DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dhjl96/the_b_side_of_lte) has announced the addition of the "The B Side of LTE - when your A Game just isn't good enough" report to their offering.
With Release 10 finalized and much of the work already started on Release 11, the 3GPP has shifted its focus to what lies beyond LTE-Advanced (LTEA).
In June, the 3GPP RAN Working Group held a workshop in Ljubljana, Slovenia to discuss the future of LTE. During this workshop vendors and operators had the opportunity to present their vision for Release 12 and beyond with Release 12 not expected to be finalized until the 2014 timeframe.
Add another 18 to 24 months for product development, followed by rigorous testing, it becomes evident that the concepts that we discuss in this issue of Signals Ahead will not see the light of day until at least 2015, if not later. In at least one case, we hope we live long enough to see the technology commercially deployed and widely available.
For the moment, all of the proposed features are still under consideration with our expectation that some of the initial decisions regarding the contents of release 12 made at the forthcoming 3GPP RAN meeting in September. Nonetheless, it is still possible to take a peek at some of the proposed features, which we can separate into several distinct buckets.
- More effective use of a highly dense small cell network within a macro network
- Improvements and enhancements for previously-introduced features
- HSPA+ improvements, including closer coordination with LTE
- Higher frequencies and higher modulation schemes
- Tighter integration of LTE network optimization capabilities, including interference management, smartphone signaling and synergies with Wi-Fi
- Device to device discovery and communication
Of all of these proposed features, there seems to be the most interest in small cells. In summary, while Release 10 introduces the concept of HetNet, Release 12 takes the relationships between the macro network and the small cell network to another level altogether. Specific ideas being floated about include the use of Dynamic TDD and a lean carrier, which greatly enhances the ability to deploy a highly-dense concentration of small cells without the interference and control channel overhead inefficiencies that would otherwise exist.
If nothing else, the use of Dynamic TDD suggests that the market opportunity for LTE-TDD extends well beyond a few operators. Optimization is also a hot topic and it comes in many different flavors. Networks might be able to leverage more information about the devices, including the exact location of the device (geo location) and its ground speed in the network, and the devices' historical behavioral patterns.
In effect, the network could potentially predict the future requirements of the device based on how it behaved in the past while the device could become a true smartphone and optimize how it requested network resources based on the information it had about network loading.
HSPA+ may seem prehistoric by 2015, but that isn't preventing the standards body from continuing to advance its capabilities, including support for HetNet-like features, multi-flow, higher voice capacity, and greater synergy with the LTE network. Think dual carrier based on both HSPA+ and LTE. Speaking of synergy, Wi-Fi continues to shine and it is evident that operators are interested in further enhancing its capabilities. As the Wi-Fi network shares more information about itself to the LTE network, the macro network will be able to make more intelligent decisions regarding how it moves devices and traffic between the two networks. And if that wasn't enough, imagine a world in which devices discovered and communicated with each other - all while only requiring minimal support from and virtually no interaction with the macro network. All this and more in this issue of Signals Ahead.
Key Topics Covered:
- Table of Contents
- Maximizing the Use of Small Cells
- Higher Order MIMO and Modulation Schemes, and 3D Beamforming
- Optimization - SON, Smartphones, etc
- Machine Type Communication
- Device to Device Discovery and Communication
- Other
- Final Thoughts
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dhjl96/the_b_side_of_lte