To help overcome those problems, Motorola offered three guidelines for operators looking to implement GSM-based cellular services across HSDPA.
Motorola’s study, based on its HSDPA trials in Europe, showed that video performance would degrade significantly when a relatively modest number of users are active, for instance. The problem can be solved when operators prioritize video services or use more infrastructure capacity, Motorola said.
The study also found that sufficient processing power was needed to reduce latency, since HSDPA is prone to delays when using applications such as web browsing. To avoid this, Motorola operators should not employ state switching, which is a method to move users from a high- to a low-speed state based on user activity without the user being aware.
When the user requests data, such as clicking a hyperlink for a web page, state switching causes delays of seconds as the radio network transitions back from a slow to fast state, for instance.
In addition to not switching, Motorola said operators also should also use scheduling, which enables radio resources to be dynamically shared between users.
Thirdly, Motorola said key handset functionality needed to be adopted for improved mobile performance on HSDPA. Mobile devices need sufficient power to receive the signals.
Built-in handset features, such as a signal processing function called equaliser, were shown to increase data rates by as much as 40%, Motorola said. Yet only a few handset makers today claim to have equaliser functionality, the company said.
Motorola’s HSDPA experience is industry leading and through the identification of these three guidelines, a result of the real-life trials, we can help operators significantly enhance the consumer experience of HSDPA at launch, said Raghu Rau, Motorola Networks’ senior VP of marketing and strategy, in a statement.
