In-flight broadband connectivity service with speeds up to 75Mbps

Came across the following Inmarsat press release:

The new network represents two world-beating achievements for Inmarsat and its partners. It will be the world’s first truly hybrid aviation network, consisting of an S-band satellite (Europasat), constructed by Thales Alenia Space, and a Europe-wide S-band ground network. Over the integrated network, based on state-of-the-art LTE technology and access to sufficient spectrum resources, Inmarsat will be offering airlines the world’s fastest in-flight broadband connectivity service with speeds up to 75Mbps, far in excess of the limited capabilities of North American ATG systems.

Alcatel-Lucent and Inmarsat will work together to develop the ground infrastructure component of the new Europe-wide network. Alcatel-Lucent has proven expertise in the development of 4G LTE-based air-to-ground technology and was the world’s first company to field trial this technology in 2011. The initial contract awarded to Alcatel-Lucent will see the global telecommunications equipment company adapting their existing 4G LTE technology to support the S-band spectrum.

Recently Christophe WILHELM, Senior VP Strategy & Innovation, Thales Alenia Space gave a presentation in the Digiworld Summit 2014.

His presentation is above and the video is as follows. Please forward to 1:36:00 to watch his part

SON Update from 3GPP SA5

Below is a presentation from Christian Toche, 3GPP SA5 chairman in the SON Conference last month. I also blogged about his presentation last year which is available here.

Oct 2014: Update on 3GPP SA5 from 3G4G

Is mobile eating the world?

Another interesting and thought provoking presentation by Ben Evans. His earlier presentation which was very popular as well, is here. The video and slides are embedded below.


How Mobile is Enabling Tech to Outgrow the Tech Industry from Andreessen Horowitz on Vimeo.

And a recent interview by Benedict Evans with Bloomberg TV on the same topic as follows:

New Spectrum Usage Paradigms for 5G

Sometime back I wrote a post that talked about Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) techniques for Small Cells and WiFi to work together in a fair way. The Small Cells would be using the ISM bands and Wi-Fi AP's would also be contending for the same spectrum. For those who may not know, this is commonly referred to as LTE-U but the correct term that is being used in standards is LA-LTE, see here for details.

IEEE Comsoc has just published a whitepaper that details how the spectrum should be handled in 5G to make sure of efficient utilisation. The whitepaper covers the following:

Chapter 2 – Introduction, the traditional approach of repurposing spectrum and allocating it to Cellular Wireless systems is reaching its limits, at least below the 6GHz threshold. For this reason, novel approaches are required which are detailed in the sequel of this White Paper.

Chapter 3 - Spectrum Scarcity - an Alternate View provides a generic view on the spectrum scarcity issue and discusses key technologies which may help to alleviate the problem, including Dynamic Spectrum Management, Cognitive Radios, Cognitive Networks, Relaying, etc. 

Chapter 4 – mmWave Communications in 5G addresses a first key solution. While spectrum opportunities are running out at below 6 GHz, an abundance of spectrum is available in mmWave bands and the related technology is becoming mature. This chapter addresses in particular the heterogeneous approach in which legacy wireless systems are operated jointly with mmWave systems which allows to combine the advantages of both technologies. 

Chapter 5 – Dynamic Spectrum Access and Cognitive Radio: A Current Snapshot gives a detailed overview on state-of-the-art dynamic spectrum sharing technology and related standards activities. The approach is indeed complementary to the upper mmWave approach, the idea focuses on identifying unused spectrum in time, space and frequency. This technology is expected to substantially improve the usage efficiency of spectrum, in particular below the 6GHz range. 

Chapter 6 – Licensed Shared Access (LSA) enables coordinated sharing of spectrum for a given time period, a given geographic area and a given spectrum band under a license agreement. In contract to sporadic usage of spectrum on a secondary basis, the LSA approach will guarantee Quality-of-Service levels to both Incumbents and Spectrum Licensees. Also, a clear business model is available through a straightforward license transfer from relevant incumbents to licensees operating a Cellular Wireless network in the concerned frequency bands. 

Chapter 7 – Radio Environment Map details a technology which allows to gather the relevant (radio) context information which feed related decision making engines in the Network Infrastructure and/or Mobile Equipment. Indeed, tools for acquiring context information is critical for next generation Wireless Communication systems, since they are expected to be highly versatile and to constantly adapt. 

Chapter 8 – D2DWRAN: A 5G Network Proposal based on IEEE 802.22 and TVWS discusses the efficient exploitation of TV White Space spectrum bands building on the available IEEE 802.22 standard. TV White Spaces are indeed located in highly appealing spectrum bands below 1 GHz with propagation characteristics that are perfectly suited to the need of Wireless Communication systems. 

Chapter 9 – Conclusion presents some final thoughts. 

The paper is embedded as follows:

Novel Spectrum Usage Paradigms for 5G from Zahid Ghadialy

2015 will finally be the year of Voice over LTE (VoLTE)

On 4th Nov. 2009, the One Voice initiative was published by 12 companies including AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. These all agreed that the IMS based solution, as defined by 3GPP, is the most applicable approach to meet their consumers expectations for service quality, reliability and availability when moving from existing CS based voice services to IP based LTE services.

On 15th Feb 2010, GSMA announced that it has adopted the work of the One Voice initiative to drive the global mobile industry towards a standard way of delivering voice and messaging services for LTE. The GSMA’s VoLTE initiative was supported by more than 40 organisations from across the mobile ecosystem, including many of the world’s leading mobile communication service providers, handset manufacturers and equipment vendors, all of whom support the principle of a single, IMS-based voice solution for next-generation mobile broadband networks. This announcement was also supported by 3GPP, Next Generation Mobile Networks alliance (NGMN) and the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC).

GSMA has produces various reference documents that map to the 3GPP standards documents as can be seen above.

As per GSA: 71 operators are investing in VoLTE studies, trials or deployments, including 11 that have commercially launched HD voice service. The number of HD voice launches enabled by VoLTE is forecast to reach 19 by end-2014 and then double in 2015. In July 2014 GSA confirmed 92 smartphones (including carrier and frequency variants) support VoLTE, including products by Asus, Huawei, LG, Pantech, Samsung and Sony Mobile. The newly-announced Apple iPhone 6 & 6 Plus models support VoLTE.

Things are also moving quickly with many operators who have announced VoLTE launches and are getting more confident day by day. Du, Dubai recently announced Nokia as VoLTE partner. KDDI, Japan is launching au VoLTE in December. Telstra, Australia has already been doing trials and plans to launch VoLTE network in 2015. Finally, Verizon and AT&T will have interoperable VoLTE calls in 2015.

Below is my summary from the LTE Voice Summit 2014. Let me know if you like it.

Quick Summary of LTE Voice Summit 2014 #LTEVoice from eXplanoTech

4G Security and EPC Threats for LTE

This one is from the LTE World Summit 2014. Even though I was not there for this, I think this has some useful information about the 4G/LTE Security. Presentation as follows:

4G Security - Fortinet from Zahid Ghadialy