Business News Holding

Tag: 3gpp

  • Ericsson: LTE Advanced – Mobile Internet 10 Times Faster

    Ericsson chose the Swedish city of Kista to demonstrate the next stage of development of the LTE communications technology, called LTE Advanced, which can provide data transfer speeds over 10 times higher than those currently available of the LTE users.

    LTE Advanced provides improved speed and capacity needed to transform the vision of a permanently connected society into reality. The technology is in accordance with the 3GPP Release 10 global standard. Recently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) confirmed that the LTE Advanced are among the technologies that meet the International Mobile Telecommunications criteria and it’s estimated that the first implementations of LTE Advanced will become commercially operational in 2013.

    The system, fully supported using commercial equipment, was operated on a frequency of test offered by PTS. This fact allowed Ericsson to demonstrate the different features of LTE Advanced, such as expanding the bandwidth available for data transmission through a technique called "Carrier Aggregation" with 3 x 20 MHz (resulting in a total width of 60 MHz) for the first time in a mobile environment.

    The improvements introduced by LTE Advanced include the possibility of extending the bandwidth for data transmissions by carrier aggregation type techniques or the MIMO functionality (multiple-input multiple-output). From the user point of view, this means that the information will be obtained and transmitted more quickly, even during periods when the network is busy, which, along with higher speeds of data transfer will significantly improve the final experience.

    The demo was supported by the multi-standard Ericsson RBS 6000 radio base station and the data were transmitted in real time between the station and a van in motion which could effectively measure network performance. For this demonstration they used a bandwidth of 60 MHz wide, compared to 20 MHz maximum amount allowed at present to LTE. For downlink was used 8×8 MIMO.

    In 2010, the first year the technology was operational, the number of users with access to the LTE network grew to 150 million people. Ericsson has supplied most of these LTE commercial networks and has signed contracts with six of the seven largest operators by revenue in 2010.

    Ericsson is one of the leading supporters of the development of LTE and holds approximately 25% of the patents needed for LTE, making it the largest holder of patents for this technology throughout the industry.

    You may also want to read:
    Apple Ready to Launch the Production of the New iPhone
    Nokia to Reduce Smartphone Prices
    Smartphone.Biz-news.com Test: LG Optimus Chic – Android for the Masses

  • picoChip Develops First Public Access Femtocell Solution

    picoChip today unveiled the PC333, the first chip specifically designed to extend the femtocell into the realm of public access infrastructure such as metro femto, rural femto and strand-mounted systems.

    According to the company, the PC333 System-on-Chip (SoC) device is the first femtocell chip to support 32 channels (scalable to 64) for simultaneous voice and HSPA+ data, the first to support MIMO, the first to support soft-handover and the first to conform to the Local Area Basestation (LABS) standard.

    picoChip says that the PC333 enables small basestations for urban hot-spots, city-centers or public access to be made and deployed at a cost far lower than traditional approaches, “radically changing the economics of network infrastructure.”

    The PC333 is the highest-specification femtocell available, and represents a significant step in bringing a complete 3GPP Release 8 Local Area 42Mbps HSPA+ basestation onto a single-chip.

    LABS is the 3GPP definition for systems with higher performance than home-basestations, allowing higher capacity, 120km/h mobility and +24dBm output power for greater than 2km range.

    The PC333 supports 32 channels, each with both voice and HSPA+ data and, with picoChip’s smartSignaling technology, in excess of 400 simultaneous smartphone users. Two of the devices can also be cascaded to support 64 active channels. The product runs on a 700MHz ARM chip with TrustZone and variety of specialized hardware features for security. As well as LABS conformance and release 8 HSPA+ (42Mbps downlink, 11 Mpbps uplink), the PC333 supports soft handover, receive diversity and MIMO.

    “Someday, all basestations will be made like this,” asserted Doug Pulley, CTO of picoChip. “With the PC333 we have extended the parameters of femtocell performance to levels that would traditionally have been considered as ‘picocell’ or even ‘microcell’. This high performance coupled with zero-touch provisioning means carriers can routinely deploy femtocells as part of their wide-area network rollouts. We are already seeing the emergence of femtocells into rural and metropolitan-area basestations,” he added.

    “As data traffic rises inexorably, it is evident that conventional macrocell architectures cannot cope both from a cost and capability point of view. Service providers are going to be deploying different, innovative basestation architectures to address this challenge effectively,” stated Simon Saunders, Chairman of The Femto Forum.

    The PC333 will be sampled in 4Q2010 to “lead customers.”

  • AIRCOM: LTE Not the Only Option for Mobile Operators Today

    Deployment of HSPA+, set to save operators from costly CAPEX investment, deliver five times current network performance and open up new pricing models, says AIRCOM.

    In its recent analysis, AIRCOM, a network planning and optimisation company, highlights why HSPA+ could make short-term commercial sense to a wide range of 3GPP operators contemplating their mobile broadband network migration strategies. ROI (return on investment) and new pricing models are the key factors.

    According to Aircom, as operators continue to address the rapidly increasing demand for mobile data, further attention and financial investment has been committed to upgrade existing network infrastructure. “With peak download speeds above 100 Mbps being suggested, LTE has been widely hailed as the panacea for operators’ congestion troubles,” as the analysts say.

    Based on analysis of network infrastructure requirements, AIRCOM identifies HSPA+ as a compelling alternative for operators’ mobile broadband strategies.

    Available today, the technology offers up to 21Mbps without any additional antenna infrastructure or second carrier – allowing users to experience mobile broadband around five times faster than the current average of 3.6Mbps.

    HSPA+ also allows mobile operators to control service provisioning and prioritisation, delivering Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees.

    “Fundamentally, deployment of HSPA+ offers significantly reduced CAPEX investment compared to LTE. Reduction for a UK operator could be as much as £345 million in 12 months; as much as $1.19 billion for a US operator,” claims Aircom.

    AIRCOM Services Director, Fabricio Martinez, responsible for providing the industry with the ‘cost of LTE’ reality check in late 2009, said: “There is great pressure on operators to upgrade their networks and improve the level of service they deliver to consumers and enterprise customers. The so-called ‘iPhone effect’ is piling pressure on to existing infrastructure. There is a real and immediate need for operators to upgrade their networks, but LTE is not the answer – today at least.”

    HSPA+ is able to meet – and exceed – current data demands, delivering a theoretical maximum of 21Mbps and an average experience of around 16Mbps. “With average mobile broadband users experiencing around 3.6Mbps, this is a significant increase,” said Martinez.

    According to him, the increase in speed enables operators to do two things: to combat price erosion, and to offer sophisticated service provisioning. “As operators are able to prioritise data traffic and users, QoE can be assured, data speeds can be controlled, and we will see a tiered pricing model emerge, mirroring the fixed line broadband business,” the analyst claims.

    He believes that the most important factor in deciding a future network technology is ROI. “Due to the low CAPEX investment and new revenue opportunities, deployment of HSPA+ will allow operators to see ROI in three years; perfect timing to upgrade to LTE, when that technology’s ecosystem has matured, devices have come to market, and equipment prices have reduced,” he said.

    Related articles
    Motorola: TD-LTE is Now a Commercial Reality
    In-Stat: 4G LTE Gated by 3G Success, not WiMAX
    AIRCOM Reveals the Economic Reality of LTE Migration

  • Samsung Develops First Commercial LTE Modem for Mobile Phones


    Samsung announced that it has developed, as it claims, the first Long Term Evolution (LTE) modem that complies with the latest standards of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which were released in March 2009.

    The modem, branded the Kalmia, supports download speed up to 100Mbps and upload speed of 50Mbps within the 20MHz frequency bandwidth.

    Samsung assures that the users of a mobile device equipped with the LTE chipset can download a high-definition movie file (800MB) in one minute at speeds of 100Mbps, while simultaneously streaming four high-definition movies with no buffering.

    Utilizing Release 8 of the 3GPP, this LTE modem is an upgrade from the previous standard that was released in December 2008.

    The company also announced it has successfully developed a 3G baseband modem based on the Release 7 standard with an HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) Evolution platform.

    This modem, branded the Broom, allows download speeds of up to 28Mbps and upload speeds of 11.5 Mbps. This makes the Release 7 more than twice as fast as the Release 6 HSPA Service, which had a maximum download speed of 14.4Mbps.

    Because the LTE and all other HSPA evolution models share the same platform, the new LTE modem is fully compatible with earlier standards.

    Through this technology, a mobile communications service provider can upgrade to HSPA service or evolve into a LTE network simultaneously in order to convert their existing networks to broadband.

    In the future, this flexibility will be crucial as wireless mobile service providers will require compatibility with pre-existing systems, in order to offer LTE in urban areas while still supporting 3G in suburban or rural areas, as Samsung claims.

    JongKyun Shin, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics said that the company is partnering with LTE developers preparing for a LTE service launch in 2010 and will unveil a variety of LTE devices of different types and with diverse features and options, including memory cards, handheld devices and MID.

    Separately, Samsung has developed the mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) modem chip, a product that is already resonating in the mobile market. The company has already adopted the modem into commercial WiBro handsets in Korea.

    They have also demonstrated a full lineup of modems from 2G/3G to modems for the next generation of mobile telecommunication systems with its HSDPA Evolution modems.

    Samsung is strengthening its position in mobile telecommunication system standards. The campany currently holds the most chairman seats within the IEEE 802.16 Working Group, a WiMAX standardization association, and also chairs the WiMAX Forum, an affiliate organization.