Small Cells 'Terminology' and 'Comparison'

Here is AT&T's attempt in comparing the small cells. The above comparison is probably based on the assumption that LTE Small cells are not yet widely available. Once they are, then LTE can be put in for most columns in the Technology part.

See also:

• Small Cells: Comparison and Deployment Scenarios - NSN

Deploying Femtocells in Private Aircraft and Less Conventional Settings

Deploying Femtocells in Private Aircraft and Less Conventional Settings from Zahid Ghadialy

Future mobile technology with Graphene

Some days back I attended an interesting talk where the speaker showed how Graphene will revolutionise the future mobile devices. Here is what Graphene is:



Another version:



A concept phone video from Samsung



And a Nokia demo from the last MWC that uses Graphene as a sensor and also opens the possibility of using other gestures except for touch

Four Options for Traffic Offloading

Data v/s Signalling Traffic in Dongles and Phones

From a presentation by Peter Zidar in the Small Cells Global Congress 2012.

The above picture shows that even though the amount data traffic carried by dongles is much more than the amount of traffic carried by the mobile phones, the amount of signalling is far higher from the mobiles than that of dongles. This is mainly because the mobiles need to conserve the battery power and for this reason they disconnect from the network as soon as there is no need for exchange of data. Remember the Fast Dormancy issue in the smartphones? If not see this post.

Related posts:

• On Signalling Storm...
• A Twitter discussion on 'Data Tsunami' myth
• M2M and the 'Big Data'
• Understanding smartphone traffic

IMS Whitepapers from Spirent

Couple of old but interesting whitepapers from Spirent available, in case you are interesting in IMS. Available to download from here (registration required)

Related blog posts:

• IMS Release 10 Tutorial
• ETSI INT IMS/EPC Interoperability Standardisation: Motivation, Roadmap & First Results
• UICC and ISIM (IMS SIM)

2 Presentations on Mobile technology Security

Present and future Standards for mobile internet and smart phone information security from Zahid Ghadialy

Other related posts:

• Evolution of 3GPP Security
• 'Mapped Security' Concept in LTE
• 3GPP LTE Security Aspects
• New Security Algorithms in Release-11
• 6th ETSI Security Workshop

Spectrum auction results from The Netherlands

The result of the auction: 

	800	900	1800	2100	1900	2600
KPN	2x10	2x10	2x20	2x5		30
Vodafone	2x10	2x10	2x20	2x5
T-Mobile		2x15	2x30		4,9+9,7	25
Tele2	2x10

The total price of the auction:

• Vodafone 1,380,800,000 euro (1.381 billion)
• KPN 1,351,852,000 euros (1.352 billion)
• T-Mobile 910,681,000 euro (910.8 million)
• Tele2 euro 160,813,000 (160.8 million)

After the auction is the distribution of the main bands is as follows:

	800	900 no	900 new	1800 no	1800 new	2100 no	2100 new	2600
KPN	2x10	2x12,4	2x10	2x18,4	2x20	2x15	2x20	2x10
Vodafone	2x10	2x12,4	2x10	2x4,8	2x20	2x15	2x20	2x10
T-Mobile		2x10	2x15	2x30,6	2x30	2x20	2x20	2x5
Tele2	2x10	-	-	-	-	-	-	2x20
TO		-	-	-	-	-	-	2x20

Sources:

• Dutch multiband spectrum auction ends with four winners
• Veiling eindigt met vier winnaars, Tele2 nieuwkomer

LTE Rollouts planned:
Vodafone - Summer 2013
KPN - February 2013

Added 15/12/12:11.48

You can also see it visually as in the slide below:

Half Duplex Operation (HD-FDD) in LTE

It was interesting to hear the other day that there is an option for HD-FDD but it is still undergoing investigation and not standardised yet. From what I hear, operators are showing an interest and we may see it coming to an operator near us in the next couple of years.

Complete presentation below:

Half Duplex Operation in Multimode/Multiband/MIMO-capable Handsets from Zahid Ghadialy

The advantages are obvious but probably the only reason this was not standardised actively is probably because then peak rates often quoted when promoting technology will be halved. The economy of scale is also important and we may not see this becoming popular unless many operators decide together to push for this.

Other posts of interest:

• Quick Introduction to LTE-Advanced
• Quick update on 3GPP Release-12 progress
• TD-LTE in China: Progress and Plan

"Small Cells" - An introduction for beginners

A good starting point for beginners on Small Cells:

 

Related links:

• Small Cells: Comparison and Deployment Scenarios
• Whats inside a Picocell?
• Building the World’s Largest Residential Small-Cell network
• ‘Small Cells’ and the City
• ‘Proximity Marketing’ and ‘Location Based Services’ (LBS) using ‘Small Cells’
• Radio Challenges and Opportunities for Large Scale Small Cell Deployments