4.6 Creation of 3GPP 4.7 How does 3GPP Operate? 4.11 Beyond 3GPP Release ’99

 The standardization organizations involved in the creation of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) ◦ ARIB (Japan) ◦ ETSI (Europe) ◦ TTA (Korea) ◦ TTC (Japan) ◦ T1P1 (USA)

 Figure 4.2: the manufacturers and operators that are members of 3GPP through the respective standardization organization  1999, CWTS (the China Wireless Telecommunication Standard Group) ◦ joined 3GPP and contributed technology from TD- SCDMA, a TDD-based CDMA 3G technology already submitted to ITU-R earlier

 3GPP also includes market representation partners ◦ GSM Association ◦ UMTS Forum ◦ Global Mobile Suppliers Association ◦ IPv6 Forum ◦ Universal Wireless Communications Consortium (UWCC)

 3GPP ◦ the end of 1998  initiated formally ◦ early 1999  detailed technical work was started ◦ the end of 1999  the first version of the common specification, Release ’99

 Within 3GPP, four different technical specification groups (TSGs) were set up ◦ Radio Access Network TSG  the one most relevant to WCDMA technology ◦ Core Network TSG ◦ Service and System Aspects TSG ◦ Terminals TSG  Radio Access Network TSG (RAN TSG) has been divided into four different working groups (WGs) (Figure 4.3)

 During 2000 ◦ further work on GSM evolution was moved from ETSI and other forums to 3GPP ◦ including work on GPRS and EDGE ◦ a new TSG, TSG GERAN was set up for this purpose

 In 3GPP the work is organized around work items ◦ define the justification and objective for a new feature  For a smaller topic ◦ only a single work item in one working group if the impacts are limited to that group

 For bigger items ◦ such as HSDPA ◦ there were work tasks done for each of the four RAN working groups ◦ these work tasks were under a common work item, named HSDPA  For a larger topic ◦ a feasibility study is needed before the decision of actually creating a work item

 Feasibility study ◦ simply focus on the pain vs. gain ratio of the new feature ◦ comparing the advantages and the resulting impacts on the equipment and existing features (backwards compatibility)  For each work item a reporter is nominated ◦ who has the responsibility of coordinating the work and reporting the progress from WGs to TSG level

 At TSG level ◦ every meeting (called a plenary) monitors progress every three months and makes any necessary synchronization between working groups and TSGs  If a work item is determined not to have reached the expected target ◦ it may be altered or removed from the work program

 Once the work item is completed in all working groups ◦ Change Requests (CRs) are brought to the plenary for approval ◦ CRs contain the changes needed in each particular specification ◦ once the plenary level approval is obtained, the specification will be updated to a new version with the changes resulting from the new feature

 The simplified illustration of the process from feasibility study to specification finalization is shown in Figure 4.4

 Release 3 (Release ’99)  March 2001 ◦ Release 4 (Release 2000) contains only minor adjustments with respect to Release 1999 ◦ Release 4 specifications contain robust IP header compression suitable for cellular transmission to enable an efficient Voice over IP (VoIP) service

 March 2002 ◦ Release 5 ◦ bigger items included are High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and IP-based transport layer

 Release 6 ◦ Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) ◦ HSDPA-related enhancements for uplink ◦ radio resource management supporting measurements for beamforming