How Cyber-Attacks Can Impact M2M Infrastructure

An Interesting presentation from Deutsche Telekom in the Network Security Conference which highlights some of the issues faced by the M2M infrastructure. With 500 Billion devices being predicted, security will have to be stepped up for the M2M infrastructures to work as expected. Complete presentation embedded below:

How Cyber-Attacks Can Impact M2M from Zahid Ghadialy

eIMTA: Enhanced Interference Mitigation & Traffic Adaptation

eIMTA is one of the features being discussed in 3GPP Rel-12. The pictures above and below provide the details.

As can be seen, at the moment all the eNodeB's associated with a network has to transmit the same UL/DL pattern throughout out the system. With eIMTA, each eNodeB can decide the UL/DL pattern itself depending on the load.

The main challenge would be interference management while using this scheme.

See also, this slideshare presentation for details:

White Paper: Dynamic TDD for LTE-a (eIMTA) and 5G from Eiko Seidel

Stress Testing of LTE devices

Another interesting presentation from R&S LTE Summit 2013 embedded below:

Stressing a LTE device with Typical User Behaviors from Zahid Ghadialy

C-RAN Architecture and Challenges

I have blogged about Cloud RAN or C-RAN in the Metrocells blog here and am looking forward to more discussions on this topic in the SON conference later this year.


I came across this interesting presentation from Orange in the LTE World Summit this year where the authors have detailed the C-RAN architecture and also discussing the fronthaul challenges faced by C-RAN. The presentation is embedded as follows. Please feel free to add your comments with your opinions.

C-RAN architecture and fronthaul challenges from Zahid Ghadialy

2 Factor and 3 Factor Authentication (2FA / 3FA)

Found an interesting slide showing 2 Factor Authentication in picture from a presentation in LTE World Summit

You can also read more about this and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) on Wikipedia here.

M2M, Cellular and Small Cells

I have written a post on this topic in the Cisco Service Provide Mobility blog here. The article is embedded as follows:

Feel free to add any comments you may have on the blog post here.

Mobile Relay Nodes (MRN) in Rel-12

Interesting article in IEEE Comms Magazine (embedded below) about the Moving Relay Node (MRN). 3GPP has done a study on a similar topic available in 3GPP TR 36.836. To make the case for the MRN they provide a reference scenario of high speed train

The TGV Eurostar in Europe is 393 m long, moves at speed reaching 300 km/h. The Shinkansen in Japan has similar characteristics, with 480 m long, 300 km/h of commercial speed. The high speed train in China is 432 m long moving at speed reaching 350 km/h.

Due to fast moving and well shield carriage, the network in high speed train scenario faces severe Doppler frequency shift and high penetration loss, reduced handover success rate and increased power consumption of UEs.

To improve the coverage of the train deployment, access devices can be mounted on the high speed train, providing a wireless backhaul connection via the eNBs along the railway by outer antenna e.g. installed on top of the train, and wireless connectivity to the UEs inside carriages by inner antenna installed inside.

MRN is a good solution but when it has to operate alongside with many other technologies can pose challenges. The IEEE article summarises it as follows:

Furthermore, new challenges regarding interference management arise due to the use of MRNs. As the distance between an MRN and the vehicular UE served by it is very short, the MRN and the vehicular UE can communicate with each other using very low power. In addition, the VPL can further help to dampen the signal of the MRN access link that propagates out from the vehicle. Thus, compared to direct transmission, the use of MRNs generates less interference from the access link, for both downlink and uplink, to UE outside the vehicles. This is appreciated in a densely deployed urban scenario where link availabilities are usually dependent on interference rather than coverage. For the backhaul link, however, the problem becomes complicated, as interference is expected both between different MRN backhaul links, and between MRN backhaul links and macro UE. The use of predictor antennas can improve CSI accuracy to enable the use of advanced interference avoidance and cancellation schemes for the backhaul links. Nevertheless, whether enhancements on the current intercell interference coordination (ICIC) framework in LTE are needed to support the use of MRNs still requires further investigation.

I have been thinking of possible use of 8x8 MIMO, this can be one possible scenario where the network may use 8x8 or even 4x4. Anyway, the complete article is embedded below:

Making LTE fit for the IoT

Another presentation from the #FWIC2013. This presentation by Vodafone covers some of the areas where the LTE standards are being tweaked for making M2M work with them without issues.

Another area is the access barring that I have blogged about before here. This will become important when we have loads of devices trying to access the network at the same time.

The presentation is embedded below and you can also listen to the audio here.

Making LTE fit for the IoT - Vodafone from Zahid Ghadialy

Big Data and Vulnerability of Cellular Systems

I am sure most of you are aware of Big Data, if not watch this video on my old post here. Moray Rumney from Agilent recently gave a talk in #FWIC on how Big Data techniques can be used to exploit the vulnerabilities in a cellular system. Though the talk focussed on GSM and 3G, it is always a good intro. The presentation embedded below:

Collecting Big Data in an Increasingly Complex Mobile World from Zahid Ghadialy

You can also listen to the audio of his presentation here.

New RRC message in Rel-11: In-device coexistence indication

I have blogged about about IDC here and here. If the eNB is interested in knowing if the device is having an interference issue it can ask the UE to send this message in the RRC Conn Reconfiguration message. The UE would send the message if it has interference issues.

Inter-frequency handover is a good solution in case the UE is experiencing interference.

From the Rel-11 whitepaper posted last week here:

To assist the base station in selecting an appropriate solution, all necessary/available assistance information for both time and frequency domain solutions is sent together in the IDC indication. The IDC assistance information contains the list of carrier frequencies suffering from on-going interference and the direction of the interference. Additionally it may also contain time domain patterns or parameters to enable appropriate DRX configuration for time domain solutions on the serving LTE carrier frequency.

Note that the network is in the control of whether or not to activate this interference avoidance mechanism. The InDeviceCoexIndication message from the UE may only be sent if a measurement object for this frequency has been established. This is the case, when the RRCConnectionReconfiguration message from the eNB contains the information element idc-Config. The existence of this message declares that an InDeviceCoexIndication message may be sent. The IDC message indicates which frequencies of which technologies are interfered and gives assistance to possible time domain solutions. These comprise DRX assistance information and a list of IDC subframes, which indicate which HARQ processes E-UTRAN is requested to abstain from using. This information describes only proposals, it is completely up to the network to do the decisions.