The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is the standards organization that is responsible for the evolutionary planning of the 3GPP family of technologies. 3GPP creates specifications for wireless cellular technologies through working groups comprised of operators and vendors to further the development and standardization for successful global deployments of the 3GPP family of technologies and labels the final stages of development as “Releases.” 3GPP uses a system of parallel Releases to provide developers with a stable platform for implementation and to allow for the addition of new features required by the market.

Source: Transition to 4G: 3GPP Broadband Evolution to IMT-Advanced

From the 4th LTE North America Conference, 8 - 9 November 2011, Dallas, Texas, USA
Presented by Joe Lawrence, Vice President, CDMA Development Group (CDG)

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Ericsson IMS Demo 

When LTE is an overlay to a CDMA/EV-DO network, the current de facto standard for voice delivery is Simultaneous Voice and LTE (SVLTE). In this arrangement, voice service is deployed as a 1x service running in parallel with LTE data services. For this solution to work, the handset needs to have two radios that are on simultaneously. The problem that is obvious is that the power consumption would generally be higher as two radios are on when the voice call is ongoing. The advantage (and I think its a big advantage) is that the data speeds are not affected by ongoing voice call and at the same time the state machine is simple.



For some reason this idea is not very popular for the 2G/3G evolution to LTE as the reliance will be on the CS Fallback. I had discussed this idea in the LTE World Summit and had blogged about it.

Extracted from 3GPP 36.300:


The eNB hosts the following functions: 
- Functions for Radio Resource Management: Radio Bearer Control, Radio Admission Control, Connection Mobility Control, Dynamic allocation of resources to UEs in both uplink and downlink (scheduling);
- IP header compression and encryption of user data stream;
- Selection of an MME at UE attachment when no routing to an MME can be determined from the information provided by the UE;
- Routing of User Plane data towards Serving Gateway;
- Scheduling and transmission of paging messages (originated from the MME);
- Scheduling and transmission of broadcast information (originated from the MME or O&M);
- Measurement and measurement reporting configuration for mobility and scheduling;
- Scheduling and transmission of PWS (which includes ETWS and CMAS) messages (originated from the MME);
- CSG handling;
- Transport level packet marking in the uplink.


DeNB hosts the following functions in addition to the eNB functions:
- S1/X2 proxy functionality for supporting RNs;
- S11 termination and S-GW/P-GW functionality for supporting RNs.


E-UTRAN supports relaying by having a Relay Node (RN) wirelessly connect to an eNB serving the RN, called Donor eNB (DeNB), via a modified version of the E-UTRA radio interface, the modified version being called the Un interface. The RN supports the eNB functionality meaning it terminates the radio protocols of the E-UTRA radio interface, and the S1 and X2 interfaces. From a specification point of view, functionality defined for eNBs, e.g. RNL and TNL, also applies to RNs unless explicitly specified. RNs do not support NNSF. In addition to the eNB functionality, the RN also supports a subset of the UE functionality, e.g. physical layer, layer-2, RRC, and NAS functionality, in order to wirelessly connect to the DeNB.


The architecture for supporting RNs is shown in Figure 4.7.2-1. The RN terminates the S1, X2 and Un interfaces. The DeNB provides S1 and X2 proxy functionality between the RN and other network nodes (other eNBs, MMEs and S GWs). The S1 and X2 proxy functionality includes passing UE-dedicated S1 and X2 signalling messages as well as GTP data packets between the S1 and X2 interfaces associated with the RN and the S1 and X2 interfaces associated with other network nodes. Due to the proxy functionality, the DeNB appears as an MME (for S1-MME), an eNB (for X2) and an S-GW (for S1-U) to the RN. 


For more details see - 3GPP TS 36.300 : Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) and Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN); Overall description; Stage 2 (Release 10)

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For seven years and counting, the Cisco CRS has maintained and enhanced its leadership position in the network core, while Juniper core routers have come and gone.

Tutorial on LTE, what it is and how it will change the communications

Have you ever thought how come? The to-do list of tomorrow is a forum for bright ideas. Some are big. Some are small. But together they have one clear goal: to help shape a better tomorrow. See what others have put on the list and add your own question by clicking the links below.

MIMO and Smart Antennas for 3G and 4G Wireless Systems

 Americas has published an educational white paper titled, MIMO and Smart Antennas for 3G and 4G Wireless Systems: Practical Aspects and Deployment Considerations. The report is a complete tutorial reference document that outlines the considerable importance of various smart antenna schemes for improving the capacity and coverage of the emerging generations of wireless networks.
With the rapid growth of wireless data traffic, now greatly exceeding voice traffic in many developed markets, operators are anxious to quickly expand the capacity and coverage of their wireless networks. To address these demands for increased capacity in a cost effective way, 3GPP standards have incorporated powerful techniques for using “smart antennas.”
“The gains in spectral efficiency being advanced by new wireless air interface technologies, such as LTE and LTE-Advanced, will be enabled by the application of MIMO and other smart antenna technologies,” stated Kevin Linehan, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer – Base Station Antenna Systems, Andrew Solutions. Linehan, one of the project leaders for the creation of the 3G Americas report continued, “It is critical that operators and others in the industry appreciate these advanced technologies and their practical application.”
The term smart antennas refers to adaptive array antennas – those with electrical tilt, beam width and azimuth control that can follow relatively slow-varying traffic patterns; intelligent antennas, which can form beams aimed at particular users or steer nulls to reduce interference; and MIMO antenna schemes, predominately featured in LTE and LTE-Advanced.
The white paper was created by a 3G Americas technical work group and concentrates on the practical aspects of antennas and their deployment for 3G and 4G wireless systems, specifically downlink antenna techniques available in 3GPP LTE Release 8. The comprehensive report highlights a substantial and growing body of theoretical and field experience that provides reliable guidance on the tradeoffs of various antenna configurations. Some of the areas addressed in the paper include:

• Smart antennas provide the next substantial increase in throughput for wireless networks. The peak data rates tend to be proportional to the number of send and receive antennas, so 4X4 MIMO is theoretically capable of twice the peak data rates as 2X2 MIMO systems. For another example, in upgrading from HSPA (1X2) to LTE (2X2) a gain of 1.6x is seen (Rysavy Research, 2009).
• The practical tradeoffs of performance with the realistic constraints on the types of antennas that can be realistically installed, cognizant of zoning, wind loading, size, weight and cabling challenges and constraints from legacy terminals and other equipment. Constraints are, of course, present in both the base station and the terminal side of the air interface, where MIMO technology promises useful gains if multiple antennas, amplifiers, receivers and baseband processing resources can be made available in terminals.
• Beyond the single antenna or beamforming array cases, 3GPP Release 8 of the LTE standard supports MIMO antenna configurations. This includes Single-User (SU-MIMO) protocols using either Open Loop or Closed-Loop modes as well as Transmit Diversity and MU-MIMO. Closed-Loop MIMO mode, which supports the highest peak data rates, is likely to be the most commonly used scheme in early deployments. However, this Closed-Loop MIMO scheme provides the best performance only when the channel information is accurate, when there is a rich multipath environment and is appropriate in low mobility environments such as with fixed terminals or those used at pedestrian speeds.

 

 

Another one from Qualcomm's 4G World presentation. You can see the number of scenarios that would have to be taken into account for; this was one of the reasons I believed SVLTE may be a good choice.

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5 Reasons Why Testing Is Important For User Equipments

5 Reasons Why Testing Is Important For User Equipments

After much evolution of telecommunication technologies we are now in a generation where mobile communication is the biggest medium of communication. Apart from biggest now Mobile communication is one of the most complex systems ever used so vastly around the globe.
In mobile communication system User Equipment (Mobile Stations) are one of the most important node.
To make sure that the mobile stations should work properly testing is a must during the whole development cycle and also after the complete product is developed.
We have documented 5 important reasons why testing is very important in mobile station development.

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Reason:1 So Many Technologies

Mobile communication has a long history. Starting from 1st generation till 4th generation the technology becomes complex. For example GSM which was a second generation popular technology was developed for Voice and CS related traffic. But when the demand for data (PS) services grew different other technologies were added with GSM. These include GPRS, EDGE, etc.

When 3G was drafted during beginning of 1990s many more services were introduced. It was also decided that mobile stations will support different verities of QoS (Quality of Service), which includes Voice, PS (there are many QoS specified for PS like Background class, interactive class, streaming, etc), video telephony, SMS, MMS.
By adding so many services the system became more complex. During the evolution of 3GPP standardization many more new concepts were introduced. Some of these are IMS, MIMO, HSDPA, HSUPA, etc. These added extra overhead in the design of the mobile stations.
With introduction of LTE added a new type of air interface and new type of QoS criteria.
To make sure the mobile stations are working as per the standards with these technologies testing of each and every service type is very important. This includes signaling and data testing of each kind of services.
Testing also should be done when user equipments do handover inside the systems and also between different systems.

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Reason:2 Different Network Vendors Different Configuration

The number of Network Equipment (Base stations, Core Network, RNC, etc) providers are many. Some of them are Ericsson, Alcatel Lucent, Nokia Siemens Network, Huawei, Nortel, ZTE, DoCoMo, Motorola, etc.

With so many different NW vendors it is the goal of the mobile station producers to test their mobile stations against most of them. This is because each NW vendors have their own set of implemented configuration from 3GPP standards.
This is the reason that most of the NW vendors have their own labs where UE manufactures can test the mobile stations. This type of testing is called interoperability testing. In this type of interoperability testing, UEs are tested against NW configurations in controlled environments.

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Reason:3 UE Manufacturers Are Not Component Suppliers

In today’s competitive industry, it is hard for one company to focus on all aspect of mobile handset development. That is the reason why many handset manufacturers buy components from other companies. These components include protocol stacks, chipsets, cameras, etc.

So it is the responsibility of the component suppliers to check the quality of the components before delivering to UE manufacturers.
The UE manufacturers should check the quality of the end product.

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Reason:4 Operators Are The New Bosses

These days it is a regular practice to buy mobiles directly from operators. Operators decide which mobile station they will sell. This is the reason why the component suppliers and the mobile manufacturers need to test their UEs in Operators labs & live environment.

This process finds out if there are some bugs or issue with the mobile station or component in the operator’s NW configuration. Some of the most common issues which can be fixed during this phase are Throughput, configuration issue, handover problems, call drop issues, etc.

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Reason:5 Without Certification Mobiles Can Not Be Sold

Certifications are introduced by standardization bodies to make sure that all mobile stations should follow a minimum set of criteria before those can be released. For this reason standardization bodies like GCF created test suites and those suites are tested against the UEs. This type of testing brings out many common functionality problems in the mobile stations. This is called conformance testing.

These tests are most of the time tested against system simulators.
There are many companies they provide system simulators. These include Anristu, Anite, Rohde & Schwarz, etc.

 

HD Voice - Next step in the evolution of voice communication

Nearly 2 years back I blogged about Orange launching HD Voice via the use of AMR-WB (wideband) codecs. HD voice is already fully developed and standardized technology and has so far been deployed on 32 networks in almost as many countries. 

People who have experienced HD voice say it feels like they are talking to a person in the same room. Operators derive 70 percent of their revenue from voice and voice-related services, and studies show that subscribers appreciate the personal nature of voice communication, saying it offers a familiar and emotional connection to another person. 

HD voice is also a reaction to the competition faced by the operators from OTT players like Skype.

Donor eNB (DeNB) and Relay Node (RN)

Extracted from 3GPP 36.300:


The eNB hosts the following functions: 
- Functions for Radio Resource Management: Radio Bearer Control, Radio Admission Control, Connection Mobility Control, Dynamic allocation of resources to UEs in both uplink and downlink (scheduling);
- IP header compression and encryption of user data stream;
- Selection of an MME at UE attachment when no routing to an MME can be determined from the information provided by the UE;
- Routing of User Plane data towards Serving Gateway;
- Scheduling and transmission of paging messages (originated from the MME);
- Scheduling and transmission of broadcast information (originated from the MME or O&M);
- Measurement and measurement reporting configuration for mobility and scheduling;
- Scheduling and transmission of PWS (which includes ETWS and CMAS) messages (originated from the MME);
- CSG handling;
- Transport level packet marking in the uplink.

The DeNB hosts the following functions in addition to the eNB functions:
- S1/X2 proxy functionality for supporting RNs;
- S11 termination and S-GW/P-GW functionality for supporting RNs.


E-UTRAN supports relaying by having a Relay Node (RN) wirelessly connect to an eNB serving the RN, called Donor eNB (DeNB), via a modified version of the E-UTRA radio interface, the modified version being called the Un interface. The RN supports the eNB functionality meaning it terminates the radio protocols of the E-UTRA radio interface, and the S1 and X2 interfaces. From a specification point of view, functionality defined for eNBs, e.g. RNL and TNL, also applies to RNs unless explicitly specified. RNs do not support NNSF. In addition to the eNB functionality, the RN also supports a subset of the UE functionality, e.g. physical layer, layer-2, RRC, and NAS functionality, in order to wirelessly connect to the DeNB.


The architecture for supporting RNs is shown in Figure 4.7.2-1. The RN terminates the S1, X2 and Un interfaces. The DeNB provides S1 and X2 proxy functionality between the RN and other network nodes (other eNBs, MMEs and S GWs). The S1 and X2 proxy functionality includes passing UE-dedicated S1 and X2 signalling messages as well as GTP data packets between the S1 and X2 interfaces associated with the RN and the S1 and X2 interfaces associated with other network nodes. Due to the proxy functionality, the DeNB appears as an MME (for S1-MME), an eNB (for X2) and an S-GW (for S1-U) to the RN.