The testing process used Qualcomm'x X20 LTE modem, and Ericsson radios and LTE software and utilized 12 LTE streams on three 20 MHz channels of licensed Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) spectrum, alongside 4x4 MIMO and 256-QAM.
The 1.07 Gbps speed was achieved using only three 20MHz carriers of FDD (Frequency Division Duplex using separate transmit and receive frequencies) spectrum, achieving new levels of spectral efficiency for commercial networks and devices.
In the begining of August (to
be specific 2nd August, 2017), the same trio - Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm
Technologies had touched astounding 953Mbps
in a joint commercial network deployment in Boca Raton, Florida. The
demostration used network components from Verizon including a cell site,
hardware, software and backhaul; most advanced radio systems from Ericsson
(micro Radio 2205 for LAA) and Gigabit powered Qualcomm's Snapdragon X16 LTE
modem (based on Snapdragon 835 mobile platform).
Licensed Assisted Access
(LAA) helped Verizon to aggregate licensed and unlicensed spectrum. In addition to four channel carrier
aggregation, other technological advancements include:
·
4x4 MIMO
(multiple in, multiple out) which uses multiple antennae at the cell tower and
on consumers' devices to optimize data speeds
·
256 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) which
enables customer devices and the network to exchange information in large
amounts, delivering more bits of data in each transmission, significantly
enhancing data speeds
Multiple devices in the
market now support gigabit speeds, and LAA support can be put on Snapdragon 835
processors by a simple software update and this processor already powers many
of the flagship smartphones of 2017, including Sony XZ Premium, HTC U11,
Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, and Motorola Z2 Force Edition. Galaxy S8 is the
first commercial phone to support Gigabit LTE.
To add more unlicensed spectrum under Gigabit LTE, Verizon has collaborated with Federated Wireless to use CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) band 48 spectrum (3.5GHz).
Explaining the Gigabit LTE:
Gigabit LTE is the next
phase of LTE, and it’s termed so, as the connection speed peaks at 1 gigabit
per second. And technically it’s not 5G, however we could see services
providers advertise it as 5G. Many are using the term LTE Advanced Pro for the same, but Qualcomm is the main promoter of
the term Gigabit LTE.
Chinese equipment vendor
ZTE explains Gigabit LTE as pre-5G or key to 5G, paving the way for a
comprehensive evolution from 4G to 5G.
Road to LTE to Gigabit
LTE:
Consider your network as a highway of trucks and you can understand the basic theory of upgrade process of LTE. Say, that highway is jammed by huge number of cars and that is exactly as LTE network is over loaded by huge traffic from huge number of users. And your data speed gets crippled.
How to handle this situation, adding more lanes to highway. That's similar to carrier aggregation.
If highway is overloaded even after adding more lanes, so adding flyovers that stack on top of each other is an option. That's done by 4x4 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output). It opens up new levels to the carrier highway by using four radios and four antennae in cell towers and your phone, respectively, creating more channels to send and receive data on the same spectrum.
But even after CA and 4x4 MIMO, LTE network is still clogged, and usual speed is 30Mbps, which is too slow compared to 1Gbps.
Now consider the data as the packages sent by the trucks, so putting more packages in trucks means it does not increase the traffic. Here it comes 256QAM.
And the last one - Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) comes to save spectrum. A part of LTE-U (U stands for unlicensed), LAA is designed to aggregate licensed and non licensed spectrum. With LAA operators can achieve 1Gbps with 20MHz licensed spectrum (which could require 60MHz without LAA).
These four methods - aggregation to open more lanes, 4x4MIMO to stack them and 256QAM to squeeze more data into channels and lastly LAA (to deployed less amount of licensed spectrum) create a new platform for evolving LTE towards 5G.
But even after CA and 4x4 MIMO, LTE network is still clogged, and usual speed is 30Mbps, which is too slow compared to 1Gbps.
Now consider the data as the packages sent by the trucks, so putting more packages in trucks means it does not increase the traffic. Here it comes 256QAM.
And the last one - Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) comes to save spectrum. A part of LTE-U (U stands for unlicensed), LAA is designed to aggregate licensed and non licensed spectrum. With LAA operators can achieve 1Gbps with 20MHz licensed spectrum (which could require 60MHz without LAA).
These four methods - aggregation to open more lanes, 4x4MIMO to stack them and 256QAM to squeeze more data into channels and lastly LAA (to deployed less amount of licensed spectrum) create a new platform for evolving LTE towards 5G.
Devices supporting Gigabit
LTE:
1.
Qualcomm® X16 LTE
modem (incorporated in Snapdragon® 835 processor)
·
Peak Download
Speed 1 Gbps - LTE Category 16 (downlink) - 4x20 MHz carrier aggregation, Up to
256-QAM, Up to 4x4 MIMO on two carriers, Maximum 10 spatial streams
·
Peak Upload Speed
- 150 Mbps - LTE Category 13 (uplink), Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Upload+, 2x20 MHz
carrier aggregation, Up to 2x 75Mbps LTE streams, Up to 64-QAM, Uplink data
compression
·
VoLTE with SRVCC
(Single Radio Voice Call Continuity) to 3G and 2G, HD and Ultra HD Voice (EVS),
CSFB to 2G/3G
·
Support for LTE
FDD, LTE TDD including CBRS support, LTE-U, LAA, LTE Broadcast, WCDMA (DB-DC-HSDPA, DC-HSUPA), TD-SCDMA, CDMA
1x, EV-DO, GSM/EDGE
·
10nm LPE / 14nm
LPP processing
·
Already in use
with commercially available Snapdragon 835 SoC - Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, Sony
XZ Premium, HTC U11, Motorola Z2 Force Edition, Xiaomi Mix Evo, Xiaomi Mi 6, Essential’s One, OnePlus 5, OPPO Find 9 & others.
2.
Qualcomm® X20 LTE
modem – it’s an upgrade from X16 LTE modem, main differences are:
·
support for 5x
carrier aggregation (5x20MHz), allowing for more flexible use of available
licensed and unlicensed spectrum with over 1000 possible carrier aggregation
band combinations
·
increased number
of usable spatial streams from 10 to 12
·
10nm LPE processing
·
Support for Dual
SIM Dual Active VoLTE.
3.
Intel® XMM™ 7560
Modem
·
peak 1Gbps in the
downlink (Cat 16), and up to 225Mbps in the uplink (Cat 15)—meeting 3GPP
Release 13 requirements
·
supports 5x
carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM
·
Supports LAA
(Licensed Assisted Access), providing enhanced flexibility, and throughput.
·
Built on Intel’s
14nm process, consuming less power than Intel’s previous generation LTE
Advanced modem.
·
includes Intel’s
SMARTi 7 RF transceiver;
·
5x Carrier
Aggregation for downlink of four non-contiguous bands up to 100MHz,
·
support for upto
35 LTE bands simultaneously
·
powered by Intel®
XMM™ 7560 platform capable of up to 230 Carrier Aggregation combinations;
·
integrates 4 mode
GNSS with GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou positioning systems
·
Announced in
February, 2017
·
It is now part of
Intel’s LTE IOT Quick Deployment (LIQD) program, which collaborates with
Ericsson, AT&T, Nokia, Telefonica and 5Tonic.
·
No commercial
devices so far, mostly because of poor penetration of Intel into mobile
processor market.
4.
Samsung Exynos 9
series 8895 modem
·
10nm FinFET
Process
·
LTE Cat.16 5CA 1Gbps
(DL) / Cat.13 2CA 150Mbps (UL)
·
Used on Samsung
Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note8
Who are testing it?
Across the globe, several
operators in different countries have started Gigabit LTE trials. In US,
Verizon (with Qualcomm and Ericsson), Sprint (with Qualcomm and Motorola), T-Mobile
(Ericsson) are testing the pre-5G technology in various places. Global
operators are not sitting idle –
SingTel (ZTE) in Singapore,
China Mobile (Qualcomm,
Huawei, ZTE and Samsung) in China,
Telstra (Netgear,
Qualcomm, Ericsson) in Australia,
Proximus (Huawei,
Qualcomm) in Belgium,
China Unicom (Ericsson,
launched on August 23),
Telecom Italia Mobile
(Ericsson, Qualcomm and Asus smartphone) in Italy,
C&W Communications
(Ericsson) in Antigua and Barbuda,
Orange (Ericsson and Qualcomm)
in France has joined the list.
◊ Technology
partners are written in the brackets
Indian scenario of Gigabit
LTE:
As of now none of Indian
telecom operator has started any trial on Gigabit LTE. However Airtel and Jio
are conducting carrier aggregation between LTE-TDD and LTE-FDD in some cities,
though there is no timeline for commercial launch of LTE-CA.
However Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has announced the launch of 5G India Forum on 31st August, 2017. The 5G India Forum will serve as a strategic national initiative which will address key concerns of all stakeholders, seek inputs from private, public, small and large companies, to meet the challenge of making 5G a reality in India, as informed by COAI's DG Rajan Mathews.
As of now there is no seperate website for 5GIndiaForum. You can find the 5G India Forum on COAI's website : https://coai.com/index.php/5g_india_forum or you can directly mail to : contact@5Gforumindia.in
Updated on September 13th, 2017: Bharti Airtel announced strategic partnership with South Korea's SK Telecom to collaborate on an on-going basis to evolve standards for 5G, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Software-defined Networking (SDN) and Internet of Things (IoT), and jointly work towards building an enabling ecosystem for the introduction of these technologies in the Indian context.
Updated on September 13th, 2017: Bharti Airtel announced strategic partnership with South Korea's SK Telecom to collaborate on an on-going basis to evolve standards for 5G, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Software-defined Networking (SDN) and Internet of Things (IoT), and jointly work towards building an enabling ecosystem for the introduction of these technologies in the Indian context.
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