Study on Further Enhanced Uplink (EUL) enhancements
In the past few years, a considerable increase in number of users as well as offered traffic per user has been experienced in HSPA networks, both in the downlink and in the uplink.
In response to this, several features have been standardized in 3GPP. These include multi-carrier HSPA, downlink and uplink CELL_FACH state enhancements, and introduction of downlink and uplink MIMO. However, much of the focus has been on improving downlink performance and further enhancements are needed for the uplink to handle increasing traffic load as well as new traffic types.