Ericsson Hopes to Accelerate LTE Roll-out With Patent Deals

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/167202/ericsson_hopes_to_accelerate_lte_rollout_with_patent_deals.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl

Ericsson Hopes to Accelerate LTE Roll-out With Patent Deals

Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service 

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 9:10 AM PDT

Ericsson has signed its first license agreements for patents essential to next-generation mobile networks based on LTE (Long Term Evolution), it said on Tuesday.

The individual deals and their respective terms are confidential, so Ericsson won’t name the companies that are now working on products that will support LTE, according to Gustav Brismark, vice president for patent strategies and portfolio management at Ericsson. But both infrastructure and end-user devices are included, he said.

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Alan Spicer’s Note: Long Term Evolution, LTE, is reportedly the next generation of cellular broadband … both voice and Internet. It should be what will be called 4G. I think that most cellular companies will converge into this technology - where they are now different (EVDO/CDMA, GSM/UMTS) … and hopefully that will help end users and businesses to be able to choose their carrier and use whatever cellular compatible device they want to. Perhaps this will make more unlocked devices (like the current Ericsson W25 and W35 are unlocked) available and give everyone both equipment and carrier choices to make for themselves.

Speeds will no doubt increase on Internet with 4G … wether they actually let much of that get to end users remains to be seen. With current shared bandwidth and monthly 5 Gigabyte Limits on users … I’m a little leary as to if this will actually change things much? We’ll have to wait and see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) which will be introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8. Much of 3GPP Release 8 will focus on adopting 4G mobile communications technology, including an all-IP flat networking architecture.

Overview

LTE provides downlink peak rates of at least 100Mbit/s, 50 Mbit/s^[1] in the uplink and RAN (Radio Access Network) round-trip times of less than 10ms. LTE supports flexible carrier bandwidths, from 1.4MHz up to 20MHz as well as both FDD (Frequency Division Duplexing) and TDD (Time Division Duplex).

The goals for LTE include improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum and reformed spectrum opportunities,^[1] and better integration with other open standards. The architecture that will result from this work is called EPS (Evolved Packet System) and comprises E-UTRAN (Evolved UTRAN) on the access side and EPC (Evolved Packet Core) on the core side. EPC is also known as SAE (System Architecture Evolution) and E-UTRAN is also known as LTE.

The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD in the same platform, improved end-user experience and simple architecture resulting in low operating expenditures. LTE will also support seamless connection to existing networks such as GSM, cdmaOne, W-CDMA (UMTS), and CDMA2000.^[1]

Current State

While 3GPP Release 8 has yet to be ratified as a standard, much of the standard will be oriented around upgrading UMTS to 4G mobile communications technology, which is essentially a mobile broadband system with enhanced multimedia services built on top.

The standard includes:

• Peak download rates of 326.4 Mbit/s for 4×4 antennas, 172.8 Mbit/s for 2×2 antennas for every 20 MHz of spectrum. ^[2]
• Peak upload rates of 86.4 Mbit/s for every 20 MHz of spectrum.^[2]
• 5 different terminal classes have been defined from a voice centric class up to a high end terminal that supports the peak data rates. All terminals will be able to process 20 MHz bandwidth.
• At least 200 active users in every 5 MHz cell. (i.e., 200 active data clients)
• Sub-5ms latency for small IP packets
• Increased spectrum flexibility, with spectrum slices as small as 1.5 MHz (and as large as 20 MHz) supported (W-CDMA requires 5 MHz slices, leading to some problems with roll-outs of the technology in countries where 5 MHz is a commonly allocated amount of spectrum, and is frequently already in use with legacy standards such as 2G GSM and cdmaOne.) Limiting sizes to 5 MHz also limited the amount of bandwidth per handset
• Optimal cell size of 5 km, 30 km sizes with reasonable performance, and up to 100 km cell sizes supported with acceptable performance
• Co-existence with legacy standards (users can transparently start a call or transfer of data in an area using an LTE standard, and, should coverage be unavailable, continue the operation without any action on their part using GSM/GPRS or W-CDMA-based UMTS or even 3GPP2 networks such as cdmaOne or CDMA2000)
• Supports MBSFN (Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network). This feature can deliver services such as Mobile TV using the LTE infrastructure, and is a competitor for DVB-H-based TV broadcast.
• PU²RC as a practical solution for MU-MIMO has been adopted to use in 3GPP LTE standard. The detailed procedure for the general MU-MIMO operation is handed to the next release, e.g, LTE-Advanced, where further discussions will be held.

A large amount of the work is aimed at simplifying the architecture of the system, as it transits from the existing UMTS circuit + packet switching combined network, to an all-IP flat architecture system.

 Carrier adoption

Most carriers supporting GSM or HSUPA networks can be expected to upgrade their networks to LTE at some stage:

• Rogers Wireless has stated that they intend on initially launching their LTE network in Vancouver by February 2010, just in time for the Winter Olympics. ^[22]
• AT&T Mobility has stated that they intend on upgrading to LTE as their 4G technology in 2011, but will introduce HSUPA and HSPA+ as bridge standards. ^[23]
• TeliaSonera has started network built up in Stockholm and Oslo, and will follow up in Copenhagen when a license in Denmark has been bought/granted. The networks are still only for testing. There are no indication of a public live date.
• T-Mobile, Vodafone, France Télécom and Telecom Italia Mobile have also announced or talked publicly about their commitment to LTE.

Despite initial development of the rival UMB standard, which was designed as an upgrade path for CDMA networks, most operators of networks based upon the latter system have also announced their intent to migrate to LTE, resulting in discontinuation of UMB development.

• Verizon Wireless is presently testing its LTE network^[24] and selects Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent as Primary Network Vendors for LTE Network.
• Bell Mobility plans to start LTE deployment in 2009-2010^[25]
• Telus Mobility has announced that it will adopt LTE as its 4G wireless standard.^[26]
• MetroPCS recently announced that it would be using LTE for its upcoming 4G network.^[27]
• The newly formed China Telecom/Unicom^[28] and Japan’s KDDI^[29] have announced they have chosen LTE as their 4G network technology.
• In January 2009 TeliaSonera signed a contract for an LTE network with Huawei covering Oslo, Norway. Under the agreement, Huawei will provide an end-to-end LTE solution including LTE base stations, core network and OSS (Operating Support System).
• In January 2009 Ericsson and TeliaSonera announced the signing of a commercial LTE network. The roll-out of the 4G mobile broadband network will offer the highest data rates ever realized, with the best interactivity and quality. This network will cover Sweden’s capital Stockholm and the contract is Ericsson’s first for commercial deployment of LTE.

• In February 2009 at Mobile world congress, Aricent gave the demo of LTE eNodeB layer2 stacks.

• COX Communications has it’s first tower for wireless LTE network build-out. Wireless services should launch late 2009.

(More of this available at the link above on Wikipedia.)

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom is interested in technology developments and solutions for Satellite, Cellular, WiFi, and other wireless means that can be used for mobile communications on land and sea. ASMT serves a lot of marine customers but also serves businesses and individuals with fixed location and land-mobile applications as well.

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Alan Spicer Telecom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

http://www.wifiyacht.net

http://www.mobilebroadbandrouter.biz/

http://www.backupvoiceandinternet.com/

+1 954 683 3426

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