Devices may require support for over 40 RF Bands to be used universally

Interesting picture from Qualcomm presentation in 4G World that shows that for Universal use, a device may have to support over 40 RF bands (which may not be physically possible and may also be overly expensive)

Related posts:

• A global analysis of LTE spectrum requirements and business models
• LTE Spectrum Strategies and Forecasts to 2016
• Global survey of the Status of LTE Ecosystem

Ericsson Video: Networked Society 'On the Brink'

In On The Brink we discuss the past, present and future of connectivity with a mix of people including David Rowan, chief editor of Wired UK; Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr; and Eric Wahlforss, the co-founder of Soundcloud. Each of the interviewees discusses the emerging opportunities being enabled by technology as we enter the Networked Society. Concepts such as borderless opportunities and creativity, new open business models, and today's 'dumb society' are brought up and discussed.

Three quick 3GPP Videos

Balazs Bertenyi, Dealing with the data explosion: Speaking about how 3GPP manages Releases and giving details of some of the key LTE features and some new work on the horizon.

Andrew Howell, GERAN and LTE Interworking: Andrew Howell, 3GPP GERAN Chairman, gives some background on the work of the GSM/EDGE RAN groups, including GELTE and the impact of machine type communications over legacy networks in the LTE age.


See also my earlier post on GELTE here.

Atle Monrad is Chairman of the 3GPP Core Network and Terminals group. In this short film, he explains the role of the protocol groups and gives a snap shot of the latest priorities for his group.

If you want to learn more about 3GPP, see earlier blog post here.

Femto as a Service (FaaS)

The following is from a recent Small Cells conference, presented by Colt Telecom.

Femtocell service prototyping

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

I wanted to highlight the Femto as a Service (FaaS) concept as I think that this may be the way forward in future. Since multiple people have phones and devices from multiple operators and it would not be possible to have Femtocells from different operators, this may be an easy solution.

I am not exactly sure about what Spectrum would be used but I guess a better case could also have been that the Fixed operator has its own spectrum that it can use and a single Femto would allow any operator's device to connect. The Femto Core can route the call to the correct mobile operator so there would be no need for multiple femtos in a house.

RRC Signalling in Rel-10 for MDT

Last year I wrote about Minimization of Drive Testing (MDT) and mentioned about the possibility of enhancements. Now looking at the new RRC specs I can see a new message LoggedMeasurementsConfiguration has been added,

When the UE is in RRC_CONNECTED mode, this message can be sent and the UE be informed about the measurements to be performed. The message contents are as follows:

LoggedMeasurementConfiguration-r10 ::= SEQUENCE {

criticalExtensions CHOICE {

c1 CHOICE {

loggedMeasurementConfiguration-r10 LoggedMeasurementConfiguration-r10-IEs,

spare3 NULL, spare2 NULL, spare1 NULL

},

criticalExtensionsFuture SEQUENCE {}

}

}

LoggedMeasurementConfiguration-r10-IEs ::= SEQUENCE {

traceReference-r10 TraceReference-r10,

traceRecordingSessionRef-r10 OCTET STRING (SIZE (2)),

tce-Id-r10 OCTET STRING (SIZE (1)),

absoluteTimeInfo-r10 AbsoluteTimeInfo-r10,

areaConfiguration-r10 AreaConfiguration-r10 OPTIONAL, -- Need OR

loggingDuration-r10 LoggingDuration-r10,

loggingInterval-r10 LoggingInterval-r10,

nonCriticalExtension SEQUENCE {} OPTIONAL -- Need OP

}

Once the UE has done the measurements, it can inform the network in one of the following messages, RRCConnectionSetupComplete, RRCConnectionReestablishmentComplete, RRCConnectionReconfigurationComplete and UEInformationResponse that it has the required information available. This is done by including the following new Enum:

logMeasAvailable-r10 ENUMERATED {true} OPTIONAL,

Finally, the network can request the logged Measurements information in the UE Information Request Message. The new fields for that are:


UEInformationRequest-v1020-IEs ::= SEQUENCE {
logMeasReportReq-r10 ENUMERATED {true} OPTIONAL,
nonCriticalExtension SEQUENCE {} OPTIONAL
}

The UE would send the following information in the response message:

LogMeasInfo-r10 ::= SEQUENCE {
locationInfo-r10 LocationInfo-r10 OPTIONAL,
relativeTimeStamp-r10 INTEGER (0..7200),
servCellIdentity-r10 CellGlobalIdEUTRA,
measResultServCell-r10 SEQUENCE {
rsrpResult-r10 RSRP-Range,
rsrqResult-r10 RSRQ-Range
},
measResultNeighCells-r10 SEQUENCE {
measResultListEUTRA-r10 MeasResultList2EUTRA-r9 OPTIONAL,
measResultListUTRA-r10 MeasResultList2UTRA-r9 OPTIONAL,
measResultListGERAN-r10 MeasResultList2GERAN-r10 OPTIONAL,
measResultListCDMA2000-r10 MeasResultList2CDMA2000-r9 OPTIONAL
} OPTIONAL,
...
}


MeasResultList2GERAN-r10 ::= SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxCellListGERAN)) OF MeasResultListGERAN


LocationInfo-r10 ::= SEQUENCE {
locationCoordinates-r10 CHOICE {
ellipsoid-Point-r10 OCTET STRING,
ellipsoidPointWithAltitude-r10 OCTET STRING,
...
},
horizontalVelocity-r10 OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
gnss-TOD-msec-r10 OCTET STRING OPTIONAL,
...
}

Phones with Flexible Screens in 2012

From PC World:

Samsung Electronics said Friday that it is aiming to launch mobile phones with flexible displays next year, with tablets and other portable devices to have these displays soon after.

The company said it was aiming to follow on the success of its Galaxy S II smartphone, which has now sold 10 million units in five months.

The comments came as the company discussed its earnings for the three-month period through September. Samsung said its overall profit fell 23 percent from a year ago to 3.44 trillion Korean won (US$3.1 billion), dragged down by its chip and display operations, but operating profit at its mobile unit more than doubled in the period.

"The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part," said spokesman Robert Yi during an earnings call. "The application probably will start from the handset side."

Yi said tablets and other mobile devices with flexible displays would follow.

Samsung has shown flexible OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays inside rigid cases that kept the screens curved. The technology has material within each pixel that generates light, making it perhaps more suitable for flexible screens than LCDs, which would require both a flexible screen and a backlight.

This is a Video from CES 2011 in January:

I like this concept of bendy phones. The following Nokia video shows how this could really be useful.

Toshiba shows something similar at SID 2010.

News via WebProNews.

'Twisted Radio Waves': Could they be the way out of Spectrum Crunch?

A recent infograph from PCMag.com, summarises the Spectrum Crunch that we may be facing soon. Though in reality its not as bad as it may seem initially, we still have to find a way out of this. Carrier Aggregation can only help to a certain extent as we still need spectrum to do the aggregation.

The following is from a recent article in discover magazine:

Italian astrophysicist Fabrizio Tamburini says a solution may lie in making better use of the frequencies already in use. In a recent paper, he demonstrated a potential way to squeeze 100 times more bandwidth out of existing frequencies.

The idea is to twist radio waves like corkscrews and create multiple subfrequencies, distinguished by their degree of twistedness. Each subchannel carries discrete data sets. “You can tune the wave with a given frequency as you normally do, but there is also a fingerprint left by the twist,” Tamburini says. He and Swedish colleague Bo Thidé hit upon the approach while studying waves warped by the immense gravity of black holes. This past June, the scientists set up a custom dish in Venice and successfully broadcast video encoded in both twisted and normal radio waves across St. Mark’s Basin. (Note this type of wave-twisting is fundamentally different from the better-known circular polarization of light.)

The next step is to design small, cheap smartphone antennas that can transmit and receive the warped signals. If the industry’s appetite for bandwidth is any indication, it may not be long before twisted-radio technology shows up in your new gadgets.

If you are a Physics buff, you can check the paper out here.

The picture above is from Wikipedia section on Light orbital angular momentum.

Femtocell Backhaul Options

Any others?

There is also this interesting presentation from Maravedis on Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) backhaul, embedded below:

Maravedis@4Gworld, Backhaul summit, NLOS session

View more presentations from Elias Aravantinos

New 4G Americas whitepaper on HSPA evolution in 3GPP standards

Some forecasts put HSPA at over 3.5 billion subscribers by the end of 2016. Operators with HSPA and LTE infrastructure and users with HSPA and LTE multi-mode devices will be commonplace. There are 412 commercial deployments of HSPA in 157 countries, including 165 HSPA+ networks. Thus, with the continued deployment of LTE throughout the world, and the existing ubiquitous coverage of HSPA in the world, HSPA+ will continue to be enhanced through the 3GPP standards process to provide a seamless solution for operators as they upgrade their networks. While LTE, with 33 commercial deployments to date and over 250 commitments worldwide, will be the mobile broadband next generation technology of choice for HSPA, EV-DO, WiMAX and new wireless operators, HSPA will continue to be a pivotal technology in providing mobile broadband to subscribers.

The white paper explains that as 3GPP specifications evolve, their advanced features help to further the capabilities of today’s modern mobile broadband networks. With each release there have been improvements such as better cell edge performance, increased system efficiencies, higher peak data rates and an overall improved end-user experience. 3GPP feature evolution from Rel-7 to Rel-10 has pushed possible HSPA peak data rates from 14 Mbps to 168 Mbps. Continued enhancements in 3GPP Rel-11 will again double this capability to a possible peak data rate of 336 Mbps:

• Rel-7: 64QAM or 2X2 MIMO => 21 or 28 Mbps
• Rel-8: DC + 64QAM or 2X2 MIMO + 64QAM => 42 Mbps
• Rel-9: DC + 2X2 MIMO + 64QAM => 84 Mbps
• Rel-10: 4C + 2X2 MIMO + 64QAM => 168 Mbps
• Rel-11: (8C or 4X4 MIMO) + 64QAM => 336 Mbps

“If operators are able to gain new additional harmonized spectrum from governments, they will no doubt deploy LTE, However, it is clear that HSPA+ technology is still exceptionally strong and will continue to provide operators with the capability to meet the exploding data usage demands of their customers in existing spectrum holdings,” Pearson said.

The paper is embedded as follows:

The Evolution of HSPA

View more documents from All About 4G

This paper and other similar papers are available to download from the 3G4G website here.

Donor eNB (DeNB) and Relay Node (RN)

Extracted from 3GPP 36.300:

The eNB hosts the following functions:

- Functions for Radio Resource Management: Radio Bearer Control, Radio Admission Control, Connection Mobility Control, Dynamic allocation of resources to UEs in both uplink and downlink (scheduling);

- IP header compression and encryption of user data stream;

- Selection of an MME at UE attachment when no routing to an MME can be determined from the information provided by the UE;

- Routing of User Plane data towards Serving Gateway;

- Scheduling and transmission of paging messages (originated from the MME);

- Scheduling and transmission of broadcast information (originated from the MME or O&M);

- Measurement and measurement reporting configuration for mobility and scheduling;

- Scheduling and transmission of PWS (which includes ETWS and CMAS) messages (originated from the MME);

- CSG handling;

- Transport level packet marking in the uplink.

The DeNB hosts the following functions in addition to the eNB functions:

- S1/X2 proxy functionality for supporting RNs;

- S11 termination and S-GW/P-GW functionality for supporting RNs.

E-UTRAN supports relaying by having a Relay Node (RN) wirelessly connect to an eNB serving the RN, called Donor eNB (DeNB), via a modified version of the E-UTRA radio interface, the modified version being called the Un interface. The RN supports the eNB functionality meaning it terminates the radio protocols of the E-UTRA radio interface, and the S1 and X2 interfaces. From a specification point of view, functionality defined for eNBs, e.g. RNL and TNL, also applies to RNs unless explicitly specified. RNs do not support NNSF. In addition to the eNB functionality, the RN also supports a subset of the UE functionality, e.g. physical layer, layer-2, RRC, and NAS functionality, in order to wirelessly connect to the DeNB.

The architecture for supporting RNs is shown in Figure 4.7.2-1. The RN terminates the S1, X2 and Un interfaces. The DeNB provides S1 and X2 proxy functionality between the RN and other network nodes (other eNBs, MMEs and S GWs). The S1 and X2 proxy functionality includes passing UE-dedicated S1 and X2 signalling messages as well as GTP data packets between the S1 and X2 interfaces associated with the RN and the S1 and X2 interfaces associated with other network nodes. Due to the proxy functionality, the DeNB appears as an MME (for S1-MME), an eNB (for X2) and an S-GW (for S1-U) to the RN.

For more details see - 3GPP TS 36.300 : Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) and Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN); Overall description; Stage 2 (Release 10)