While checking 3GPP TS 36.306, I noticed some new LTE categories have been defined. We now have all the way up to category 14. I also noticed that Wikipedia page has up to Category 15, not sure how/where they got it from.
The LG Space page has some more details for anyone interested in exploring further.
A Qualcomm demo from MWC for LTE Category 11, if interested.
The 3GPP news from some months back listed the main RAN features that have been approved for Release-13 and the work has already started on them. The following are the main features (links contain .zip files):
LTE in unlicensed spectrum (aka Licensed-Assisted Access) - RP-150055
The vision of the Networked Society, where everything that benefits from being connected will be connected, places new requirements on connectivity. LTE is a key component in meeting these demands, and LTE release 13 is the next step in the LTE evolution.
Their whitepaper embedded below:
It should be pointed out that 5G work does not start until Release-15 as can be seen from my tweet
xoxoxo Added Later (26/04/2015) xoxoxo
I came across this presentation from Keysight (Agilent) where Moray Rumney has provided information in much more detail.
We have talked about the unlicensed LTE (LTE-U), re-branded as LTE-LAA many times on this blog and the 3G4G Small Cells blog. In fact some analysts have decided to call the current Rel-12 non-standardised Rel-12 version as LTE-U and the standardised version that would be available as part of Release-13 as LTE-LAA.
There is a lot of unease in the WiFi camp because LTE-LAA may hog the 5GHz spectrum that is available as license-exempt for use of Wi-Fi and other similar (future) technologies. Even though LAA may be more efficient as claimed by some vendors, it would reduce the usage for WiFi users in that particular spectrum.
As a result, some vendors have recently proposed LTE/WiFi Link Aggregation as a new feature in Release-13. Alcatel-Lucent, Ruckus Wireless and Qualcomm have all been promoting this. In fact Qualcomm has a pre-MWC teaser video on Youtube. The demo video is embedded as follows:
The Korean operator KT was also involved in demoing this in MWC along with Samsung and Qualcomm. They have termed this feature as LTE-Hetnet or LTE-H.
Link aggregation by LTE-H demonstrated at MWC 2015 (Source: Netmanias)
As can be seen the data is split/combined in PDCP layer. While this example above shows the practical implementation using C-RAN with Remote Radio Head (RRH) and BaseBand Unit (BBU) being used, the picture at the top shows LTE Anchor in eNodeB. There would be a need for an ideal backhaul to keep latency in the eNodeB to minimum when combining cellular and WiFi data.
Comparison of link level Carrier Aggregation technologies (Source: Netmanias)
The above table shows comparison between the 3 main techniques for increasing data rates through aggregation; CA, LTE-U/LAA and LTE-H/LWA. While CA has been part of 3GPP Release-10 and is available in more of less all new LTE devices, LTE-U and LTE-H is new and would need modifications in the network as well as in the devices. LTE-H would in the end provide similar benefits to LTE-U but is a safer option from devices and spectrum point of view and would be a more agreeable solution by everyone, including the WiFi community.
A final word; last year we wrote a whitepaper laying out our vision of what 4.5G is. I think we put it simply that in 4.5G, you can use WiFi and LTE at the same time. I think LTE-H fulfills that vision much better than other proposals.
I was looking at the proposed spectrum for 5G last week. Anyone who follows me on Twitter would have seen the tweets from last weekend already. I think there is more to discuss then just tweet them so here it is.
Metis has the most comprehensive list of all the bands identified from 6GHz, all the way to 86GHz. I am not exactly sure but the slide also identifies who/what is currently occupying these bands in different parts of the world.
The FCC in the USA has opened a Notice of Inquiry (NoI) for using the bands above 24GHz for mobile broadband. The frequency bands above have a potential as there is a big contiguous chunk of spectrum available in each band.
Finally, the slides from ETRI, South Korea show that they want to have 500MHz bandwidth in frequencies above 6GHz.
As I am sure we all know, the higher the frequency, the lower the cell size and penetration indoors. The advantage on the other hand is smaller cell sizes, leading to higher data rates. The antennas also become smaller at higher frequencies thereby making it easier to have higher order MIMO (and massive MIMO). The only way to reliably be able to do mobile broadband is to use beamforming. The tricky part with that is the beam has to track the mobile user which may be an issue at higher speeds.
The ITU working party 5D, recently released a draft report on 'The technical feasibility of IMT in the bands above 6 GHz'. The document is embedded below.
xoxoxo Added Later (18/12/2014) xoxoxo
Moray Rumney from Keysight (Agilent) gave a presentation on this topic in the Cambridge Wireless Mobile Broadband SIG event yesterday, his presentation is embedded below.
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.
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.
Recently came across a presentation by Ericsson where they used the term LA-LTE. I asked a few colleagues if they knew or could guess what it means and they all drew blank. I have been blogging about Unlicensed LTE (a.k.a. LTE-U) on the Small Cells blog here. This is a re-branding of LTE-U
LA-LTE stands for 'Licensed Access' LTE. In fact the term that has now been adopted in a recent 3GPP workshop (details below) is Licensed Assisted Access (LAA).
Couple of months back I blogged in detail about LTE-U here. Since then, 3GPP held a workshop where some of the things I mentioned got officially discussed. In case you want to know more, details here. I have to mention that the operator community is quite split on whether this is a better approach or aggregating Wi-Fi with cellular a better approach.
The Wi-Fi community on the other hand is unhappy with this approach. If cellular operators start using their spectrum than it means less spectrum for them to use. I wrote a post on the usage of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) Techniques that would be used in such cases to make sure that Wi-Fi and cellular usage does not happen at the same time, leading to interference.
Here is a presentation from the LTE-U workshop on Use cases and scenarios, not very detailed though.
Finally, the summary presentation of the workshop. As it says on the final slide "The current SI proposal focuses on carrier aggregation operations and uses the acronym LAA (Licensed Assisted Access)", you would be seeing more of LAA.
We recently held our first Virtual Networks SIG event in Cambridge Wireless. There were some great presentations. The one by the UK operator EE summarised everything quite well. For those who are not familiar with what NFV and SDN is, I would recommend watching the video on my earlier post here.
One of the term that keeps being thrown around is 'Orchestration'. While I think I understand what it means, there is no easy way to explain it. Here are some things I found on the web that may explain it:
Orchestration means Automation, Provisioning, Coordination and Management of Physical and Virtual resources.
Intelligent service orchestration primarily involves the principles of SDN whereby switches, routers and applications at Layer 7 can be programmed from a centralized component called the controller with intelligent decisions regarding individual flow routing in real time.
If you can provide a better definition, please do so.
There are quite a few functions and services that can be virtualised and there are some ambitious timelines.
ETSI has been working on NFV and as I recently found out (see tweet below) there may be some 3GPP standardisation activity starting soon.
@zahidtg They can for virtualised networks. There is ongoing discussion in 3GPP for service chaining, vEPC etc.
— Dimitris Mavrakis (@dmavrakis) May 16, 2014
There was another brilliant presentation by Huawei but the substance was more in the talk, rather than the slides. The slides are here in case you want to see and download.
Here is the 3GPP presentation from the 9th ETSI Security workshop. Quite a few bits on IMS and IMS Services and also good to see new Authentication algorithm TUAK as an alternative to the widely used Milenage algorithm.
A quick summary from 3GPP about the Release-12 progress (Jun. 2014 release planned) from the recent ETSI Future Mobile Summit. Presentation and video embedded below
The ETSI Future Mobile Summit has heard how the mobile internet will evolve over the next ten to fifteen years, and how 3GPP systems will ensure future stability as the network copes with an explosive growth in complexity and usage.
With 3GPP providing the evolutionary framework for mobility, via its Releases of new functionality and features, the more radical thinking, at the Summit, came in the form of Research projects and some future focused industry initiatives, such as the WWRF, the METIS Project and the DVB Project. In his keynote address, Mario Campolargo - of the European Commission - introduced a new initiative on research & innovation that will provide momentum to funded work on research. The 5G Public Private Partnership is being launched as a blueprint for the deployment of 5G, in the years after 2020.
In summing up the Summit’s main themes, the ETSI CTO, Adrian Scrase identified some certainties; “...traffic will continue to increase, connected devices will increase dramatically over time, new device types will significantly contribute to that increase (e.g., probes, sensors, meters, machines etc) and new sectors will bring new priorities (e.g, critical infrastructures).”
On the concept of 5G, Mr. Scrase reported that ultra-reliable 5G networks should, among other things, enable the tactile internet, the perception of infinite capacity and bring in augmented reality.
5G, the way forward! Mario Campolargo, Director, Net Futures, DG Connect, European Commission
A new initiative 5GPPP, to accelerate and structure research & innovation."...Industry to co-create the "vision" and build global convergence by end 2015.
Who needs 5G? Hans D. Schotten, University of Kaiserslautern
Long Term Evolution of LTE (linear evolution) or Something new (5G)?
Why 5G? Rahim Tafazolli, Director of CCSR and 5GIC, The university of Surrey
Perceived infinite capacity, a new communication paradigm for 5G and Beyond
"New technology challenges: huge number of nodes, latency , energy efficiency, backhaul and over the air signaling design...May require a whole new approach to: physical layer, air interface and spectrum usage, resources management & optimization..."
Considering how popular the Release-11 SON post have been, here is Rel-12 status that was presented in the SON Conference in October 2013. Complete presentation embedded below:
Public Safety is still a hot topic in the standards discussion and on this blog as well. Two recent posts containing presentations have been viewed and downloaded like hotcakes. See here and here.
The ’Critical Communications World’ conference, held recently in Paris, has focused largely on the case for LTE standardized equipment to bring broadband access to professional users, by meeting their high demands for reliability and resilience.
Balazs Bertenyi, the 3GPP SA Chair, reported on the latest status of the first 3GPP features for public safety, in particular those covering Proximity services (Direct mode) and Group call. He spoke of the need to strike a balance between more or less customisation, to make use of commercial products while meeting the specific requirements for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR).
To ensure that these needs are met, Balazs Bertenyi called for the wholehearted participation of the critical communications community in 3GPP groups, by sending the right people to address the technical questions and obstacles that arise during the creation of work items.
A presentation and video from that event is embedded below:
Some months back, I blogged about the 3GPP Rel-12 workshop, since then there has been progress on the Rel-12 features. Here is a quick update from 3GPP:
3GPP Recently held a workshop on "Release 12 and Onward" to identify common requirements for future 3GPP radio access technologies. The goal of the workshop is to investigate what are the main changes that could be brought forward to evolve RAN toward Release 12 and onward. It is recommended that presentations in the workshop include views on:
-Requirements
-Potential technologies
-Technology roadmap for Releases 12, 13 and after
The discussions from the workshop should be used to define the work plan for Release 12 and onward in TSG-RAN.
The list of presentations and links, etc. are below and I have also embedded the Summary and Draft report, both of which can be downloaded from 3GPP website or slideshare. Here is a list of different topics and the presentations that covered them:
AdHoc Networks AdHoc Networks - RWS-120035
Antennas, Beamforming, Transmitters, Receivers 3D-beamforming - RWS-120002 Vertical sectorization/3D beamforming via AAS - RWS-120005 Advanced receivers and joint Tx/Rx optimisation - RWS-120005 Network assistance for IC receivers - RWS-120005 Support of Active Antenna Systems - RWS-120006 Advanced transmitter beamforming - RWS-120010 Advanced receiver cancellation - RWS-120010 Vertical and 3D beamforming - RWS-120011 MIMO Enhancements - RWS-120014 New antenna configurations and 3D MIMO - RWS-120014 UE AAS (Active Antenna System) [Detailed] - RWS-120015 / RWS-120049 Cloud of Antennas (CoA) Concept - RWS-120016 Support of Massive MIMO Technology - RWS-120016 Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) System [Detailed] - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046 Cloud-RAN: Benefits and Drawbacks - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046 Further Enhanced Receivers - RWS-120022 Multiple antenna evolution - RWS-120025 3D beamforming - RWS-120026 Vision of 3D MIMO - RWS-120029 Massive MIMO & 3D MIMO - RWS-120034 Potential MIMO Enhancements - RWS-120035 Advanced Antenna Technology - RWS-120035 DL MIMO Enhancement - RWS-120037 Performance Requirement for 8Rx at eNB - RWS-120037 UE Receiver Enhancements - RWS-120039 DL MU-MIMO Enhancement - RWS-120039 Enhancement of MIMO, CoMP - RWS-120040 Advanced MIMO - RWS-120040 MIMO and COMP - RWS-120041 Role of Advanced Receivers - RWS-120041 Advanced Interference Handling - RWS-120041 Interference Suppression Subframes (ISS) and IRC Receiver [Detailed] - RWS-120051
Applications (Apps) Efficiency for diverse small data applications - RWS-120011 Device Service/Application Awareness - RWS-120018 I-Net:”I”-centric mobile network design philosophy - RWS-120024 Application Aware Comm - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
Backhaul and Relay Relay backhaul enhancement - RWS-120011 LTE Backhaul - RWS-120013 Relay - RWS-120025 CoMP, backhaul and X2 interface - RWS-120027 / RWS-120048 Mobile Relay And Relay Backhaul Enhancement - RWS-120029
Baseband Baseband resource pooling and virtualization - RWS-120011
Capacity and Coverage Higher system capacity - RWS-120010 Capacity for Mobile Broadband: Requirements and Candidate technologies - RWS-120012 Increase N/W capacity by 1000 times - RWS-120020 Coverage Enhancement - RWS-120037 Capacity Enhancement - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047 Cell-edge Throughput Improvement - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047
Carrier Aggregation, Flexible Bandwidths and Multiflow LTE multiflow / Inter-site CA - RWS-120002 LTE/HSDPA Carrier Aggregation - RWS-120002 Multiflow Enhancements - RWS-120002 Multi-Stream Aggregation - RWS-120006 Provide mechanisms for Flexible Bandwidth Exploitation - RWS-120008 Carrier aggregation enhancement - RWS-120019 Inter-eNB Carrier Aggregation - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046 Evolution of Carrier Aggregation - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050 CA of Alternative Spectra - RWS-120042
Cells, Carriers, C/U Planes C/U plane split & Phantom cell - RWS-120010 Phantom cell by single/separate nodes - RWS-120010 Phantom cell: Other topics - RWS-120010 New Carrier Type for Primary Component Carrier - RWS-120011 Flexible/Reconfigurable Cells - RWS-120023 New carrier-type (NCT) enhancements - RWS-120026 Amorphous cells - RWS-120034 New Carrier Types - RWS-120035 Non-Orthogonal Access - RWS-120039 Dynamic Area Construction for UE - RWS-120040
Cognitive Radio Cognitive radio - RWS-120034 Cognitive Networking - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
D2D / Device-to-Device Device-to-Device - RWS-120003 LTE Device to Device - Proximity Based Services - RWS-120004 LTE device to device - RWS-120007 LTE direct communication - RWS-120007 Device-to-Device Communications - RWS-120014 D2D Discovery/Communication - RWS-120016 3GPP Proximity Services (ProSe) / D2D - RWS-120022 Device-to-Device communications - RWS-120026 Device-to-Device communication - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
Data Rates and Throughputs Higher data rate and user-experienced throughput - RWS-120010 Fairness of user throughput - RWS-120010
Deployments LTE in Local Area Deployments & Enhancements - RWS-120004 Energy Efficient Local Area Deployments - RWS-120004 Scaling for Mass Deployment - RWS-120008 Flexible and cost-efficient NW deployments - RWS-120010 Considerations on dense NW deployment - RWS-120019
Energy Consumption, Efficiency and Savings Energy efficiency - RWS-120005 Reduce energy consumption - RWS-120008 Energy Saving - RWS-120014 UE Power Saving - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050 NB Power Saving - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050 Energy Saving Enhancements with CoMP - RWS-120040 Energy Saving with Centralized eNB - RWS-120040
Herogeneous Networks (HetNets) Optimisation of Het Nets performance - RWS-120005 Improved Support for Heterogeneous Networks - RWS-120006 Network hyper-densification: LTE HetNet2.0 - RWS-120007 Multi-layer HetNet Deployments - RWS-120016 HetNet for HSPA - RWS-120017 HetNet Enhancements - RWS-120023 HetNet Mobility - RWS-120029 Small cells & HetNet - RWS-120031 HetNet - RWS-120037 HetNet Enhancements for HeNB - RWS-120040
HSDPA / HSUPA / HSPA+ Enhancements HSPA UL Enhancements - RWS-120003 Uplink Enhancements - RWS-120006 UMTS evolution: enhancing CS voice on DCH - RWS-120007 High Speed Packet Access - RWS-120012 HSPA RRM enhancement - RWS-120024 HSPA+ further evolution - RWS-120034
Local-Area Access (Small Cells) Local-Area Access - RWS-120003 LTE in Local Area Deployments & Enhancements - RWS-120004 LTE Local Area Enhancements - RWS-120004 LTE Local Area Enhancement Areas - RWS-120004 enhanced Local Area (eLA) - RWS-120010 Local Area Enhancements - RWS-120022 Improved Local Area Mobility - RWS-120022
LTE LTE for Nomadic and Fixed Use - RWS-120018 E-PDCCH enhancement - RWS-120019 Efficiency : Paging Optimization - RWS-120024
LTE Hotspot and Indoor Enhancements (LTE-Hi) Hotspot and Indoor Enhancements (LTE-Hi) - RWS-120006 Hotspot/indoor Scenario (LTE-Hi) - RWS-120025 Indoor & Hotspot Enhancements (LTE-Hi) [Detailed] - RWS-120029 Possible Study Items for Indoor Environment - RWS-120040
M2M / Machine Type Communications (MTC) Machine Type Communications - RWS-120003 Improved Support for MTC - RWS-120006 Machine-to-Machine: The Internet of Things - RWS-120014 Machine Type Communications: a new ecosystem - RWS-120014 Wireless MTC and RAN optimizations for MTC - RWS-120016 Low-Cost MTC UE - RWS-120017 MTC + eDDA (enhanced Diverse data application) - RWS-120019 Further Enhancements to Support MTC - RWS-120023 MTC - RWS-120025 MTC enhancements - RWS-120026 M2M - RWS-120029 MTC and migration of traffic from 2G - RWS-120031 Machine Type Communications enhancements - RWS-120034 Machine Type Communications - RWS-120035 Extension triggered by growing M2M traffic - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047 LTE-based M2M - RWS-120041
Traffic and Signalling Overhead Efficient support of diverse traffic characteristics - RWS-120005 Efficient support for variety of traffic types - RWS-120010 Enhancements for variety of traffic types - RWS-120010 Very high traffic (and signalling) scenarios - RWS-120017 Control Plane Overhead Reduction - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046 Further Enhancements to Support Diverse Data Applications - RWS-120023 Efficiency : Small data services in high mobility - RWS-120024
User Experience Improve User experience - RWS-120009 User Challenges - RWS-120032
Video streaming, call RAN Enhancements for Video Streaming QoE - RWS-120023 RAN Enhancements for Internet Video Call - RWS-120023
WiFi / WLAN Cooperation between LTE/HSPA and WiFi - RWS-120005 Unlicensed spectrum: LTE & WLAN - RWS-120007 LTE integration with other RATs - RWS-120014 WiFi integration: For Beyond Rel-12 - RWS-120017 LTE-WLAN Interworking - RWS-120023 Coordination With WiFi - RWS-120029 Smarter opportunistic usage of Wi-Fi - RWS-120031 LTE TDD Small-Cell versus WiFi - RWS-120041
Others Other identified techniques for LTE - RWS-120005 Efficient Transactions - RWS-120035 Link Enhancement Considerations - RWS-120035 Intra-RAT cooperation / Inter-RAT cooperation - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050