PROTOCOL ARCHITECTURE WCDMA
shows the air interface protocol architecture.
The protocol architecture is similar to the current ITU-R protocol
architecture, ITU-R M.1035. The air interface is layered into three protocol
layers:
·
The physical layer (layer 1, L1);
·
The data link layer (layer 2, L2);
·
Network layer (layer 3, L3).
The
physical layer interfaces the medium access control (MAC) sublayer of layer
2 and the radio resource control (RRC) layer of layer 3. The physical layer
offers different
transport channels to MAC. A transport channel is characterized by how the information
is transferred over the radio interface. Transport channels are channel coded and
then mapped to the physical channels specified in the physical layer. MAC
offers
different
logical channels to the radio link control (RLC) sublayer of layer 2. A logical channel
is characterized by the type of information transferred. Layer
2 is split into following sublayers: MAC, RLC, packet data convergence protocol
(PDCP) and broadcast/multicast control (BMC). Layer 3 and RLC are divided into
control and user planes. PDCP and BMC exist in the user plane only. In the
control plane,
layer 3 is partitioned into sublayers where the lowest sublayer, denoted as
RRC, interfaces
with layer 2. The RLC sublayer provides ARQ functionality closely coupled with the
radio transmission technique used.
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