Start the stack with right 3GPP specifications

Well, this is my first official post after starting this blog and after the rather null Testpost. So here are few tips on starting to get to the right 3GPP specifications, irrespective of what standard you want to work on. When I initially started reading the 3GPP specifications an year ago, I was not sure, if the one I chose would provide me with the information I needed. Also, I was really irritated by the fact that each and every line in any specification pointed to several other specifications (and those pointed to several others. Gosh ! I felt trapped in a loop of specs), but that's how specifications are written and we have to deal with them.

So after going through lot of references provided in articles relevant to my problem, I ended up choosing the correct set of specs. That's one way of starting with the hunt for right set of specifications for your requirement. And this is pretty much how anyone who is interested in continuing their career in research will follow (atleast that's what I assume). Once you zero in on which specs to follow, the right place to hit is the 3GPP Specification matrix. This matrix has all the specs sorted according to their releases and refers to the respective standards(GSM, 3G, and 4G) with respective specification series. Each sepecification series addresses different areas of the stack and you can pick the newest and appropriate documents suitable for your need.

While one can plunge into 3GPP Specification matrix directly, it is always a good practice to spend some time referring the relevant articles/papers and then come back to the matrix.

And coming to the heavy reference of specifications inside another specification, you'll tend to ignore them once you get yourself more involved into the specifications and hit the right ones automatically once you understand them, which leaves me conveying the fact that, there is really no workaround or special way to understand 3GPP specifications (fooling around everyone who read this blog post for tips).