3GPP Standards

With all the focus on LTE, LTE-Advanced and now 5G, it is easy to forget that High Speed Packet Access (HSPA/HSPA+), based on 3G WCDMA, is still the dominant mobile broadband technology worldwide. In February 2014, the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) reported that all WCDMA operators had launched HSPA, with 547 networks providing access to… Read more

One of the major features of LTE-Advanced is Carrier Aggregation, which allows mobile network operators to combine a number of separate LTE carriers. This enables them to increase the peak user data rates and overall capacity of their networks and to exploit fragmented spectrum allocations. I introduced the fundamentals of Carrier Aggregation in a previous… Read more

One of the highlights of 3GPP Release 12 is the introduction of LTE Device-to-Device (D2D) discovery and communication. Release 12 is only the start, but ultimately D2D will create a host of new service opportunities, while also achieving significant performance and efficiency benefits in LTE networks. It does this by enabling mobile devices to discover… Read more

A few months ago I wrote a summary of facts and figures on HSPA+, LTE and LTE-Advanced, based on the 3GPP Release 11 standard. With Release 12 due to be finalised in the middle of 2014, I thought I would write about some of the developments in the pipeline in the 3GPP work programme. The expected… Read more

One of the tools in the LTE toolbox of radio features is Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas. MIMO enables radio systems to achieve significant performance gains by using multiple antennas at their transmitters and receivers. In my Facts and figures on HSPA+, LTE and LTE-Advanced I comment that LTE-Advanced uses base stations and mobile… Read more

I am often asked for facts and figures on current wireless technologies such as Evolved High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+), Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced, so I thought it would be worth capturing some of these in this blog post. There have been dramatic advances in both HSPA+ and LTE since their first arrival… Read more

Last week I was interviewed for a forthcoming report on mobile network sharing and it prompted me to catch up on the latest 3GPP developments in this area. As network sharing becomes widespread in the mobile industry, a range of new capabilities are under development in 3GPP. These will provide network operators with much greater… Read more

In the first few months of 2013 there have been signs that LTE Carrier Aggregation (CA) is coming to fruition, with a series of announcements of demonstrations, trials and launch plans by network operators and equipment manufacturers. Here are some examples: Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies and Sierra Wireless provided the first public demonstration of LTE Carrier Aggregation at Mobile… Read more

One of the major themes of 3GPP Release 12 (due for completion in 2014) is enhanced support for small cells in LTE. With mobile network traffic expected to increase dramatically over the coming years, the ability to reuse spectrum many times in dense usage areas will make small cells crucial. In a previous post on… Read more