LTE: delivering mobile
ADVERTISEMENT
broadband everywhere
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is poised to offer users a superior mobile broadband experience
with simplified technology. It is an evolutionary technology step for today’s mobile systems,
as Håkan Eriksson, Chief Technology Officer at Ericsson describes.
Mobile broadband takes off
People are becoming accustomed to having
broadband access outside the home or
office. They can already browse the Internet
or send e-mails using High Speed Packet
Access (HSPA)-enabled notebooks, replace
their fixed ADSL modems with HSPA
modems, and send and receive video or
music using 3G/HSPA phones.
LTE will significantly enhance the mobile
broadband experience for users, who will be
able to enjoy more performance-demanding
applications like interactive TV, advanced
games or professional services.
In many countries, net additions of mobile
broadband subscribers already exceed
those for fixed broadband. Worldwide,
mobile data traffic is expected to overtake
voice in 2010, and of the estimated 1.8
billion people who will have broadband by
2012, some two-thirds will be mobile
broadband subscribers.
Wireless will be the predominant way of
accessing broadband and Internet
connectivity in homes, businesses, schools
and hospitals in the developing world.
Initially, this will be mainly over HSPA, but
LTE is expected to pick up quickly,
leveraging on its relationship with the highly
successful GSM/WCDMA/HSPA technology
family.
LTE makes business sense
For mobile operators, LTE offers several
important benefits. For a start, it builds on
the commercial success of existing
WCDMA/HSPA services. There are already
over 160 commercially deployed HSPA
networks in 75 countries and 180 million
subscribers (WCDMA/HSPA) and these
numbers are growing rapidly. This will
provide LTE with a distinct economy of scale
advantage, as HSPA operators deploy LTE
as a capacity and speed extension to their
existing network
Another key benefit of LTE is its performance
and capacity. One of the requirements on
LTEisthatitshouldprovidedownlinkpeak
rates of at least 100Mbit/s. In fact, the
technology allows for speeds of 300Mbit/s –
and potentially higher – and Ericsson has
already demonstrated LTE peak rates of
about 160Mbit/s. Furthermore, LTE Radio
Access Network (RAN) round-trip times will
be less than 10ms. This means that LTE,
more than any other technology, already
meets key 4G requirements.
LTE also offers operators deployment
flexibility:
. It supports flexible carrier bandwidth,
from 1.4MHz up to 20MHz, and both
Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and
Time Division Duplex (TDD). Ten paired
and four unpaired spectrum bands have
so far been identified by 3GPP for LTE,
and there are more bands to come. This
means that an operator may introduce
LTE in ‘new’ bands where it is easiest to
deploy 10MHz or 20MHz carriers, and
eventually deploy LTE in all bands.
. LTE radio network products will have a
number of features that simplify and
reduce the cost of building and
managing next-generation networks –
including plug-and-play, selfconfiguration
and self-optimization.
Basic mechanisms for this are already
built into the LTE specifications, based
on 30 years of experience from the
cellular industry.
. LTE will be deployed in parallel, and
coexist efficiently, with existing networks
using simplified, IP-based core and
transport networks that are easy to build,
maintain and introduce services on.
All this means that existing CDMA operators
can choose to migrate to LTE directly; HSPA
and TD-SCDMA operators can use LTE
(FDD and TDD respectively) to add capacity
and performance; while greenfield operators
can deploy LTE directly. GSM operators can
theoretically evolve to LTE directly, although
in practice they will first evolve to HSPA.
Experience from HSPA shows that when
operators provide good coverage, service
offerings and terminals, mobile broadband
uptake rapidly takes off. During 2007,
worldwide WCDMA/HSPA data traffic
increased 600 per cent and the number of
subscribers tripled.
This strong market pull for HSPA is creating
a burgeoning mobile broadband ecosystem
of device makers, network vendors,
application developers and enterprises. With
this ecosystem in place, LTE modules will be
embedded in many devices, including
notebooks, ultra-portables, gaming devices
and cameras. Since LTE supports hand-over
and roaming to existing mobile networks, all
these devices can have ubiquitous mobile
broadband coverage from day one.
LTE offers operators the flexibility to match
their network, spectrum and business
objectives for mobile broadband and
multimedia services long into the future.
www.ericsson.com
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.