 accordingly. HSDPA parameter planning and performance monitoring are the last two stages of the planning procedure and may be considered together, since the initial configuration of HSDPA parameters (i.e. maximum HSDP power, number codes, HO thresholds, etc.) may be modified based on the performance measured in the network and the relation between HSDPA and DCH traffic. However, performance HSDPA monitoring can also be used to determine when the planning strategy needs to be changed or new dimensioning needs to be done. B.6 Further Evolution: Release 6 HSDPA, HSUPA and HSPA B.6.1 HSDPA Release 6 Improvements There are a number of items in the release 6 standardisation that aim to bring further gains for HSDPA: fractional DPCH, where the objective is to try to avoid the need for full DCH in downlink when only PS data (SRB in HSDSCH) and a shared DL channel to provide uplink TPC commands are required; pre/post scheme to avoid DTX detection in base station for ACK/NACK commands, which allows lower power offsets for the ACK/NACK, and thus a better uplink range; RX diversity and improved receiver performance; L2/L3 signalling improvements on-going as well; mandatory HSDPA capable release 6 UE for RX diversity and an improved receiver. B.6.2 HSUPA High speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) is the complementary bearer for HSDPA in the uplink, which may allow very high upload throughputs (up to 5.8 Mbps). Similar to HSDPA, HSUPA is considered as 3.75G or even 4G. The specifications for HSUPA will be included in UMTS release 6, published by the 3GPP. HSUPA will probably use an uplink-enhanced dedicated channel (E-DCH) on which link adaptation methods similar to those employed by HSDPA will be used: a shorter transmission time interval, enabling faster link adaptation, and HARQ (hybrid ARQ) with incremental redundancy, making retransmissions more effective. A new packet scheduler will be needed, but in this case it will operate on a request-grant principle where the UEs request a permission to send data and the scheduler dec