Hkan Eriksson
Senior Vice President, Head of Group Function
Technology and Chief Technology Officer
Time to get ready for LTE
For users, Long Term Evolution (LTE) the next
evolutionary technology step for todays mobile
systems is poised to offer a superior mobile
broadband experience, with higher speeds and
simplified technology. But to turn the LTE promise
into reality, the industry needs to address a number
of important issues to ensure the transition to the
new technology is as fast and smooth as possible,
as Hkan Eriksson, Ericssons Chief Technology
Officer describes.
In recent years, mobile operators have made sig-
nificant investments in radio access network base
station infrastructure, enabling faster access rates
for end-user applications over WCDMA and HSPA.
Access speeds have already increased from hun-
dreds of kilobits per second for WCDMA to sev-
eral megabits per second for HSPA. Now LTE has
already been proven to deliver downlink speeds
of up to 160 Mbit/s, and the standard allows for
speeds of 300 Mbit/s and potentially higher. Radio
Access Network (RAN) round-trip times (latency)
is less than 10 ms.
For consumers, LTE will significantly enhance the
mobile broadband experience as they will be able
to enjoy more performance-demanding applica-
tions like personal and interactive TV, video and
advanced location based services. It will support
a host of multimedia applications that benefit and
enrich peoples lives and the society as a whole,
all delivered over a broad range of devices any-
where, anytime and for everyone.
For operators, LTE offers spectrum flexibility,
seamless interoperability with existing technolo-
gies, along with cost-effective network roll-out
and management. LTE radio network products
will have a number of features that simplify the
building and management of next-generation net
works. For example, Ericssons Smart Simplicity
architecture supports advanced features like plug-
and-play, self-configuration and self- optimization
all of which simplify and reduce the cost of
network roll-out and management.
Industry converges around LTE
There is a well-defined, evolutionary roadmap for
2G/3G operators to implement the 3GPP standard
initiative, Evolved Packet Systems (EPS), which
combines LTE and Service Architecture Evolution
(SAE), to make this massive performance leap. EPS
offers a secure, stable and standardized technol-
ogy platform for evolving to fourth generation (4G)
mobile broadband. It is able to support multiple
spectrum bands in both Frequency Division Du-
plex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes
and makes use of other radio spectrum (includ-
ing TV bands) for future mobile communications.
Ericsson was the first company to demonstrate
LTE operating in both FDD and TDD modes on
the same base station platform, in January 2008.
By using the same platform for both paired and
unpaired spectrum, LTE provides large economies
of scale for operators.
What is more as a result of collaboration be-
tween 3GPP, 3GPP2 and IEEE, we have created a
roadmap for CDMA to evolve to LTE. Another sig-
nificant aspect is that LTE-TDD mode, also known
as TD-LTE provides a future-proof evolution path
for the 3GPP standard TD-SCDMA. This is the
first time we will have one single global standard,
which in turn will secure economies of scale and
simplify roaming.
The industrys faith in LTE is highlighted by its
selection by NGMN Ltd as the first technology that
meets the organizations criteria for next generation
mobile networks, as well as public commitments
from some of the worlds largest mobile operators
including China Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone, NTT
DoCoMo, AT&T and Telenor.
Opening up mobile broadband for all
With mobile broadband traffic levels growing
swiftly and steadily, the bandwidth bottleneck has
moved from the air interface to the upstream
links, creating demand for higher-bandwidth IP
connectivity through the radio access network
(RAN) infrastructure.
Ericssons mobile backhaul strategy combines
the ability to deliver high individual subscriber
throughput to deliver mobile broadband ser-
vices on any device, anywhere with statistical
aggregation gains. It also addresses total cost
of ownership, and provides practical circuit-to-
packet migration paths that build upon existing
infrastructure wherever possible. Our backhaul
solution delivers Ethernet and IP on optical, micro-
wave and routed platforms to fully support the
reliable delivery of advanced mobile services. Its
built-in scalability ensures the solution can easily
grow to accommodate new subscribers and
business opportunities.
In order to make LTE licensing as fair and reason-
able as possible, in April 2008 Ericsson announced
its role in a joint initiative with Alcatel-Lucent,
NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens
Networks and Sony Ericsson to enhance the pre-
dictability and transparency of IPR licensing costs
in future 3GPP LTE/SAE technology. This initiative
includes a commitment to an IPR licensing frame-
work that provides more predictable maximum
aggregate IPR costs for LTE technology and
enables early adoption of this technology into
products.
The already strong market pull for HSPA is creat-
ing a burgeoning mobile broadband ecosystem
of device makers, network vendors, application
developers and enterprises. With this ecosystem
in place, LTE modules will be embedded in many
devices, including notebooks, ultra-portables,
gaming devices and cameras.
Earlier this year, Ericsson unveiled the worlds
first commercially available LTE-capable platform
for mobile devices, the M700, which offers peak
data downlink link rates of 100 Mbit/s and uplink
rates of up to 50 Mbit/s. The first products based
on M700 will be data devices such as laptop
modems, USB modems for notebooks and other
small-form modems suitable for integration with
other handset platforms to create multi-mode
devices.
Since LTE supports hand-over and roaming to
existing mobile networks, all these devices can
have ubiquitous mobile broadband coverage from
day one.
LTE offers operators the flexibility to match their
network, spectrum and business objectives for
mobile broadband and multimedia services long
into the future. To get the most out of their evolu-
tion to LTE, however, operators and their partners
need to act now.