Evolved High Speed Packet Access

Evolved High Speed Packet Access, HSPA+, HSPA (Plus) or HSPAP, is a technical standard for wireless broadband telecommunication.

[1] It introduces antenna array technologies such as beamforming and multiple-input multiple-output communications (MIMO).

HSPA+ should not be confused with LTE though, which uses an air interface based on orthogonal frequency-division modulation and multiple access.

[3] The QoS (Quality of Service) can be particularly improved for end users in poor radio reception where they cannot benefit from the other WCDMA capacity improvements (MIMO and higher order modulations) due to poor radio signal quality.

Dual-Cell and MIMO 2x2 each multiply the maximum data rate by 2, because multiple independent transport blocks are transmitted over different carriers or spatial streams, respectively.

Dual Cell (DC-)HSUPA is the natural evolution of HSPA by means of carrier aggregation in the uplink.

Release 11 specifies 8-carrier HSPA allowed in non-contiguous bands with 4 × 4 MIMO offering peak transfer rates up to 672 Mbit/s.

In general, HSPA+ offers higher bitrates only in very good radio conditions (very close to the cell tower) or if the terminal and network both support either MIMO or Dual-Cell HSDPA, which effectively use two parallel transmit channels with different technical implementations.

The higher 168 Mbit/s speeds are achieved by using multiple carriers with Dual-Cell HSDPA and 4-way MIMO together simultaneously.

The legacy architecture is still permitted with the Evolved HSPA and is likely to exist for several years after adoption of the other aspects of HSPA+ (higher-order modulation, multiple streams, etc.).

This 'flat architecture' connects the 'user plane' directly from the base station to the GGSN external gateway, using any available link technology supporting TCP/IP.

This is nearly identical to the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) flat architecture as defined in the 3GPP standard Rel-8.