Friday 29 January 2010
HSDPA Code Tree
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Mobile Phone Batteries: Past, Present and Future
Monday 25 January 2010
LTE/EPS Security Starting point
Wednesday 20 January 2010
LG cementing its LTE handset leader position
LG has an impressive LTE track record: an LTE demo at Mobile World Congress 2008; the announcement of the world's first LTE chipset and modem prototype in November 2008; the first LTE-enabled mobile device Live Air Demo at Mobile World Congress 2009; the first FCC LTE Device certification built around LG's LTE chipset in June 2009; the first dual-mode LTE/eHRPD in-call handover in August 2009; and a 100 Mbps maximum throughput Live Demo at CES 2010.
3GPP Release8 June 2009 compliance, multiple band support (2.1 GHz Band1 or 700 MHz Band13), various system bandwidth, from 5 MHz to 20 MHz and max throughput with up to 100 Mbps downlink and 50 Mbps uplink, are among the main features supported by the dual-mode LTE/CDMA Vd13 device and LTE-only LD100U device.
In Las Vegas, LG executives recognized that the two devices recently unveiled are intended more to demonstrate their LTE development leadership and, likely, will not be launched as commercial devices. Although they didn't outline their exact plan, they disclosed that their own LTE modem will eventually be integrated into a netbook or notebook, meaning that a more integrated chipset solution will hit the market soon.
Known for its 2G and 3G handset line, LG relied on mature merchant chipset solutions such as Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson or Infineon chips, not LG technology. We can elaborate different scenarios to explain their new positioning as an LTE market driver. Gaining ground in all cellular technologies and capturing more than 10 percent of the total handset market as year-end 2009, leading them to third position worldwide, LG has decided to invest significantly into chipset development in order to become technology independent.
On top of the LTE modem, they will now introduce phones based on their own 2G/3G/4G intellectual properties to save cost and stay ahead. We could also speculate that LG wants to broaden their essential patents portfolio, driving 3GPP groups and initiatives to better compete with their current chip suppliers. In this case, once the LTE market matures and reaches a critical mass, LG will switch to third party players just as they have in the past. One more scenario has to be considered: following Nokia's early strategy, LG could license its LTE modem IP to partners that will manufacture the chipset solution and sell it back to them.
It's difficult to predict LG's long-term strategy in terms of chipset development at this point. The company has the scale to succeed, scale that small WiMAX players who recently announced parallel WiMAX/LTE roadmaps lack. In the new research report released by Maravedis in partnership with Reveal Wireless, entitled "WiMAX Wave2 Subscriber Station Chipset Vendors Competitive Analysis," we have identified the WiMAX chipset companies who have shifted to LTE by offering a flexible programmable base-band solution.
The LTE base-band chipset market is already crowded: incumbent manufacturers who ship in large volume (Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, and Nokia), new entrants who traditionally relied on merchant solutions (LG and Samsung Electronics), and newcomers who leverage their OFDM expertise, WiMAX chipset background, and WiMAX ecosystem experience (Altair, Comsys, Sandbridge, Sequans and Wavesat) are committed to playing a significant role in the LTE baseband landscape. With Mediatek, Infineon, Marvell, and likely giant Intel poised to enter the market eventually, the field will soon be comparable to the aisles of CES 2010... very packed.
Tuesday 19 January 2010
World Largest Operator helping transform China
Monday 18 January 2010
Top 10 paid iPhone apps
9. NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT £3.99 With 20 supercars and 18 tricky tracks to master, this title, currently reduced, is a winner.
Sunday 17 January 2010
Mobile Phones transforming Africa
The mobile phone is turning into Africa's silver bullet. Bone-rattling roads, inaccessible internet, unavailable banks, unaffordable teachers, unmet medical need – applications designed to bridge one or more of these gaps are beginning to transform the lives of millions of Africans, and Asians, often in a way that, rather than relying on international aid, promotes small-scale entrepreneurship.
While access to a fixed landline has remained static for a decade, access to a mobile phone in Africa has soared fivefold in the past five years. Here, in one of the poorest parts of the globe, nearly one in three people can make or receive a phone call. In Uganda, almost one in four has their own handset and far more can reach a "village phone", an early and successful microfinance initiative supported by the Grameen foundation.
One recent piece of research revealed how phone sharing, and the facility for phone charging, has been an engine of this small-business revolution. Particularly in rural areas, a small investment in a phone can first create a business opportunity, then maximise its reach by overcoming the possible limitations of real or technological illiteracy – because the phone operator can make sure the call gets through, and can cut off the call at exactly the right moment to avoid wasting any part of a unit. And what a difference a phone call can make.
Often the mere fact of being able to speak to someone too far away to meet with easily can be a transforming experience. For fishermen deciding which market is best for their catch, or what the market wants them to fish for, a phone call makes the difference between a good return on the right catch or having to throw away the profit, and the fish, from a wrong catch. For smallholders trying to decide when or where to sell, a single phone call can be an equally profitable experience.
But establishing market conditions is just the start. Uganda has pioneered cash transfers by phone through the innovative Me2U airtime sharing service, which allows a client to pay in cash where they are and transmit it by phone to family or a business associate hundreds of miles away. They receive a unique code that they can take to a local payment outlet to turn into cash.
But the market leaders are M-PESA, a mobile money system set up by Safaricom, in its turn an affiliate of Vodafone, in Kenya (although it operates in Uganda now too). Less than three years old, it has 7 million customers and, according to some sources, processes as much as 10% of Kenya's GDP.
At a recent International Telecommunications Union session, Nokia's Teppo Paavola pointed out that there are 4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts. The huge scope for providing financial services through mobile phones represented by that differential is a tempting prospect for the big players.
But, as one British contender, Masabi, has discovered, it is one thing to develop a secure mobile payment system like their Street Vendor - which works on old handsets and in most scripts – and quite another to get a deal with the international financial regulators that police cross-border cash flows.
Masabi has worked with another UK company, Kiwanja.net, that aims to help NGOs and other not-for-profit organisations use mobile technology.
Ken Banks, founder of Kiwanja.net (Kiwanja means "earth" in Swahili) has pioneered a two-way texting system called FrontlineSMS that allows mass texting from a single computer-based source to which individual subscribers can reply.
So for example, health workers attached to a hospital in Malawi can "talk" to their base to seek advice, pass on news of patients' progress or ask for drug supplies. The data can be centrally collected and managed. All that's needed is a mobile signal – far more available than an internet connection.
FrontlineSMS is a free download: the aim is not to tell users what to do, but to help them work out how to apply the technology to their own problem.
The only barrier to even greater mobile use, apart from international financial regulations, are the taxes levied by national governments that can make the cost prohibitive. According to one recent report, despite exponential growth in countries like Uganda there is growing evidence that what for millions is a life-changing technology risks leaving out the poorest.
Saturday 16 January 2010
Mobile Trends in 2020
Friday 15 January 2010
2.6 GHz LTE Spectrum Band Report
The licensing of the 2.6 GHz band will be critical to unlocking the benefits of global scale economies in the Mobile Broadband market, according to a new report* by US-based research firm Global View Partners in partnership with the GSMA. The research found that the 2.6 GHz spectrum, which has been identified globally by the ITU as the ‘3G extension band’, will be vital in satisfying the demand for greater capacity for Mobile Broadband and launching next-generation networks such as LTE, which will start to be deployed commercially around the world this year.
“There is clear evidence that the volume of data flowing over mobile networks is growing rapidly and is being accelerated by the popularity of smart phones and the growth in music and video downloads,” said Tom Phillips, Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer at the GSMA. “The report highlights that the 2.6 GHz band will allow operators to address rapidly increasing traffic volumes in an efficient and harmonised way. Recent licensing of this band in Hong Kong, Norway, Finland and Sweden, for example, has highlighted that there is more demand for paired (FDD) than unpaired spectrum (TDD) and that the ITU’s recommended Option 1** plan is the best structure to stimulate market growth in a technology-neutral and competitive environment.”
In Europe, measurable progress has been achieved towards the allocation of the 2.6 GHz frequency, as specified in the ITU Option 1 plan. There is widespread agreement at the member state and European Union level that this objective will best be fulfilled in a manner that is harmonised and coordinated across all countries in the region. The research suggests that leaving the band unstructured for auctions or with a diverse mix of non-harmonised FDD and TDD allocations should be avoided. Potential challenges include interference management, resulting reductions in usable bandwidth and loss of coverage in border regions, as well as higher costs and delayed equipment availability.
The research also points out that in many cases, the 2.6 GHz frequency will be the first opportunity for mobile operators to acquire 2x20 MHz of contiguous spectrum, enabling them to operate high-speed LTE services at optimum performance. LTE is the next-generation Mobile Broadband technology for both GSM and CDMA operators, and will leverage new and wider bandwidths to significantly increase data capacity in high demand zones such as dense urban areas. The 2.6 GHz spectrum is the ideal complement to the 700 MHz spectrum, also known as ‘digital dividend’, and will enable the most cost-effective nationwide coverage of Mobile Broadband across both rural and urban environments.
Governments in most Western European countries as well as in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and South Africa are planning to award 2.6 GHz frequencies within the next two years.
The Report is available HERE.
Thursday 14 January 2010
Temporary Identities in LTE/SAE - 2: RNTI's
RNTI or Radio Network Temporary Identifier(s) are used primarily by eNB Physical Layer for scrambling the coded bits in each of the code words to be transmitted on the physical channel. This scrambling process in PHY happens before modulation. There is a sequence followed for scrambling, calculation of which depends on the RNTI(UE specific for channels like PDSCH,PUSCH) and cell specific (for broadcast channels like PBCH). Details could be found in [2].
The following table lists different kinds of RNTI's:
Lets look at some of these in slightly more detail:
P-RNTI (Paging RNTI): To receive paging messages from E-UTRAN, UEs in idle mode monitor the PDCCH channel for P-RNTI value used to indicate paging. If the terminal detects a group identity used for paging (the P-RNTI) when it wakes up, it will process the corresponding downlink paging message transmitted on the PCH.
SI-RNTI (System Information RNTI): The presence of system information on DL-SCH in a subframe is indicated by the transmission of a corresponding PDCCH marked with a special System Information RNTI (SI-RNTI). Similar to the PDCCH providing the scheduling assignment for ‘ normal ’ DL-SCH transmission, this PDCCH also indicates the transport format and physical resource (set of resource blocks) used for the system-information transmission.
M-RNTI (MBMS RNTI): Used in Rel-9 for MCCH Information change notification.
RA-RNTI (Random Access RNTI): The RA-RNTI is used on the PDCCH when Random Access Response (RAR) messages are transmitted. It unambiguously identifies which time-frequency resource was utilized by the UE to transmit the Random Access preamble. If multiple UEs had collided by selecting the same signature in the same preamble time-frequency resource, they would each receive the RAR.
C-RNTI (Cell RNTI): The C-RNTI to be used by a given UE while it is in a particular cell. C-RNTI allocation and details are too complex to explain in the blog so please refer to Nomor newsletter here.
TC-RNTI: When the UE does not have allocated C-RNTI then Temporaru C-RNTI is used. A temporary identity, the TC-RNTI, used for further communication between the terminal and the network. If the communication is successful then TC-RNTI is promoted eventually to C-RNTI in the case of UE not having a C-RNTI.
SPS-C-RNTI (Semi-Persistent Scheduling C-RNTI): For the configuration or reconfiguration of a persistent schedule, RRC signalling indicates the resource allocation interval at which the radio resources are periodically assigned. Specific transmission resource allocations in the frequency domain, and transmission attributes such as the modulation and coding scheme, are signalled using the PDCCH. The actual transmission timing of the PDCCH messages is used as the reference timing to which the resource allocation interval applies. When the PDCCH is used to configure or reconfigure a persistent schedule, it is necessary to distinguish the scheduling messages which apply to a persistent schedule from those used for dynamic scheduling. For this purpose, a special identity is used, known as the Semi-Persistent Scheduling C-RNTI (SPS-C-RNTI), which for each UE is different from C-RNTI used for dynamic scheduling messages. - Source: LTE, The UMTS Long Term Evolution: From Theory to Practice By Stefania Sesia, Issam Toufik, Matthew Baker
TPC-PUCCH-RNTI (Transmit Power Control-Physical Uplink Control Channel-RNTI) and TPC-PUSCH-RNTI (Transmit Power Control-Physical Uplink Shared Channel-RNTI): The power-control message is directed to a group of terminals using an RNTI specific for that group. Each terminal can be allocated two power-control RNTIs, one for PUCCH power control and the other for PUSCH power control. Although the power control RNTIs are common to a group of terminals, each terminal is informed through RRC signaling which bit(s) in the DCI message it should follow.
The following table lists the values that are assigned to different RNTI's in MAC:
[1] 3GPP TS 36.321 - Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification
[2] 3GPP TS 36.211 - Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical Channels and Modulation