Thursday 11 March 2010

HSPA+ to reach 168Mbps in Release-10


Just when we thought that we have squeezed every bit out of HSPA, a surprise waiting is the speeds of upto 168Mbps in the downlink. Going back to the 3G Americas report, there is a section in the end that details HSPA+ enhancements for Rel-10:

Rel-8 introduced dual-carrier HSDPA operation in the downlink while Rel-9 similarly introduced dual-carrier HSUPA operation in the uplink and also enhanced the dual-carrier HSDPA operation by combining it with MIMO.

Further enhanced multi-carrier HSDPA operation is being specified for Rel-10, where the base station will be able to schedule HSDPA transmissions over three or four carriers simultaneously to a single user with the carriers are spread over one or two frequency bands. Solutions specified in earlier releases can be reused to a large extent. The difference is that now it is possible to configure a UE with one primary serving cell and up to three secondary serving cells. As in earlier releases, the secondary serving cells can be activated and deactivated dynamically by the base station using so-called “HS-SCCH orders.” With MIMO transmission on all four carriers, the peak rate would be doubled to 168 Mbps compared to Rel-9 and for typical bursty traffic the average user throughput would also experience a substantial increase.

Remember, I posted a blog on data rates calculation? The maximum data rate in Release-8 HSDPA is 42Mbps. With Dual-carrier operation, this could be doubled to 84Mbps. As you can probably guess, with 4 carriers, this will become 168Mbps ;)

For people who are less technically inclined, can check this Ericsson presentation on HSPA+ data rates. For people who may become sleepless without some technical references can check this report from RAN WG#1 meeting#59. If you are not sure what RAN WG#1 is, check quick tutorial on 3GPP here.

Going back to the 3GPP report, section 5.4 lists the details of 4 carriers HSDPA. It would be interesting to see what happens in cases where initially there were 4 carriers but then in a particular spot it changed to 2 carriers, and vice-versa. People who have yet to work on LTE may not have to worry too much as HSPA is being future proofed against the threats of LTE and WiMAX.

Interestingly enough, HSPA+ offers a better and cleaner solution at the moment especially with regards to voice calls and handing over to GSM then LTE or WiMAX.

It wont come as a surprise if the HSPA+ camp are able to pull out some new tricks from their bag just in time for Release-11.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi,
does anybody have some table with UE categories for release 9 and 10?

Zahid Ghadialy said...

My understanding is that Release-9 categories should be the same as Release-8 as shown here. Not sure if Release-10 categories have been finalised but I did have an old one here.

I will add the categories once I find one.

Anonymous said...

hi, and do you have some table with categories for HSDPA and HSUPA in rel 9,10. And my second question : Do you have some overview about changes in HSUPA in rel 9,10?
Thank you very much

Zahid Ghadialy said...

The UE category table is given in 3GPP TS 25.306, table 5.1a. According to the latest specs, Release 9 - v9.1.0, there are 28 categories.

There is no single document that lists the changes in Release-9 HSPA as compared to Release-8. Having said that, you may want to search the net and I am sure you will find some really useful information.

Release-10 HSPA information is not yet available as the work has recently started.

Anonymous said...

thx...and my last question...do you have some paper about throughput, attenuation, latency, range of cell and so on in rel.99?
thank you very much

Zahid Ghadialy said...

I have seen papers in past about what you are asking for but cannot locate any.

If you go to Amazon (or any book store) and search for books on Deployment and/or Network Optimisation then you will find all the information you are looking for.

Anonymous said...

Release 8:
Cat 20-24:DC HSDPA max 42 Mbps
Cat 19-20: MIMO + 64 QAM max 42 Mbps

Release 9:
Cat 25-28:DC HSDPA + MIMO max 84 Mbps

Release 10:
Cat 29-32: 4C HSDPA + MIMO max 168Mbps

Anonymous said...

pFrom what I see. Rel10:

cat29 = 3 cells,64QAM = 63Mbps
cat30 = 3 cells,64QAM,MIMO = 127Mbps
cat31 = 4 cells, 64QAM = 84
cat32 = 4 cells, 64QAM, MIMO = 168

I've also seen talk about Rel11:
8C = 168Mbps
8C+MIMO = 336Mbps
8C+4xMIMO = 672Mbps

Curious to why somebodoy would choose 8C+4xMIMO before 128-QAM, any ideas?

Anonymous said...

Those 4 or 8 carriers would come from NodeB ?
Or is it possible that there will be two pairs coming from two NodeB