The UTRA concept, Europe's proposal to IMT-2000

Market expectations for third generation (IMT-2000/UMTS) mobile radio systems show an increasing demand for a wide range of services from voice, low up to high and advanced data rate services as mobile multimedia. This leads to technical requirements, which are currently being standardized worldwide. Circuit and packet oriented services will be supported. These systems will be operated in all radio environments to provide service to anyone, anytime and anywhere. This paper focuses on the technical approach of the UTRA concept, which is the European proposal for IMT-2000. The similar concepts from Japan, Korea and North America are currently harmonized and specified in detail in the new international body 3GPP. The activities in the Operators Harmonization Group (OHG) by the major international operators have achieved a harmonized concept between the 3GPP and the 3GPP2 proposals.