WCDMA - Wideband CDMA

Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) is the extended and more sophisticated version of CDMA and is commercially deployed on a carrier pair of 5MHz bandwidth. The technology was developed and introduced mostly in view of achieving the leap into the era of wireless high speed data transmission. The theoretical base behind that move is derived from the Shannon equation. It stipulates that the symbol throughput of any given system is a direct proportion of the bandwidth and the quality of the transmission channel. This means that the higher each of these values are the more data could be pushed through the transmission medium.

In addition to the wider channel bandwidth more pseudo-random codes are used to accommodate a greater number of users and achieve a higher spectrum efficiency. Another major feature introduced in WCDMA is the support of asymmetric in- and outbound traffic. The latter has to do with common web browsing behavior patterns.

WCDMA is the common AI standard behind nowadays UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) also known as 3G networks. This is the first ever resource sharing standard that clearly defines the dynamic convergence of multiple services, e.g. voice, video and data over a single transmission channel.

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