Radio Access

There are multiple radio access technologies used in IMT. Each has its own acronym.

It is worth noting that telecommunications is an “acronym intensive environment” as can be seen from the list below. Expansions of the abbreviations may be found using SANCHO, the ITU-T Terms and Definitions Database.

As of WRC-07, the list is:

- CDMA-Direct Spread (Universal Terrestrial Radio Access-UTRA)

- CDMA-Multi Carrier (CDMA2000)

- CDMA TDD (UTRA TDD)

- TDMA Single Carrier (UWC (Universal Wireless Communication)-136)

- FDMA/TDMA (Digital Enhanced Cordless Communications-DECT)

- OFDMA TDD WMAN (WiMAX)

Currently under study are technologies for Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A.)

ITU-R Recommendation M.1457-8 (May 2009) clause 5 indicates the radio interfaces for the terrestrial component of IMT-2000 as listed above and also indicates that an overview of each radio interface is provided in §§5.1.1, 5.2.1, 5.3.1, 5.4.1, 5.5.1 and 5.6.1 of Recommendation M.1457-8. However, these clauses are still quite detailed. The newcomer to IMT should first review “About mobile technology and IMT-2000” which provides an introduction to and an overview of mobile telecommunications before attempting to go deeper into the individual technologies.