Ericsson ; HPSA with MIMO

Ericsson: HSPA with MIMO

Posted by Sam Churchill on March 27th, 2008

Ericsson will conduct the world’s first demonstration of end-to-end HSPA Evolution technology with speeds of up to 42 Mbps at CTIA Wireless 2008, next week

HSPA Evolution can provide speeds of up to 42 Mbps, says Ericsson. It is currently being standardized by 3GPP in Releases 7 and 8 of the WCDMA specification (pdf). It achieves those speeds using higher order modulation (64QAM), combined with 2×2 MIMO antennas. The first step of the HSPA evolution will be introduced during 2008.

Ericsson says their 3G solutions offer a path for evolution. Their RBS 3000 family of Ericsson base stations has support for both HSPA Evolution and LTE the COFDM-based standard for “4G”. Ericsson’s recently launched next-generation radio base station family, the RBS 6000 series, is said to offer a enhanced multi-standard solution that supports GSM/EDGE, WCDMA/HSPA Evolution and LTE, all in a single package.

HSPA, the data network for 3G cellular companies like AT&T, has been commercially launched in 80 countries on all continents and in 185 networks. Ninety of these networks have been delivered by Ericsson.

Ericsson, which supplies communications services and manages networks that serve more than 185 million subscribers, is not a fan of Mobile WiMAX.

Ericsson believes the proper path for cellular networks is the voice-centric GSM/3G/LTE way. Data-centric Mobile WiMAX, using TDD, MIMO, beamforming and a host of other technologies does not conform to their world-view. Here is an Ericsson white paper comparing HSPA Vrs WiMAX.

LTE offers a choice of carrier bandwidths – from 1.4MHz to 20MHz – and supports both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) access (pdf).

Ten paired and four unpaired spectrum bands have so far been identified by 3GPP for LTE. Operators may introduce LTE in ‘new’ bands where it is easiest to deploy 10MHz or 20MHz carriers. That would likely be AWS band in the United States and Canada.

LTE is a telecom-centric project. It is not a standard yet, but it is expected to mold the new release 8 of the UMTS IP-based standard. LTE’s overriding characteristic is many telco layers and proprietary protocols.

Most observers believe WiMAX has a 2-3 year lead over LTE.

Meanwhile, NTT DoCoMo says it can do 250 Mbit/s on an LTE downlink. They will detail the full trial results at next week’s CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas.

DoCoMo has been testing LTE, which it calls Super 3G, since February in a field trial using a real wireless environment outside its research and development labs in Yokosuka, Japan. Unstrung says DoCoMo has set the most aggressive timeline for commercial deployment, which is planned for 2010.

source : dailywireless.org