Tom Yemington
Icera

Manufacturers of consumer electronics are experiencing an increase in demand for data connectivity in their products, such as built-in wireless local area networking (WLAN). However, truly "mobile" high-speed data connectivity, sometimes referred to as WWAN (wireless wide area networking), can only be delivered by cellular data services, which can seamlessly manage the connectivity of users as they move locally and roam nationally and internationally.

HSxPA (high speed packet access, an evolution of the UMTS standard) stands out as the cellular broadband data technology of choice because of its high performance and widespread service availability. It consists of two closely related technologies—HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access), which improves download performance, and HSUPA (high speed uplink packet access), which improves the upload performance. This paper discusses the choices available to manufacturers who wish to incorporate HSxPA functionality into a target product.