Performance evaluation of WCDMA high speed downlink packet access/frequency division duplex mode

"3G and beyond" cellular networks target a shift from low rate traditional voice services to high rate multimedia communications. Wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) is a candidate air interface technology for achieving this goal. Usually, throughput and spectral efficiency are two of the most important metrics used in evaluating the performance of such systems. In this paper, we present a pseudo-closed form expression for the average throughput and spectral efficiency of WCDMA in the high speed downlink packet access/frequency division duplex (HSDPA/FDD) mode. The throughput is expressed in terms of system dependent parameters that are analytically defined as well as stochastic parameters that depend on the user received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINK). Monte Carlo simulations are used to evaluate those stochastic parameters and several numerical examples are presented. Our results cover a wide variety of practical scenarios in which sectorized/non-sectorized cells, different antenna radiation patterns and different frequency reuse factors are used.