India: TRAI Releases Consultation Paper on IMT-Advanced

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released a consultation paper on IMT- Advanced Mobile Wireless Broadband Services. International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced) systems offers higher bandwidth, higher data rate, lower authentication load, and will support higher level of user-level customization.

The key issues raised in the consultation paper are suitable spectrum bands, block size of spectrum to be auctioned, maximum spectrum permitted to bidder, eligibility criteria for bidding, rollout obligations, spectrum usage charges, QoS parameters, security issues and other related issues.

Written comments on the issues raised in this consultation paper are invited from the stakeholders by 20th September, 2011 and counter-comments on the comments by 27th September, 2011.

3GPP LTE Advanced (based on 3GPP release 10) and IEEE 802.16m WirelessMAN Advanced have been accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced technology by ITU.

IMT and IMT-Advanced has identified 450 MHz, 585–806 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 1900 MHz, 2,1 GHz, 2.3-2.4GHz, 2.5-2.69 GHz, 3.3-3.4 GHz and 3.4–3.6 GHz bands for mobile broadband services.

In India, 800 MHz and 900 MHz spectrum bands are presently being used for 2G mobile services. Though, TRAI has recommended to reframe it and allocate for the IMT services. At present spectrum in these bands is not available. For reframing these bands 1900 MHz bands & 1800 MHz bands can be allocated when available.

Spectrum has been auctioned in the blocks of 2x5MHz in the 2.1GHz band for 3G services. If additional spectrum is available in the 2100 MHz band, it will be utilized for 3G services only.

In this scenarios, following spectrum bands are only available for future technologies in India :

- 700 MHz band (698-806 MHz)

- 2010-2025 MHz band

- 2.3-2.4 GHz band

- 2.5-2.69 GHz band

- 3.4-3.6 GHz band

The 700 MHz (698-806 MHz) spectrum band is considered the most important band for broadband deployment. It is suitable from the point of both capacity and coverage. TRAI has recommended that 698-806 MHz be earmarked only for IMT applications.

2.3-2.4 GHz Band has been allocated for IMT applications including BWA. Out of the total 100 MHz spectrum, 40 MHz has been allocated for BWA services. As per TRAI, remaining 60 MHz of spectrum in this band (currently with Government agencies and captive users) needs to be reframed in a short span of time.

source: LteWorld

LTE-Advanced Training

3GPP Release 9 expands the functionality of Release 8 as well as laying solid foundations for LTE-Advanced. 3GPP proposed LTE Release 10 & beyond (LTE-Advanced) as a candidate for IMT-Advanced which has been accepted by ITU. The new capabilities of LTE-Advanced is envisaged to handle a wide range of supported data rates with target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility. In comparison to LTE, LTE-Advanced is wider than approximately 70 MHz in DL and 40 MHz in UL.

Who Should Attend
Telecom developers, testers, managers and operational
engineers involved in LTE & LTE-Advanced technologies.

Objective
After completing this course, the audience will be able to:
Understand history & overview of LTE-Advanced
Define LTE-Advanced Requirements
Explain LTE-Advanced Features
Describe LTE-Advanced Air Interface Enhancements
Explain LTE-Advanced Procedures


Course Contents

LTE-Advanced Overview
• History & Evolution
• Need of LTE-Advanced
• High Level Requirements
• LTE-Advanced Spectrum Allocation
• Overview of LTE-Advanced Features

Network Architecture Enhancements
• LTE R8/R9 Architecture
• HeNB Evolutions – LIPA/SIPTO
• Extended H(e)NB Features
• Relays for LTE
• Self-Organizing Networks (SON) Evolutions
• Network-Based Positioning

E-UTRA Evolutions
• Carrier Aggregation
• Enhanced Downlink Multiple Antenna Transmission
• Uplink Multiple Antenna Transmission
• LTE Spectrum Enhancements
• Latency Reductions

Operations & Deployments
• HeNB Mobility Enhancements
• Attach & Bearer Setup in LTE-Advanced
• Mobility in LTE-Advanced
• LTE-Advanced Interworking
• Migration to LTE-Advanced

Course content details are available in NgnGuru Training Catalog. For more information please send us a message or send an email to support@ngnguru.com.

Introduction of LTE-Advanced Signal Generation and Analysis

4G Mobile Broadband Evolution: 3GPP Release 10 and Beyond - HSPA+, SAE/LTE and LTE-Advanced

4G Americas white paper provides detailed information on the status of IMT-Advanced, on 3GPP Rel-10 including HSPA+ enhancements and the introduction of LTE-Advanced, and the planning for Rel-11 and beyond.

Additional information on Rel-9 is included in Appendix B and includes a complete update to Section 6 of the 3G Americas white paper, 3GPP Mobile Broadband Innovation path to 4G: Release 9, Release 10 and Beyond-HSPA+, LTE/SAE and LTE-Advanced, which was published in February 2010 (and therefore did not contain some additional changes to the standards before their publication in March 2010). This paper has been prepared by a working group of 4G Americas' member companies and the material represents the combined efforts of many leading experts from 4G Americas’ membership.

Download white paper

Next generation LTE, LTE-Advanced or LTE Rel-10 is the next step in radio access technology

Whatever the name – next generation LTE, LTE-Advanced or LTE Rel-10 – the next step in LTE evolution allows operators to introduce new technologies without putting existing investments at risk.

LTE radio access technology is continuously evolving to meet the requirements of regulators, operators and users. The first fully commercial and operational 4G mobile broadband systems, currently being deployed, are based on the first release of LTE, 3GPP Rel-8, which was finalized in 2008. Rel-9, finalized at the end of 2009, added support for broadcast/multicast services, positioning services, and enhanced emergency call functionality, as well as enhancements for downlink dual-layer beam forming.

Authors : Stefan Parkvall, Anders Furuskär, Erik Dahlman

Download Ericsson Article

Carrier Aggregation for LTE-Advanced

To meet LTE-Advanced requirements, support of wider transmission bandwidths is required than the 20 MHz bandwidth specified in 3GPP Release 8/9. The preferred solution to this is carrier aggregation. It is of the most distinct features of 4G LTE-Advanced. Carrier aggregation allows expansion of effective bandwidth delivered to a user terminal through concurrent utilization of radio resources across multiple carriers. Multiple component carriers are aggregated to form a larger overall transmission bandwidth.

3GPP specifies carrier aggregation in LTE as following

• Rel-8/9 backward compatible carriers are the basic building blocks and to be supported
• Rel-10 signalling to support aggregation of up to 5 DL of component carriers and 5 UL of component carriers, irrespective of intra- or inter-band Carrier Aggregation (CA).
• Rel-10 to support both intra- and inter-band aggregation for both DL & UL in FDD
• Rel-10 to support inter-band aggregation with different signal reception timings across of component carriers of different bands for FDD DL
• UE-specific asymmetric number of component carriers in DL and UL
• Component carriers can have any of the bandwidths supported in Rel-8

Contiguous & non-contiguous carrier aggregation

Two or more component carriers can be aggregated to support wider transmission bandwidths up to 100 MHz. Spectrum deployment can be either contiguous or non-contiguous. Support for carrier aggregation feature requires enhancement to the 3GPP LTE Release 8 & 9 physical, MAC, and RRC protocol layers. To an LTE Release 8 terminal, each component carrier will appear as an LTE carrier, while an LTE-Advanced terminal can use the total aggregated bandwidth.

source: LteWorld

The Path to 4G: LTE and LTE-Advanced

Presented by James Seymour, Senior Director, Alcatel-Lucent.

The Path to 4G: LTE and LTE-Advanced

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy.