobile terminals of class A, those of class B see a
degradation of their mean IP throughput at a much lower load. This is depicted in Fig. 3 for the same
interference thresholds as in Fig. 2. With increasing load an increasing number of mobile terminals
with best effort service are reconfigured to lower data rates. The paradigm of the applied method is
to provide to class A users the required service and fill the remaining capacity with traffic of class B.
However the service quality of users of class A shall not be degraded owing to the traffic of class B.
From Fig. 2 and 3 it becomes obvious that this paradigm works better, if a reconfiguration of the data
rate of the mobile terminals of class B is triggered at a lower interference threshold. However, the
total cell capacity is not utilised as efficiently as with higher interference thresholds. This can be seen
in Fig. 4, where the accumulated IP traffic of the users of class A and B is depicted. With an
interference threshold of –93 dBm the total throughput in the cell is up to 15% increased compared
to an interference threshold of –95 dBm. This can be explained by the effect that reconfiguration is
performed more conservatively. On the other hand, at a very high traffic load a high interference
threshold can be less stable as can be seen in Fig. 4 for 20 mobile terminals on average in the cell. At
this point the interference is already very high, and the resulting high block error rate delays the
reconfiguration messages which are transmitted. In Fig. 5 a comparison is drawn between the
different options of reconfiguring the radio resources, which were presented in section II D. The
reconfiguration delay specifies the time interval between the moment that congestion has been
detected until the radio resources have been reconfigured. If a radio access bearer or transport
channel is reconfigured, a RRC message is transmitted from the UTRAN to the UE and

Figure 3 Mean application data rate per UE for class B

2
4

10

12

14

16

18

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Average number of mobile terminals in cell

Mean uplink IP throughput per mobile station [kbit/s]

Interference limit = -95 dBm

Interference limit = -94 dBm

Interference limit = -93 dBm

10

15

20

25

30

35

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Average number of mobile terminals in cell

Mean uplink IP throughput per mobile station [kbit/s]

Interference limit = -95 dBm

Interference limit = -94 dBm

Interference limit = -93 dBm

Wireless’99 | 4. ITG-Fachtagung "Mobile Kommunikation" October 6 - 8, 1999, Munich, Germany

Figure 4 Mean application data rate per UE for class B

is acknowledged with a complete message, thus resulting in two messages which are transmitted
over the radio link. In the simulations the size of the reconfiguration messages has been set to 30
bytes leading to segmentation into several RLC packet data units. If the congestion detection is based
on measurements in the mobile terminal, an additional measurement report has to be sent to the
UTRAN prior to the reconfiguration. An example for that is when the detection for uplink congestion
is based on transmit power information of the physical layer in the mobile terminal. Therefore a third
message over the radio link is introduced, thus adding to the reconfiguration delay. The
reconfiguration delay is a significant measure for the congestion control, since during that time
interval a congestion is leading to an increased block error probability on the radio link and thus an
increased number of RLC retransmissions. This effect is depicted in Fig. 5. For a higher traffic load in
the cell, the reconfiguration delay increases due to the increased number of retransmissions.
Another option to handle congestion, is the limitation of the valid TFCS by means of an RRC message
Transport Format Combination Control. This is a short message, which needs to be transmitted only
from the UTRAN to the mobile terminal. In Fig. 5 it is shown that the reconfiguration delay for TFCS
limitation is much shorter compared to a transport channel reconfiguration. It is also less depending
on the traffic load owing to its small message size. A large reconfiguration message is segmented into
several RLC datagrams. Therefore it is immensely stronger influenced by increased block error rates.
However, the TFCS limitation has the drawback of low flexibility. The momentary Transport Format
Combination used in a frame on the physical channel is indicated in an identity field (TFCI) of 6 bits,
providing a maximum of 64 different Transport Format Combinations. If several parallel services are
active and service k has lk different Transport Formats, then the number of possible TFCs can be
rather large: ∏ k kl . Therefore, the number of Transport Format Combinations is limited and must be
used efficiently. A TFCS limitation reduces the number of TFCs that can be used whereas a traffic
channel reconfiguration reassigns a new TFCS and is therefore more flexible. In the meantime it has
been added to the UMTS specification

Figure 5 Mean application data rate per UE for class B

that an extended TFCI field can be used, increasing the size of the TFCS to 1024 [6]. This reduces the
probability of having too few TFCI values to apply TFCS limitation.

V. CONCLUSION

The impact of the WCDMA radio channel of the UMTS FDD mode on radio resource usage has been
described. Congestion control methods have been discussed with different radio resource
reconfiguration mechanisms and congestion detection indicators. The choice of an optimal threshold
for the congestion indication measure allows to find the appropriate balance between efficient
utilisation of the cell capacity on one hand and quickly resolving congestion and maintaining the
quality of service for the data services on the other hand. Simulations have shown how users of
different service classes can share the radio resources according to their service requirements.
Results indicated that it is possible to shield traffic flows with strict service requirements from best
effort flows. Radio resources provided to best effort service traffic can dynamically be adapted to use
only resources not required by traffic with strict service requirements.

VI. REFERENCES

[1] E. Dahlman, P. Beming, J. Knutsson, F. Ovesjö, M. Persson, and C. Roobol, “WCDMA – The Radio
Interface for Future Mobile Multimedia Communications,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular
Technology, Nov. 1998. [2] 3GPP, TSG RAN, WG 2, Services provided by the Physical Layer, TS 25.302
V2.3.0, June 1999. [3] 3GPP, TSG RAN, WG 2, Radio Resource Control (RRC) Protocol Specification, TS
25.331 V1.1.0, June 1999. [4] 3GPP, TSG RAN, WG 2, Radio Link Control (RLC) Protocol Specification,
TS 25.322 V1.1.0, June 1999. [5] 3GPP, TSG RAN, WG 2, Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocol
Specification, TS 25.321 V3.0.0, June 1999. [6] 3GPP, TSG RAN, WG 1, Multiplexing and channel
coding (FDD), TS 25.212 V2.0.0, June 1999.