LTE Advanced: NSN Proves relaying technology

Nokia Siemens Networks has broken new ground with another technological first: mobile broadband communications beyond LTE. Company researchers have successfully demonstrated Relaying technology proposed for LTE-Advanced, enabling an exceptional end-user experience delivered consistently across the network.

Completed in Nokia Siemens Networks research facilities in Germany, the demonstration illustrated how advances to Relaying technology can further improve the quality and coverage consistency of a network at the cell edge - where users are furthest from the mobile broadband base station.

Relaying technology, which can also be integrated in normal base station platforms, is cost efficient and easy to deploy as it does not require additional backhaul. The demonstration of LTE Advanced means operators can plan their LTE network investments knowing that the already best-in-class LTE radio performance, including cell edge data rates, can be further improved and that the technological development path for the next stage of LTE is secure and future-proof.

These performance enhancements have been achieved by combining an LTE system supporting a 2x2 MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antenna system, and a Relay station. The Relaying operates in-band, which means that the relay stations inserted in the network do not need an external data backhaul. They are connected to the nearest base stations by using radio resources within the operating frequency band of the base station itself. Towards the terminal they are base stations and offer the full functionality of LTE. LTE-Advanced is currently being studied by 3GPP for Release 10 and will be submitted towards ITU-R as the 3GPP Radio Interface Technology proposal.

The improved cell coverage and system fairness - meaning offering higher user data rates for and fair treatment of users distant from the base station - will allow operators to utilise existing LTE network infrastructure and still meet growing bandwidth demands.

The demonstration has been realised by using an intelligent demo relay node embedded in a test network forming a FDD in-band self-backhauling solution for coverage enhancements. With this demonstration the performance at the cell edge could be increased up to 50% of the peak throughput.

More info on LTE-A coming soon.