WCDMA TECHNOLOGY

What is WCDMA?

W-CDMA or WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), along with UMTS-FDD, UTRA-FDD, or IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread is an air interface standard found in3G mobile telecommunications networks. It supports conventional cellular voice, text andMMS services, but can also carry data at high speeds, allowing mobile operators to deliver higher bandwidth applications including streaming and broadband Internet access

W-CDMA is the basis of Japan's NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service and the most-commonly used member of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) family and sometimes used as a synonym for UMTS^] It uses the DS-CDMA channel access method and the FDD duplexing method to achieve higher speeds and support more users compared to most previously used time division multiple access (TDMA) and time division duplex (TDD) schemes.

While not an evolutionary upgrade on the airside, it uses the same core network as the2G GSM networks deployed worldwide, allowing dual mode mobile operation along with GSM/EDGE; a feature it shares with other members of the UMTS family.