UMB spec joins the CDMA family

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) and the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) welcomed the latest member of the CDMA2000 family on Monday, with the publication of the Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) air interface specification.

UMB is billed as the platform for next generation mobile broadband services based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technology and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO). The platform promises peak download and upload speeds of 288Mbps and 75Mbps, respectively, in a mobile environment with a 20MHz bandwidth.

The technology claims to address a cross section of advanced mobile broadband services by “economically delivering low-rate, low latency voice traffic at one end of the spectrum, just as efficiently as ultra-high-speed, latency insensitive, broadband data traffic at the other.” UMB also supports inter-technology hand offs and seamless operation with existing CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO systems.

The CDG anticipates that the UMB specification will be quickly converted into an official global standard by the 3GPP2 organisational partners, including the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) in Japan, China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) in North America, Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) in Korea, and the Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC) in Japan.

UMB is expected to become commercially available on a global basis in the first half of 2009.