The growing GoTa ecology is giving birth to a new global mainstream standard of digital trunking technology.

The Global open Trunking architecture (GoTa) system is the world´s first CDMA2000-based new-generation digital trunking system, independently developed and launched by ZTE. GoTa is one of the best examples of ZTE´s innovative approach to technological design. ZTE owns 120 GoTa-related patents. ZTE has entered into a technical cooperation agreement with system equipment manufacturers such as Nortel and Lucent for "Open Standards and Interface Specifications", jointly building the industry chain alliance for system equipment.

Since its launch, GoTa has been deployed widely both at home and abroad. It won the Chinese ICT industry award issued by Ministry of Information Industry (MII) at the end of 2005.

The technology takes full advantage of CDMA2000´s high voice quality, system capacity and high data rates to enable operators to deliver many more mobile community services and realize a smooth evolution path toward CDMA2000 1xEV-DO.

Since its commercial launch in 2004, ZTE´s GoTa solutions have been deployed in more than 20 countries and regions including Norway, China and Malaysia as well as at large-scale events such as the 10th Chinese National Games last October and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Tunisia last November.

A comparison of GoTa and TETRA/iDEN

Compared with the 2G-based Trans-European Trunked Radio (TETRA) and the Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) of the US, it has distinct advantages as it provides higher speed data service-a rate of 2.4Mbps- and reduces costs in terms of system equipment, terminals and installation as well as smooth migration to all-IP communications and a highly efficient network management solution.

From 2004 to 2006, ZTE has helped China Tietong and China Satcom to construct trunking networks in five cities, replacing the iDEN system in Tianjin City. Meanwhile, GoTa has been put into commercial applications in many European countries such as Norway and Portugal which had formerly used the TETRA system.

System components

The GoTa system is basically composed of the Base Station Subsystem (BSS), Dispatching SubSystem (DSS), Mobile Switching Subsystem (MSS), Packet Data Service System (PDSS), terminals, and other extended service subsystems, as shown in Fig. 1. It can operate in various frequency bands including 800MHz, 850MHz and 450MHz.

Fig. 1 Network architecture of ZTE´s GoTa trunking communication system

Professional trunking services and value-added services

ZTE has established agreements with over 100 value-added service providers and application integrators to jointly developing practical GoTa services.

In addition to professional trunking services such as group calls, private calls, floor taken, late-entry call and dynamic regrouping, the GoTa system develops new feature-rich services to meet customers´ requirements, including floor queue, online user status query, call restriction, call forwarding, priority call and a do not disturb service.

To attract more users, the GoTa service is also bundled with value-added services such as broadband data services, short message services (cell broadcast, short message group sending and missed call prompt), location and industrial applications of wireless data communications.

The GoTa system supports 14.4 kbps circuit switched services such as G3 fax, low-speed Internet access, and low-speed data transmission as well as 153.6 kbps high speed packed switched data services such as mobile office, Video-on-Demand, online query and multimedia emails. These data services include the following types of services:

Mobile commerce

This includes: e-commerce, shopping, banking, online stock trading, foreign exchange transactions, insurance, and financing, etc.

Video monitoring

The broadband network allows data to be shared achieving unified monitoring, storage and management as well as video sharing. Mobile users are provided with remote video control which is particularly helpful for home users and group users in transportation and banking industries. 

Streaming media

The system can provide VoD and broadcasting services and is also used for public security applications.

WAP gateway

The terminals can support WAP, browsing, downloading, mail and PUSH services.

CDMA videophone

It not only supports virtual face-to-face communication but also multi-party conferencing, roaming, dispatch function and picture-in-picture mode.

Location-based services

The GoTa system can flexibly select appropriate positioning modes such as GPS-based positioning, Cell ID-based positioning and Advanced Forward Link Trilateration (AFLT) positioning according to the requirements for accuracy and terminal capabilities and environmental conditions. It supports a variety of terminals including CDMA cards or handsets, vehicle-mounted GPS receiver and gps One-enabled handsets.

The Enterprise Star system-GoTa´s corporate location service - enables enterprises to dispatch vehicles and staff based on location. It has open interfaces so service providers or cotent providers can develop custom-made applications.

GoTa terminals

ZTE has a comprehensive GoTa terminal range (see Fig.2) but is also actively cooperating with many terminal manufacturers to promote the development of multi-vendor GoTa trunking terminals. Terminal products include common GoTa handsets, vehicle-mounted terminals, Data Transmission Units (DTU) and wireless modem cards.

Fig. 2  Available GoTa terminals

Fig. 3  GoTa terminal development roadmap

A timeline for the development of GoTa terminals is shown in Fig. 3.

In the next two years, GoTa terminals will support BREW, WAP and other multimedia services; incorporate cameras and properties such as water-proof, dust-proof, and quake-proof.

Global applications

ZTE´s GoTa system provided the communications for China´s 10th National Games in September last year where the system delivered digital command and dispatch communications services through more than 3000 terminals. Electcoms, the largest professional trunking operator in Malaysia, has selected ZTE´s GoTa system to update its analog trunking system and establish a nation-wide digital trunking network with a capacity of more than 50,000 subscribers.

As China´s leading CDMA brand, ZTE developed GoTa technology with its own research and development facilities. It is capable of bringing rich and sophisticated services to subscribers and evolve smoothly to future technologies. It can help improve wireless operators´ revenues as well as simultaneously cutting trunking costs while opening up the opportunity for operators to deliver new value-added services.