DL - 4G Americas

3 PLANS FOR RELEASE 9 AND RELEASE 10: EVOLVED HSPA (HSPA+) AND LTE/LTE‐
ADVANCED
3GPP Rel-9 focuses on enhancements to HSPA+ and LTE while Rel-10 focuses on the next generation
of LTE for the ITU’s IMT-Advanced requirements and both were developed nearly simultaneously by
3GPP standards working groups. Several milestones have been achieved by vendors in recent years for
both Rel-9 and Rel-10. Most significant was the final ratification by the ITU of LTE-Advanced (Rel-10) as
4G IMT-Advanced in November 2010.
HSPA+ was further enhanced in Rel-9 and was demonstrated at 56 Mbps featuring multi-carrier and
MIMO technologies in Beijing at P&T/Wireless & Networks Comm China in 2009. Vendors anticipate that
the steps in progress for HSPA+ will lead up to 168 Mbps peak theoretical downlink throughput speeds
and more than 20 Mbps uplink speeds in Rel-10 in coming years. At Mobile World Congress 2010, the
world’s first HSPA+ data call with a peak throughput of 112 Mbps was demonstrated by a leading vendor.
M2M Identity Modules (MIM) with Rel-9 M2M Form Factors (MFF) are being shipped around the world for
devices now embarking wireless in vehicles and harsh environments where humidity and vibration would
not allow the traditional 2FF and 3FF to perform to the requirements. These MFF MIM also include
additional software features to enable the expected life expectancy for such devices.
Vendors are already progressing beyond LTE with the next generation of technologies in Rel-10 for IMT-
Advanced, called LTE-Advanced, demonstrating that the evolution of LTE is secure and future-proof. In
October 2009, 3GPP submitted LTE-Advanced to the ITU as a proposed candidate IMT-Advanced
technology for which specifications could become available in 2011 through Rel-10. Detailed information
on the progress of LTE-Advanced is provided in Section 6 of this paper.
Milestones have already been achieved in the commercialization of Rel-10 and beyond. As early as
December 2008, researchers conducted the world’s first demonstration of Rel-10 LTE-Advanced
technology, breaking new ground with mobile broadband communications beyond LTE. A leading
infrastructure company’s researchers successfully demonstrated Relaying technology proposed for LTE-
Advanced in Germany. The demonstration illustrated how advances to Relaying technology could further
improve the quality and coverage consistency of a network at the cell edge – where users were furthest
from the mobile broadband base station. Relaying technology – which can also be integrated in normal
base station platforms – is cost-efficient and easy to deploy as it does not require additional backhaul.
The demonstration of LTE-Advanced indicated how operators could plan their LTE network investments
knowing that the already best-in-class LTE radio performance, including cell edge data rates, could be
further improved and that the technological development path for the next stage of LTE is secure and
future-proof.
Additionally, performance enhancements were achieved in the demonstration by combining an LTE
system supporting a 2X2 MIMO antenna system and a Relay station. The Relaying was operated inband,
which meant that the relay stations inserted in the network did not need an external data backhaul;
they were connected to the nearest base stations by using radio resources within the operating frequency
band of the base station itself. The improved cell coverage and system fairness, which means offering
higher user data rates for and fair treatment of users distant from the base station, will allow operators to
utilize existing LTE network infrastructure and still meet growing bandwidth demands. The LTE-Advanced
demonstration used an intelligent demo Relay node embedded in a test network forming a FDD in-band
self-backhauling solution for coverage enhancements. With this demonstration, the performance at the
cell edge could be increased up to 50 percent of the peak throughput.
www.4gamericas.org February 2011 Page 27