A comparative study of cdma2000 and W-CDMA

Third-generation mobile systems promise to provide new and enhanced services requiring very high data rates compared to second-generation mobile systems. Two key Radio Transmission Technology (RTT) proposals to meet the desired data rates and other requirements are cdma2000 by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) of USA and Wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA) by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) of Europe. A functional level comparison is carried out between these two technologies. These two technologies are compared and analyzed based on a number of factors. Some of these factors are chip rate, deployment configuration, power control, handoffs, spreading and channelization codes, and others. We present as part of our analysis the impact of the discussed factors on system design, deployment, backward compatibility and future network evolution. We discuss harmonization of these two proposals and issues influencing that debate.