Customer Reviews

UMTS Signaling: UMTS Interfaces, Protocols, Message Flows and Procedures Analyzed and Explained

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great reference book for UMTS and does a great job of explaining real world examples of protocol flows. I have all of the other "standard issue" UMTS book both on the RAN and Core, this is the only one that covers all aspects.

The main author Ralf Kreher is very knowledgeable; I have attended a number of his training sessions. His views on KPI's have helped to guide our strategy on UTRAN and Core analysis.

I highly recommend this book...

Chris

The book excellently covers UMTS signalling and protocols with detailed call setup signal flows, various Radio and packet channel allocation scenarios, HSDPA flows, and MAC flows. A must have reference before going through the various 3GPP documents.

Good as reference. Bad as explanatory.

At the first time I saw this book over a colleague's desk I got very interested. Finally (I thought)I would get an "easier" approach to 3GPP standards and on understanding basic UMTS message flows !
After buying the book and spending some time on it, I perceived that this book is, in truth, a joint of all processes described on 3GPP, without any relevant improvement on the sense of making UMTS' message flows easier to diggest... Nowadays I use it much more as a reference literature (to know where to learn - on the standards).

I too was hoping that this book would help sort out the 3GPP gobblety gook. But nope, this is yet another book like so many on these topics that are essentially a compendium of high level manufacturer's 3GPP contributions and power point slides.

Its really hard to tell if the authors know anything about UMTS Signaling because their English is so bad. The preface says the book is "...directed at UMTS experts, who need to analyze UMTS signaling procedures at the most detailed level." But then later it says the emphasis is "...on the general ideas that help to operate and optimize the network." Then, in another part, it says " The first part of this book is a refresher on UMTS basics, and the second part continues with in-depth message flow scenarios. I am rally surprised that John Wiley editors let this book out.

Its unclear why 5 pages are devoted to the history of cryptography, including 2 pages going back to 400 BC. Really, do we need all this? Lots of errors in facts and/or on the drawings. Figure 1.11 shows GSM with 14 kbp/s and 14.4 Kbit/sec for HSDPA & HSUPA having very different lengths. I think they should be Mbps for HSDPA & HSUPA.

Here are some other really uninspired quotations: "...A few years ago, UMTS technology was at (sic) the early deployment." "A proximity of time-critical functions to the air interface is crucial." In 3GPP Release 5, the UMTS evolution continues." "Every day the number of equipments (sic) and their feature sets gets broader." "UMTS is quite blurry beyond release 6." The chapters are also very oddly seperated, with chapter 2 running less than 20 pages and chapter 3 running 140 pages.