In the

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technolog ...

cellular communication system, received signal code power (RSCP) denotes the power measured by a receiver on a particular physical communication channel. It is used as an indication of

signal strength In telecommunications, particularly in radio frequency engineering, signal strength is the transmitter power output as received by a reference antenna at a distance from the transmitting antenna. High-powered transmissions, such as those used i ...

, as a

handover In cellular telecommunications, handover, or handoff, is the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another channel. In satellite communications it is the process of transf ...

criterion, in downlink power control, and to calculate path loss. In

CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...

systems, a physical channel corresponds to a particular spreading code, hence the name (Received signal code power). RSCP is also called Receiver Side Call Power. While RSCP can be defined generally for any CDMA system, it is more specifically used in UMTS. Also, while RSCP can be measured in principle on the downlink as well as on the

uplink In a telecommunications network, a link is a communication channel that connects two or more devices for the purpose of data transmission. The link may be a dedicated physical link or a virtual circuit that uses one or more physical links or shar ...

, it is only defined for the downlink and thus presumed to be measured by the UE and reported to the Node B.

References

Mobile telecommunications standards 3GPP standards {{telecom-stub