Orange/Fujitsu wideband CDMA field trials-system overview

Around the globe operators and manufacturers are rapidly preparing for the deployment of third generation systems. With some operators aiming for commercial deployment as early as 2001, field trials of third generation systems are currently well underway. Within the UK a number of third generation field trials are taking place and the purpose of this paper is to highlight a selection of the results obtained from WCDMA field trials being undertaken by Orange and Fujitsu at Orange's purpose built third generation trials facility in Bristol. The paper begins by outlining the configuration of the Orange/Fujitsu W-CDMA testbed and highlights the capabilities of the testbed and the trials performed thus far. The paper then goes on to consider in detail a part of the work undertaken to investigate the effects of inter-operator interference. Within the industry concerns have been raised over the possible effects of inter-operator interference when deploying third generation radio technologies. Many theoretical results have been produced based upon simulations, however the results to be presented by Orange/Fujitsu will be some of the first to be based upon actual real field measurements of the effects of adjacent channel interference within a WCDMA system.