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HUAWEI COMMUNICATE

SEP 2011

ISSUE 61

SEP 2011

ISSUE 61

Mobile Internet: The future of Internet

Weather the signaling storm

Grameenphone secures the future

Evolution and deployment of VoLTE

Germany: MBB on the fast track

Mobile broadband soaring high


2010 was a boom year for mobile broadband globally. Mobile broadband subscribers surpassed their fixed broadband counterparts, surging to nearly one billion. They are forecast to grow 10 times in the coming five years and, in the decade to come, increase 500-fold. Mobile broadband is an irreversible trend. As a major next-generation mobile broadband technology, LTE is being deployed at a faster pace in an increasingly mature ecosystem. 218 operators in 81 countries have committed to LTE, as confirmed by the GSA in its recent LTE evolution report. Since early 2010, LTE has been commercialized on an unprecedented scale. Vodafone Germany, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefnica Germany have announced their commercial LTE deployments. Singapores M1 rolled out the first commercial LTE-EPC network in Southeast Asia More encouragingly, diverse LTE devices are flooding the market, fuelling the development of mobile broadband applications. LTE speeds up the network, and more importantly, it revolutionizes the lifestyles and working patterns of its subscribers, bringing them incredibly rich applications and experience through HD video conferencing, HD VOD, shoot & transfer, to name but a few. Despite all the promises of LTE, operators are humbled by the challenges of GSM/UMTS/CDMA/LTE coexistence, network overlapping, and ever-increasing network costs. They have been desperately seeking an effective solution to harmonize different technologies, simplify network structure without compromising the diversity of services and technologies, and solve the cost conundrum to maximize asset value. The SingleRAN has come as a perfect solution. Based on Huaweis indepth understanding of mobile broadband, the SingleRAN helps operators tap into the potential of mobile broadband. Highlighting convergence, ecofriendliness, broadband and evolution, the solution realizes one network, one deployment, one team. Supportive of various network technologies and capable of evolution, it helps reduce TCO and improve O&M efficiency for business success. Since its official launch in 2009, it has been the common choice for world-leading operators like China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, TeliaSonera, and Vodafone. In 2011, mobile broadband is soaring high. Huawei will, as always, work with industry peers to promote mobile broadband. By helping operators build efficient, sustainable, and profitable mobile broadband networks, it will open up a highly potential market for operators, and bring people a wonderful service experience.

Sponsor: Huawei COMMUNICATE Editorial Board, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Consultants: Hu Houkun, Xu Zhijun, Xu Wenwei Yu Chengdong, Zhang Hongxi, Wang Tao Editor-in-Chief: Gao Xianrui (sally@huawei.com) Editors: Long Ji, Li Xuefeng, Zhu Wenli, Huang Zhuojian Yao Haifei, Xue Hua, Fan Ruijuan, Xu Ping Pan Tao, Chen Yuhong, Zhou Shumin Contributors: He Gang, Zhu Haobing, Cai Mengbo Lars Bondelind, Sun Runping, Shao Yang, Xu Yan Hao Guangming, Lv Xiaofeng, Yan Jun, Hu Kangyan Jiang Yihua, Zhu Jikui, Zhu Wenjie, Hao Bing E-mail: HWtech@huawei.com Tel: +86 755 28789348, 28789343 Fax: +86 755 28787923 Address: B1, Huawei Industrial Base, Bantian, Longgang, Shenzhen 518129, China Publication registration No.: Yue B No.10148
Copyright Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 2011. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. NO WARRANTY The contents of this document are for information purpose only, and provided as is. Except as required by applicable laws, no warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, are made in relation to contents of this document. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no case shall Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages, or lost profits, business, revenue, data, goodwill or anticipated savings arising out of or in connection with any use of this document.

Yu Chengdong Chief Strategy & Marketing Ofcer, Huawei

Whats inside:

P.11
News
01 Huawei launches worlds first LTE TDD multi-mode data card

P.34
Cover Story
11

Germany: MBB on the fast track


Leading mobile operators have all committed to building next-generation mobile networks, and LTE is recognized as the primary technology.
By Chen Shanshan & Zhu Jikui

02 Aircel successfully conducts worlds first GSM/UMTS/LTE TDD trial in India

Main Topic Experts Forum


03 18

Weather the signaling storm


High-performance smartphones with large screens are attracting increasing numbers of users and boosting operators profits, and yet they bring with them unprecedented signaling storms. By Chen Yang

Mobile Internet: The future of Internet


There is no question that the future of the Internet, at least over the next decade, lies in mobile. And this is something that is being embraced the world over, by equipment suppliers and operators, industry players and the general public. By Chen Jinqiao

21

Realizing the full potential of SingleRAN


By Bernhard Scholl

06

Expanding mobile broadband horizons with HSPA+ and LTE


By Alan Hadden

Interview
23

Grameenphone secures the future


By Ranajit S. Dam

Lets COMMUNICATE beyond technology and share understandings of the latest industry trends, successful operational cases, leading technologies and more. Based on in-depth analysis of the matters that lie close to your heart, we will help you stay on top in the competitive telecom industry.

P.18
26

P.06
43

Convergence in the EPC age


By Chen Jia

GL1800 Refarming: A cost-effective way to win in MBB


Spectral resources are not inexhaustible, a fact that is becoming increasingly obvious as demand for them keeps growing. This is requiring operators to conduct proper planning for and use these resources efficiently. By Chen Yifang

29

MBB: The cost conundrum


By Ranajit S. Dam

How to Operate
31

46
By Yin Chunlei

Exploring the cloudified BSS

Exploring subscriber data management for MBB


By Yu Qian

34

A closer look: IPv6 commercial deployment


By Qin Hao

Leading Edge
49

LTE-Advanced: The leading technology in the new MBB era


By Shi Yong

Solution
39

Maximizing MBB profitability with SingleRAN Evolution


By Li Chunlin

52

Evolution and deployment of VoLTE


By Chen Qunhui

News
Huawei launches worlds first LTE TDD multi-mode data card
The introduction of the Huawei E392 will bring super-fast Internet connectivity to users worldwide and accelerate the global development of the LTE TDD industry, says Wu Shimin, President of Mobile Broadband, Huawei Device. Shenzhen, China, 29 July, 2011, Huawei announced that the worlds first LTE TDD/UMTS/GSM/ CDMA multi-mode data card will be commercially available in the third quarter of 2011 to LTE TDD network operators worldwide. The E392 is a USB data card supporting LTE TDD technology. It incorporates LTE FDD technology while compatible with UMTS/GSM/ CDMA networks. This is the worlds first multi-mode data card that supports LTE TDD/FDD/UMTS/GSM/ CDMA. Although LTE will be a mainstream standard in the future development of telecommunications, it will coexist with the 3G/2G standards for a significant period of time. The E392 represents a breakthrough to the current single-mode status of the LTE TDD. " The download speed of the E392 is up to 100Mbps, allowing for downloading a 4GB HD movie file in just a few minutes. This is 20 times faster than the data transmission speed of the existing 3G network.

Huawei appointed by Genius Brand to deploy LTE network in Hong Kong


Hong Kong, 17 August, 2011, Huawei and Genius Brand Limited (Genius Brand), a joint venture between Hutchison Telephone Company Limited (HTCL) and Hong Kong Telecommunications Limited (HKT), officially signed a contract for the deployment of one of the biggest and best Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks in Hong Kong during the 12th National Five-Year Plan and Economic, Trade and Financial Cooperation and Development between the Mainland China and Hong Kong Forum. In addition, Huawei has also signed agreements with HTCL and HKT respectively on the evolution of their core networks to the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) specification, while providing them with other solutions for network resources management and end-to-end user experience QoE management. With a population of over seven million, Hong Kong is not only one of the most populous cities in the world, but also a fiercely competitive telecom market with high customer expectations of quality and efficiency. Huaweis industryleading SingleRAN LTE solution will implement MOCN for Genius Brand, allowing HTCL and HKT to gain a competitive edge in greatly reduced cost and time to market through sharing resources of the radio network and network spectrum while having two separate core networks.

China Telecom provides digital trunking with Huaweis QChat at Universiade


During the Universiade, Huawei deployed its QChat Push-to-Talk service, which is based on the CDMA2000 EV-DO network and was used by consumers equipped with China Telecom's Tianyi brand Shenzhen, China, 26 August, 2011, Huawei announced that their joint efforts in optimizing Shenzhen's CDMA network during the recent 2011 Summer Universiade resulted in significant developments in digital trunking communications service with Qchat. In telecommunications, trunking refers to the grouping of connection switches and circuits within an exchange. It enables the services provider to use fewer circuits since users are able to share connections. devices. Among other things, these devices were used by the official traffic committee to provide and monitor traffic services during the games for 20,000 people and 2,000 cars. Traffic logistics involved communication between seven control centers and six service teams spread across 126 different parking areas. Under this unprecedented usage, and with pressure from increased digital trunking traffic, the performance measurements of Shenzhen's CDMA2000 EV-DO network maintained maximum stability and the overall success rate of fixed trunking communications was 100 percent. This large-scale application of QChat affirms the high performance of China Telecom's Tianyi digital trunking system, which outclasses other trunking systems with its wide coverage, flexible devices, high-quality signal, unlimited communication distance, and open industry chain. "China Telecom and Huawei utilized their joint resources to provide unrivalled services during the 26th Summer Universiade in Shenzhen, said Li Linmei, General Manager of Government and Enterprise Customers Department, China Telecom Shenzhen. "We are happy to have observed that our digital trunking system is stable and reliable, and we hope to continue working together with Huawei to further accelerate the development of digital trunking communications." "We first unveiled QChat during the 2011 Xi'an Garden Expo, and we are happy to have worked together again with China Telecom at the 2011 Summer Universiade to provide digital trunking services," said Wu Hui, President of CDMA/LTE, Huawei. "The successful deployment of QChat at the Universiade demonstrates once again that Huawei's CDMA networks are able to perform at world-class events and under heavy usage."

SEP 2011 . ISSUE 61

Aircel successfully conducts worlds first GSM/UMTS/LTE TDD trial in India


the development of the LTE TDD ecosystem. The trial was conducted using Huaweis convergent endto-end system and Qualcomms MDM9600 multi-mode chipset on Aircels existing GSM/ New Delhi, India, 09 August, 2011, Aircel have jointly conducted the worlds first GSM/UMTS/LTE TDD trial on Aircels existing GSM/UMTS network in India using devices that are based on Qualcomm Incorporated's MDM9600 multi-mode chipset. The success of this trial is a key milestone for UMTS network. During this trial Huawei and Qualcomm jointly executed Inter-RAT (Inter-Radio Access Technology) related cases covering multiple live handover scenarios across GSM/UMTS/LTE technologies. During the trial, other high-speed data services were demonstrated, including video streaming via YouTube, VOD and HD video surveillance, which met the key performance indicators (KPIs) expected from an LTE TDD system. This end-to-end convergent GSM/UMTS/LTE TDD solution is based on Huaweis SingleRAN, SingleCORE network, and multimode devices. The trial used Huawei E392, which is the worlds first LTE TDD/FDD/UMTS/ GSM/CDMA multi-mode USB dongle. It covered end-to-end interoperability of services & applications, radio access and core network. Following this milestone, Huawei is now ready to deploy commercial LTE TDD networks for GSM/UMTS mobile operators in order to serve the ever-increasing demand for mobile broadband in India. In this era of mobile broadband, operators are interested in deploying multimode networks to meet the increasing demand for high speed data services. The efficient interoperability across networks will help operators reduce their network investments, operation & maintenance costs and ensure a rich mobile broadband experience for end users.

Huawei and Renesas Mobile set new HSUPA record


Tokyo, Japan and Shenzhen, China, 10 August, 2011, Renesas Mobile Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced cellular platforms, and Huawei announced that they have successfully made the worlds first HSPA+ call with cutting-edge speeds of up to 10.4Mbps on the uplink to the cellular base station. This HSPA+ call marks the first time that an uplink data speed of 10.4Mbps was reached using an uplink configured to HSUPA cat 7, a 3GPP Release 7 feature defining a new channel configuration that supports 11Mbps on the uplink to the base station. This next step in the evolution of HSPA+ capabilities also benefits operators through increased spectrum efficiency on the uplink. The call combined 16QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) a 16 state quadrature modulation that provides higher spectral efficiency with Huaweis E-DPCCH boosting technology and Renesas Mobiles advanced mobile platform. With the relatively recent onslaught of advanced mobile devices and applications, operators and vendors are now faced with the dual pressure of an increase in uplink data traffic and customers growing bandwidth needs for data, including sharing on social media. As a result, operators and vendors must now pay more attention to how they can effectively increase uplink data rates. This call, the latest achievement in the long-term relationship between Renesas Mobile and Huawei, is an industry first, and it effectively reduces the pressure of growing uplink data traffic, improves the uplink data throughput, and ensures the compatibility of the network elements and mobile platforms and devices.

Huawei launches China Mobiles LTE TDD trial network for the Shenzhen Summer Universiade 2011
Shenzhen, China, 12 August, 2011, Huawei announced the successful launch of a LTE TDD trial network for China Mobile in Shenzhen. The network, powered exclusively by Huawei, will serve the main event stadiums and surrounding areas for the 26th Shenzhen Summer Universiade 2011. The launch of China Mobiles LTE TDD trial network for the Shenzhen Summer Universiade, marks Huaweis third successful collaboration with the company, following our partnership on the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 16th Guangzhou Asia Games, said Deng Taihua, President of WiMAX & TDS & LTE, Huawei. We are proud of this successful launch as it helps move the industry forward by demonstrating the high quality performance of LTE TDD networks, as we believe that LTE TDD will play a crucial role in the future development of mobile broadband. For this project, Huawei provided China Mobile with an end-to-end solution including LTE TDD/FDD dual-mode USB dongle E398, and was the first vendor to complete network testing and launch 110 sites. Test results showed technological advantages such as high data speed and low latency. The trial network will cover all stadiums in the Universiade Center and Gymnasium of Shenzhen Bay Sports Center and will provide a series of mobile broadband services. Through China Mobiles LTE TDD trial network, people are able to watch the torch relay, opening ceremony and the entire competition live. SEP 2011 . ISSUE 61

Experts Forum Experts Forum


Dr. Chen Jinqiao, currently Deputy Chief Engineer at the China Academy of Telecommunication Research of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). His main research fields are framing national development strategies for the telecommunications industry and consulting on industrial policies and regulations for businesses.

Mobile Internet: The future of Internet


There is no question that the future of the Internet, at least over the next decade, lies in mobile. And this is something that is being embraced the world over, by equipment suppliers and operators, industry players and the general public.
By Chen Jinqiao, China Academy of Telecommunication Research of MIIT

World of information at fingertips


he Internet offers massive information that can be accessed via different modes and devices. The fixed Internet option involves fixed lines and relatively fixed terminals (mainly PCs); mobile Internet, on the other hand, frees people from those limitations and brings a world of information within their reach via portable devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs. That is why it is also dubbed the handheld Internet. 3
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Mobile Internet has gone through two major stages of development. Stage One was before 2006, when it was the so-called walled garden, primarily based on the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). As dedicated WAP websites were needed to support mobile devices of different types, such as feature phones and smartphones with limited processing power, the richness of the content was decided and limited by the willingness and capabilities of service providers. This kind of development method, with services tailored for terminals, failed to stimulate extensive takeup among mobile phone users.

Stage Two began after 2006, along with the massive construction of 3G wireless broadband networks and rapid development of smartphones, and WAP being replaced by universal web protocols. Smart devices are getting increasingly powerful, with the ability to adapt to various websites, removing obstacles in content sharing between fixed and mobile Internet. Moreover, smart devices are endowed with mobility and service interoperability, allowing better experiences for mobile Internet users than for fixed Internet users and enabling high convergence between mobile phone users and Internet users.

Huawei Communicate

Ac c o rd i n g t o t h e l a t e s t re p o r t on Internet Development in China published by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of Internet users reached 457 million by the end of 2010. Among them, mobile phone Internet users reached 303 million, up by 69.3 million over the same period in 2009. The percentage of mobile phone Internet users increased to 66.2% from 60.8% at the end of 2009. The percentages of Internet users who access the Internet using desktop PCs, mobile phones,

and laptops were 78.4%, 66.2%, and 45.7% respectively. The combined percentage of mobile phone and laptop users exceeded 100%, suggesting that the percentage of multi-device Internet users had increased further. According to statistics from a consulting firm, the number of global mobile Internet users reached 940 million in 2010. That represented a CAGR of 69%, and the figure is expected to exceed 100% in the next few years. Ho w e v e r, t h e r a p i d g r o w t h o f mobile Internet is bringing with it

the rapid decline of the traditional communications market, especially v o i c e s e r v i c e s . Ho w c a n t h a t b e remedied? Actually, if the growth of data services in terms of service volume and user value is sufficient to offset the decline of voice services, it makes perfect sense to shift network capabilities and service resources to data services. Mo b i l e In t e r n e t h a s c o m e t o t h e rescue at the right time, to help drive forward the transformation of telecom companies and mitigate the decline of communications services.

Market reshuffle produces new winners


The rise of emerging businesses usually brings about a new market landscape and the changing of the guard. Mobile Internet is no exception. In just a few years we have seen a whole new industry ecosystem taking shape, ranging from the upstream chips, components, operating systems (OSs), application software to downstream network operation and content services. Players who used to dominate in these areas are all becoming less significant.

Telecom operators, though still retaining their dominance in network access, have been reduced to the role of ordinary participants, followers, or onlookers in many other fields. Similarly, Intel has been overtaken by ARM in the CPU field, and Microsoft by Apple and Google in the OS field. Among all the forces, OS providers, application software developers, and application platform providers are the three most important ones, as they decide consumer experience in terms of controllability of OS, timeliness of application offerings, and integration of applications respectively, and therefore

directly affect the service traffic and content value from users. The smartphone OS sector is already a battlefield. According to internal research made by China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR), the landscape of the global mobile smart device OS sector in 2010 went through a huge shakeup, as Googles Android system that matched with mainstream chips (already more than 1GHz) in the industry became the new dominator with a market share of about 33%. Apples iOS saw its market share rise to about 16%, thanks to the popularity of iPhone and iPad. In comparison, the
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Experts Forum
Mobile Internet: The future of Internet market share for Symbian fell swiftly to 31%, and Nokia was forced into an alliance with Microsoft for new opportunities. Global competition will henceforth be among these three camps led by Google, Apple, and Microsoft-Nokia. Lying behind the shakeup is the key of user experience. Apples strength comes from integrated software and hardware, Googles from open-source and free codes, RIMs from niche business f u n c t i o n s , a n d Wi n d ow s Ph o n es from the interoperability between mobile phone OSs and desktop PCs to strike a balance between business and entertainment functions. In the field of application software development, software and Internet companies hold the absolute advantage. Most small and mediumsized technology companies serve as independent third-party application developers and work with upstream OS providers and downstream application stores (platform providers) to secure business value through the number of downloads and traffic. Currently top on the popular application software list in terms of downloads are those about communications, business, and entertainment, such as QQ for instant messaging, microblogs, Taobao for online business, and Alipay for online payment, which have been developed by Internet companies on various platforms. Application platform services, usually known as application stores, are a critical link between users and developers. Housing various kinds of application software, they provide developers with sales channels to realize the value of applications, provide network operators w i t h t r a f f i c re w a rd , a n d p r ov i d e end users with query, purchase, and maintenance services. Endowed with ability to uncover and realize value, they become another must-win front after OS. Today, OS providers and network operators are the most engaged players in the marketplace. Apple boasts 5
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the most commercially successful application store, which brings business returns to independent developers more quickly and directly, with the downside that it takes quite a long period for applications to be reviewed. The top three Chinese telecom operators all have invested enormously in trying to provide the most suitable local application development and integration. From the perspective of long-term growth, application platform services with various application stores at the core must pay equal attention to the need for application diversity and content security. Only in this way can they continuously drive the user value up.

From fun to habits: Changing business drivers


According to sample survey in both the global market and the Chinese market, the top-ranking mobile Internet applications are instant messaging, search, browsing, email, music download, video, online commerce, and social networking, which is in some ways similar to the fixed Internet. But what makes mobile Internet unique is how it is used to consume digital content for the purpose of personal enjoyment, like music, videos, and games. Us e r s c a n c o n ve n i e n t l y o b t a i n digital entertainment products through wireless networks and consume in fragmented ways, which gives full play to the business value of entertainment p ro d u c t s . Ne t w o rk o p e r a t o r s , by integrating resources of culture, music, videos, and games, build up digital copyright protection mechanisms and contents distribution platforms, thereby realizing their value in the field of fun or entertainment. However, it is only end users continuous use and experience that can bring network operators the value in traffic and content applications, rather than the limited

resort of paid entertainment services. With takeup increasing and user behavior established, innovative mobile Internet services such as identitybased mobile payment, locationbased navigation, space-based security monitoring, process-based public services, image and video-based remote medical treatment, and sharing-based social networking services stand to bring more business value to application developers, content providers, and network operators. It is not only that users of those services have higher spending power, but also that habitual behavior will drive continuous use of such services. In terms of charging modes, mobile Internet will combine the modes based on traffic and content/applications. Its revenue from ads, a typical thirdparty payment mode, is likely to be significantly lower than that in the fixed Internet sector due to the factors of device experience and traffic tariff. The trend is that having users pay for habits will bring more value than having them pay for interest. Already, many applications have been developed by industries and corporate customers and even the military in the United States based on the iPhone and the iPad. As mobile broadband technologies keep upgrading and new smart devices keep emerging, mobile Internet will become a major force that changes the information world. It is not only a technical and industry force, but also becoming a cultural and social one. It has brought not only the rosy future of a mobile information society but also raised major security issues such as user privacy leakage, potential asset losses, public opinion crises, and network vulnerabilities. Having a correct understanding of its positive and negative effects is the precondition for solving relevant problems. We must respect the laws of information technologies to push the mobile Internet toward healthy and sustainable growth. Editor: Xue Hua xuehua@huawei.com

Huawei Communicate

Alan Hadden is President of the GSA and has held this position since its establishment in 1998. Previously Alan was on the senior management team of a PCN/GSM 1800 operator, which became T-Mobile UK. He helped establish 1800MHz as a mainstream band for new mobile businesses, and represented the company at ETSI, the GSM Association and the UMTS Forum.

Expanding mobile broadband horizons with HSPA+ and LTE


By Alan Hadden
used more and more for our social lives.

Mobile broadband
In recent years, access to the Internet on the move, especially broadband, has been the major trend, and is one of the most influential drivers of market and technology developments, investments a n d b u s i n e s s g row t h . Bro a d b a n d access no longer means having to use fixed connections; the Internet and broadband are mobile too, and most mobile network operators include mobile broadband in their service portfolios. Initially mobile broadband service was often positioned as extending the fixed PC experience to mobile, using a connected laptop. Today mobile broadband is widely experienced on a plethora of portable, personal electronic devices. The GSA was established as a trade association in 1998 as the global representative organization for mobile suppliers worldwide. Its main objectives were to promote GSM and the evolution of GSM as the platform
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h e Wo r l d Wi d e We b i s 20 years old. It began as a page of links as a means of improving communications between scientists working at the CERN research facility in Geneva. It was posted on the Internet on August 6, 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, who is

credited with creating WWW as the defacto method of accessing information residing on the Internet through web pages. Now there are close to 20 billion web pages. Internet access is essential for efficient business-to-business communications, business-to-consumer marketing and sales activities, and is

Experts Forum
Expanding mobile broadband horizons with HSPA+ and LTE EDGE technology, also specified by 3GPP. As its data speeds came near to the capabilities of the first WCDMA systems, EDGE could be deployed by GSM/GPRS operators as a software upgrade in existing spectrum to triple data throughput speeds and increase capacity. WCDMA and EDGE are both classified by the ITU as IMT-2000 radio systems. More importantly, a number of the U.S. TDMA operators, attracted by EDGE performance levels, also began to migrate to GSM/EDGE, boosting the overall market. EDGE subsequently swept through the Americas and across the world. The GSA actively promoted EDGE and provided leadership for the industry with a global program of workshops and seminars. By January 2007, 196 commercial EDGE networks were launched in 105 countries. Most WCDMA operators also committed to EDGE network deployments to ensure service continuity and the best user experience. In April 2011, the GSA confirmed 545 commercial EDGE networks launched in 198 countries.

HSPA, first significant boost to mobile broadband


The introduction of HSPA technology the first evolution of WCDMA provided the environment for mobile broadband takeoff. HSPA delivered a significant performance boost and efficiency gains for WCDMA operators, who could reuse existing assets including spectrum. The specifications for HSPA were included in Release 5 and Release 6 of the 3GPP standard. The introduction of a new modulation technology (16QAM) delivered substantial benefits including a reduction of the radio frame lengths, plus new functionalities within radio networks. As a result, data throughput increased and latency was reduced to 100ms (HSDPA) and 50ms (HSUPA)

for WCDMA service delivery. The worlds first WCDMA license auction was held in the UK and ended on April 27, 2001, followed by more auctions in eight more Western European countries over the next 18 months. Many consider that mobile b ro a d b a n d b e g a n w i t h WC D M A deployments, where peak downlink data speeds were limited to a theoretical peak of 384Kbps. The first commercial 7
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WCDMA system was launched on October 1, 2001. By January 2007, there were 146 commercial WCDMA networks in 67 countries and over 100 million subscriptions, supported by around 500 user device products launched in the market. At about the same time as the first WCDMA network deployments, the industry was discussing the evolution of GSM/GPRS data capabilities with

Huawei Communicate

according to the 3GPP specifications. Since the first HSPA networks were commercially launched in 2005, every WCDMA operator has now deployed HSPA technology in their networks, and 410 operators have commercially launched HSPA networks on multiple frequency bands in 162 countries. The first commercial launch of HSUPA was in February 2007. By July 2011, 166 (over 40%) HSPA operators had commercially launched HSUPA in 78 countries, including at least 92 networks (over 55%) supporting the 5.8Mbps peak uplink data speed, and a further nine networks supporting 11.5Mbps peak on HSPA+.

HSPA+ enters the mainstream


HSPA Evolution (HSPA+) brought in more new functionalities and raised performance levels even higher. Release 7 specified MIMO antenna capability and 16QAM modulation (for the uplink) and 64QAM (for the downlink) coupled with other improvements in the radio access network. Release 7 networks have a theoretical peak downlink data rate of 21Mbps and 5.8Mbps on the uplink. Release 8 enables 42Mbps peak downlink by combining 64QAM and two 5MHz carriers (DC-HSPA+). Deploying 16QAM instead of QPSK modulation on the uplink doubles the peak rate to 11.5Mbps. HSPA+ is now mainstream, enabling operators to provision the required capacity and performance for the rapidly growing data consumption generated by laptop and smartphone users. By July 2011, 136 HSPA operators (one third) had commercially launched HSPA+ in 69 countries. Of these networks, 89 supported a peak downlink data speed of 21Mbps, eight supported 28Mbps, and 39 supported 42Mbps. The GSA forecasts that there will be at least 170 commercial HSPA+ systems worldwide by the end of 2011.

HSPA+ has a strong evolution path. 3GPP Release 9 combines multicarrier and MIMO in 10MHz bandwidth to achieve 84Mbps peak downlink data throughput. Release 9 makes it possible to use 10MHz by combining two 5MHz carriers from different frequency bands. For example, one from 2100MHz and the other from 900MHz. Using multicarrier on the uplink doubles the uplink peak data rate to 23Mbps, six operators have already committed to this evolution step. Release 10 enables a peak downlink data rate of 168Mbps using four carriers combined with 22 MIMO. The next evolution step is eight-carrier support for HSDPA, doubling the peak rate to 336Mbps. Eight-carrier HSDPA coupled with 44 MIMO would again double the peak rate to reach 672Mbps.

LTE
LT E i s a h u g e l y i m p o r t a n t development for the industr y and provides the next step in user experience. Mobile operators globally report strong data traffic and revenue growth from mobile broadband and are increasing investments in their infrastructure and transmission networks to cope with current and future needs. Enthusiasm for mobile computing and the accelerating adoption of smartphones explain the trends, which will continue as key drivers for network capacity expansion and new business. The GSA believes that the mobile tablet segment will also have a significant impact on networks and service revenues. Delivering significantly more capacity and data throughput with lower latency, LT E e n h a n c e s a n d e n a b l e s m o r e demanding services and applications its main benefits are realized when systems are deployed in 10MHz or more spectrum. LTE is the fastest developing mobile communications system technology ever. In July 2011, the GSA confirmed that 218 operators in 81 countries are

investing in LTE. 166 firm commercial LTE network deployments are in progress or planned in 62 countries, i n c l u d i n g 2 4 n e t w o rk s t h a t h a ve commercially launched. A further 52 operators in 19 additional countries are engaged in LTE trials, tests or studies. Both the number of operators investing in LTE and committed to commercial deployments had doubled compared to one year earlier. The GSA forecasts that at least 91 LTE networks will be in commercial service by the end of 2012. LTE is undoubtedly the future direction for the industry, especially for the 3GPP-systems family mobile operators. It is also attracting the interest of others, including CDMA mobile operators, cable operators, BWA operators, utility companies, public safety and emergency services operators. LT E s u p p o r t s F D D a n d T D D modes, and infrastructure solutions offer operators an easy upgrade path to LTE. So far, most of LTE deployments h a v e b e e n i n F D D m o d e . LT E TDD is an integral part of the 3GPP standards, implementing a maximum of commonalities with LTE FDD and offering comparable performance characteristics with similarly high spectral efficiency. LTE TDD is the perfect choice for providing high-speed mobile broadband access in unpaired spectrum. China and India are expected to be the major markets, and further deployments are anticipated in other parts of Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. To promote LTE TDD as a global t e c h n o l o g y, t h e G l o b a l T D - LT E Initiative (GTI) was launched at MWC 2011, leveraging vast LTE economies of scale and providing an excellent evolution path for TD-SCDMA and WiMAX networks. All existing WCDMA technologies can harmonize to LTE, becoming a single global standard, securing even higher economies of scale and simplifying roaming. Mobile operators are deploying LTE alongside existing infrastructures,
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Experts Forum
Expanding mobile broadband horizons with HSPA+ and LTE protecting and continuing investments in WCDMA systems such as HSPA/ HSPA+, ensuring service continuity and the best mobile broadband user experience. 1800MHz has emerged as a promising band for mobile broadband. Nearly half of the worlds mobile operators have 1800MHz spectrum, and over 60% of 1800MHz spectrum in Europes largest markets is available in allocations of 10MHz or more. Twice the coverage area can be achieved by deploying LTE in 1800MHz spectrum compared to 2600MHz. In European markets, the minimum combination of bands to be supported is likely to be 2600MHz, 800MHz and 1800MHz. 700MHz should be added for roaming beyond the region. The AWS band (1700/2100MHz) is used for some network deployments in the Americas, while other bands are used for LTE in Japan. LTE user devices also need to support legacy GSM/WCDMA systems. In the 3GPP systems environment, products need to support quad-band GSM/ EDGE and several HSPA/HSPA+ bands as well as multi-band LTE. Significant spectral resources are available for LTE TDD. The largest contiguous bands are at 2300MHz (100MHz) and within the 2600MHz band, and some leading chipset vendors are already producing TDD and FDD dual-mode designs. be aggregated for achieving bandwidths up to 100MHz. Improved support for heterogeneous deployments allows for deploying a denser network of picocells as a complement to the macro coverage layer. Several LTE-Advanced test systems are operating around the world. Transmission data rates of 1Gbps on the downlink and 200Mbps on the uplink have been demonstrated. Backward compatible with LTE, LTE-Advanced enables users to download a 700MB video file in 9.3 seconds, according to the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI, South Korea). 3GPP has published Release 10 of the standard and formally frozen the set of features for LTE-Advanced. The completion of Release 10 is the final step in the four-year process to ensure that the 3GPP radio interface will meet the formal requirements of IMTAdvanced. As is the case with current work on HSPA Evolution (HSPA+), LTE work will continue beyond the current Release.

Spectrum for LTE


Featuring tremendous spectrum flexibility, LTE is scalable for deployment in 1.4 to 20MHz allocations in paired and unpaired bands, and can be deployed in new spectrum and existing GSM or UMTS bands. Some 30 bands are standardized by 3GPP and modern multi-standard multi-band radio base station solutions can be configured quite easily for operation in required bands. However, supporting a large number of bands in user devices would be problematic, adding each band increases cost, and roaming becomes complicated or even impossible. Manufacturers would thus prefer to focus on a smaller number of core bands for LTE. The likely prime bands for LTE deployments are emerging in new and refarmed spectrum: 2600MHz is the ITU-designated IMT extension band comprising 70MHz paired, and will be widely allocated internationally and used for LTE FDD deployments. Digital dividend spectrum arises from the TV digital switchover, and is favored by mobile operators for its excellent geographical coverage characteristics and capability of improving in-building performance. Digital dividend 700MHz spectrum is allocated in the U.S. and used for LTE by such operators as Verizon Wireless and AT&T. This band will likely extend to several parts of the Americas while offering an opportunity for harmonization across the Asia Pacific region. In Europe, the digital dividend is based on the 790 to 862MHz band (referred to as 800MHz). Though the 1800MHz band was originally used for GSM, regulators are increasingly adopting a technologyneutral approach, and refarmed 9
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Mobile broadband devices ecosystem


In August 2011, the GSA reported how the enormous choice and capabilities of HSPA mobile broadband user devices are still expanding. 3,227 HSPA user devices have been launched, 25% higher than one year earlier, while the number of manufacturers increased by 29 to 264 in the same period. With continuing improvement in device capabilities and performance, two-thirds of devices (compared to 50% a year ago) support peak downlink speeds of at least 7.2Mbps. 35 manufacturers have introduced 182 HSPA+ devices a 264% year-onyear growth. The availability of HSUPA devices has similarly expanded, now with 1,184 products launched. Amongst them, 729 (100% higher than a year earlier)

LTE-Advanced
LTE FDD and LTE TDD have a clear evolution toward LTE-Advanced that includes many features originally considered for the future ITU IMTAdvanced system. In October 2010, the ITU accepted and officially designated LTE-Advanced as an IMT-Advanced (4G) technology. LTE-Advanced is an evolution of LTE. Several new features are added, including carrier aggregation and improved support for heterogeneous deployments. Carrier aggregation allows bandwidth to be extended by joining together an operators frequency allocations that are in different bands so that up to five component carriers can

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support a peak uplink data speed of 5.8Mbps, and 40 (ten times higher than a year ago) support 11.5Mbps. The expanding range of smartphones is clear to see. Excluding notebooks and e-book readers, 1,093 HSPA devices (over 40% of products) now incorporate 802.11/WLAN almost 49% annual growth; 945 (34.8%) incorporate GPS or A-GPS, representing 42.5% annual growth. The number of routers and mobile hotspots increased 45% in the same period. The choice of HSPAenabled tablets is also rapidly expanding. Refarmed 900MHz spectrum, previously exclusively used for GSM, i s f a vo re d by m a n y o p e r a t o r s f o r mobile broadband in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, with the comfort of a mature ecosystem of HSPA-capable 900MHz user devices (UMTS900). 663 UMTS900 devices are launched in the market, 65% higher than one year ago. 87 UMTS900 user devices support HSPA+, including 35 products that support 42Mbps DC-HSPA+. The devices ecosystem for LTE is also building quickly. On July 29, 2011, the GSA confirmed that 45 manufacturers had announced 161 LTE-enabled user devices, representing 155% growth since February 2011. The majority are designed for the 700MHz band where LTE networks and services are currently developing fastest. As LTE network rollouts accelerate in other regions, manufacturers will quickly follow with products for those markets. The largest segments are routers, dongles and embedded modules, to be followed by more LTE smartphones and tablets in the coming months. Ma n y LT E o p e r a t o r s h a ve a l s o d e p l o y e d H S PA / H S PA + s y s t e m s and they require service continuity throughout their operating area, which means a fallback to current HSPA/ HSPA+ and GSM/EDGE network assets. Manufacturers are aligning product developments with operator strategies; at least 100 dual-mode LTE/ HSPA devices are available. Similarly, LTE operators with CDMA EV-DO

Demand for mobile broadband will continue its strong growth curve. Operators will invest in capacity and coverage, leveraging the benefits of HSPA+ and LTE as complementary solutions, and exploit spectrum options in new and refarmed bands according to local conditions and possibilities.
investments also require users to be able to fall back to their legacy networks; at least 52 LTE devices also support EVDO.

Market and technology trends


Demand for mobile broadband will continue its strong growth curve. Video already dominates traffic, and higherresolution files will significantly increase traffic load. Operators will invest in capacity and coverage, leveraging the benefits of HSPA+ and LTE as complementary solutions, and exploit spectrum options in new and refarmed bands according to local conditions and possibilities. Self Organizing Network (SON) solutions will reduce network operational costs and simplify the complexities of coexisting GSM, WCDMA, HSPA, and LTE technologies. Solutions for data off-load and indoor coverage improvement will be deployed. A combination of LTE and HSPA+ technologies in high and lower spectrum (for capacity and coverage respectively) means that broadband for

all can be achieved. Continuing evolution of HSPA+ and LTE will move beyond todays super-fast access for notebooks as more smartphones and tablets enter the market, and network performance and device capabilities will improve and expand. The user experience of social networking, news, entertainment, sport, mobile gaming, blogging, etc. will all be greatly enhanced. Personal video communications will become common and further impact network capacity. Control of devices in the home and video surveillance applications has become commonplace. Motor vehicles will become mobile smartphone docking stations for streaming information and services required by drivers and passengers, and for handling vehiclerelated communications, including security and maintenance alerts. As smartphone price points lower, more users will embrace them and join the networks. Capabilities of highend devices will continue to evolve and drive yet higher volumes of data traffic. Policy control tools may need to be extended to manage traffic and user expectations. Developments in screen, semiconductor and battery technologies will ensure that required operational and standby times are delivered for the most complex user devices. Business mobile broadband users benefit from efficient communications with colleagues, access to files residing on their intranet systems, and productivity levels rise. For many people it will mean fewer trips to the office, and companies downsizing office space. HSPA+ and LTE are likely to serve market needs for the foreseeable future. All existing IMT-2000 technologies can harmonize to LTE as the single unifying global standard, and are supported by a large established ecosystem of operators and vendors. Multi-mode devices will play a pivotal role in its commercialization. Enhancements leveraged from LTE-Advanced may phase in during 2013 and 2014. Editor: Long Ji longji@huawei.com
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Cover Story
Germany: MBB on the fast track

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Huawei Communicate

Germany: MBB on the fast track


Mobile broadband services are developing fast in Germany, as smartphones and tablet PCs become increasingly popular and mobile application stores mature. The top three mobile operators in Germany, Vodafone Germany, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefnica Germany, announced in the second half of 2010 that they would deploy industry-leading commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks in order to provide mobile broadband services. These services would include broadband network access, high definition (HD) video, high-speed download, and online gaming to subscribers in both rural and urban areas. Germany is witnessing a golden era of mobile broadband service development.
By Chen Shanshan & Zhu Jikui

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Germany: MBB on the fast track

Government leads in bridging divide


lthough mobile broadband development in Germany is rapid, some 2,700,000 rural homes still have slow Internet access (speeds of less than 1 Mbps) or, in some cases, no broadband network connection. This is mainly because villages are scattered over large areas, making it difficult and costly to deploy wired broadband connections. With advantages such as fast network construction, low cost, and advanced t e c h n o l o g y, m o b i l e b r o a d b a n d technology is regarded by the German government as the preferred technology for high-speed Internet access in rural areas. On February 18, 2009, the German government presented the details of a broadband strategy which included using the digital dividend to enable operators to deploy wireless and mobile broadband services in rural areas. The government stated it would focus on four areas: speeding up digital dividend auctions; pushing operators to seek synergy via joint infrastructure deployments; ensuring growth and innovation oriented regulation, and

providing the necessar y financial support. The president of Germanys Chamber of Commerce, Ludwig Georg Braun, said that with complete broadband coverage, Germany can offer e-learning, e-health and e-government services to everybody.

LTE the best choice


LTE is recognized by the industry as the primary technology for nextgeneration mobile broadband services. Compared with HSPA, LTE is able to provide 10x data transfer speeds, 3x network capacity and only 1/4x latency. M o r e o v e r, i t c a n u t i l i z e r i c h frequency spectrum resources, with Europe making available the 800MHz, 1800MHz, and 2,600MHz bands for deployment. A feature of LTE is flexible networking with multiple frequency bands, which operators with nextgeneration mobile broadband networks will need for a smooth evolution in the future. In particular, the 800MHz Digital Dividend Spectrum (DDS) is regarded by the industry as the Golden Frequency Band since it is able to

provide better network coverage. It has a coverage radius two to three times that of the 2,600MHz band, making it the best solution for low-cost network construction and indoor coverage in rural areas. W i t h t h e d e p l o y m e n t o f LT E solutions and devices in the 800MHz band, non-commercial users in remote areas can conveniently and quickly receive broadband Internet access services. Abundant 1800MHz frequency resources featuring good coverage are available, enabling operators to utilize the band for both LTE and voice services. As the mainstream frequency spectrum for global LTE deployment, the 2,600MHz frequency spectrum is suitable for high-capacity hot spot coverage. The German government officially started the LTE frequency spectrum auction in May 2010. Operators were competing for the 800MHz band during the auction, which came to an end after 27 days and 224 rounds of bidding. Vodafone Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Telefnica Germany all secured their desired frequency bands within their budgets. At that point, Germany entered the fast track of high-speed mobile broadband services.

The government stated it would focus on four areas: speeding up digital dividend auctions; pushing operators to seek synergy via joint infrastructure deployments; ensuring growth and innovation oriented regulation, and providing the necessary financial support.

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Huawei Communicate

Vodafone Germany
The spirit of innovation

Golden frequency band transforms countryside


By Zhu Jikui & Xu Bin
deployment costs for the last mile in rural areas. LTE 800MHz also has the advantage that it delivers fast data services and guarantees QoS, which translates to a richer and better MBB user experience. 800MHz solution performed exceptionally in the joint tests. It could provide download speeds of 12 to 15Mbps when teminals were 7 to 8 km away from base stations, winning high praise from Vodafone Germany. After multiple rounds of verification tests, Vodafone Germany believed that Huaweis industry-leading, mature LTE 800MHz solution matched its performance requirements high speeds, wide coverage, and short latency. Huawei also showed the ability to respond rapidly. For these reasons, the operator named Huawei its strategic partner in the LTE sector. All this helped Vodafone Germany take the lead in quickly deploying an LTE network across Germany.

odafone has an innovation gene and has always been a pioneer when it comes to communications technology innovations and applications. With the penetration of smartphones focused on data service applications, broadband data services are embracing a period of golden growth. Data services have been placed in a position of unprecedented importance by Vodafone, a giant in the mobile communications sector. Vo d a f o n e Ge r m a n y h a s a c l e a r development strategy: becoming a market leader through innovative, industry-leading technologies and reducing service cost through new technologies, thus ensuring an advantageous position in the mobile broadband market. Vodafone Germany prioritized LTE deployment on 800MHz to reduce

Taking the lead in conducting DDS trials


To deliver on its promise to the government that it would provide mobile broadband services in rural areas using the 800MHz band, and to take the lead in deploying a mobile broadband network across the country, Vodafone Germany conducted in-depth research on the advantages of 800MHz. Meanwhile, the company worked with the local telecom authority and Huawei to perform stringent and extensive field verification tests. Huaweis end-to-end (E2E) LTE

Commercial LTE service sets sail from Heiligendamm


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Germany: MBB on the fast track Vodafone Germany CEO Friedrich Joussen believes that LTE provides better growth potential, and has the capability to be a viable alternative to fixed-line services. Joussen once told journalists that if Vodafone had a euro to spare, theyd prefer to invest it in mobile communications instead of fixed line. Several months after receiving the DDS, Vodafone Germany officially launched Germanys first ever commercial LTE 800MHz station in Heiligendamm on September 15, 2010, thus taking the lead in commercial LTE applications in Germany. Germany became the fifth country that put LTE into commercial use. The CEO and the CTO of Vodafone Germany, along with the Chairperson of RegTP, pressed the red button that symbolized the launch of the new services at the kickoff ceremony. They also issued the first LTE data card to a subscriber. The guests watched Video-on-Demand (VOD) and videophone service demos with a peak rate of 40Mbps thanks to higher speeds and shorter latency. The demos received a lot of positive comments at the site. Vodafone Germany announced the official launch of LTE services in Germany on December 1, 2010. The near-term objective of Vodafone Germany is to increase coverage in rural areas. Joussen was quoted in a press release as saying that as a high-tech country, Germany would need an advanced underlying communications infrastructure whether in cities or in the countryside. multiple frequency bands and modes, thereby maximizing equipment sharing. It also requires that the solution come with All-IP technologies to reduce network complexity and operating expenses (OPEX). For this reason, the operator is very interested in Huaweis Future Site solution, which is based on the industry-leading SingleRAN solution and software defined radio (SDR) technology. With this solution, a single cabinet is able to support all five frequency bands and three modes, enabling full convergence of mobile networks under various standards. With the Future Site solution, a single network of Vodafone Germany is able to simultaneously support network standards including GSM, UMTS, and LTE. As a result, the network structure will be simplified to the highest extent, fundamentally increasing network performance and reliability and satisfying high-end users rigorous requirements from mobile broadband services. Meanwhile, the Future Site All-IP co-transmission solution effectively solves the problem of transmission limitations in mobile broadband services. It also satisfies future data services high-bandwidth requirements on mobile broadband connections, thereby achieving smooth future evolution. Therefore, it is a perfect match for Vodafone Germanys futureoriented network construction requirements. Additionally, anything carried by a single person at one time must be less than 15kg in weight, according to German laws. Otherwise, mechanical equipment is required, which adds to installation costs. The Future Site solution provides 3mRRU, the industrys smallest and lightest Radio Remote Unit (RRU), whose weight and volume are less than 15kg and 12L respectively, thereby greatly reducing Vodafone Germanys installation cost. With the Future Site solution, Vodafone Germany has realized three visions reducing network complexity, reducing the OPEX and going All-IP. There is an increasingly evident trend toward LTE as an alternative to fixed networks. Vodafone Germany expects to seize early opportunities in the LTE market and achieve its ambition through its leading technologies and advanced network. Joussen said that Vodafone eventually would plan to upgrade all base stations in Germany to LTE - the next generation mobile communications technology. These investments would ensure in the mid-term that the new broadband wireless standard would be available to customers and in the coming years broadband Internet would be available all over Germany.

Leading a new trend of network convergence


Dealing with the explosive growth of mobile broadband services, and improving the quality of services further after the countryside is fully covered are two problems that Vodafone Germany needs to address. To further increase download speeds and provide customers with a high-quality mobile broadband service experience, Vodafone Germany plans to introduce LTE 800MHz and LTE 2,600MHz into its existing network within three to five years. That will come with a complex network structure: five frequency bands, including GSM 900/1800MHz, UMTS 2100MHz and LTE 800/2600MHz, as well as three technology standards will coexist. The costs of operation and maintenance will become extremely high. Vodafone Germany is eagerly seeking a new solution that allows a single network to support 15
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Telefnica Germany

Bring ubiquitous mobile broadband


By Zhu Jikui & Zhong Lei

Paving the way for MBB

obile communications are as important as oxygen in a modern society is the poetic slogan proposed by O2, which was acquired by Telefnica for USD31.5 billion in 2005. Telefnica has since become the worlds third largest telecom operator. The ubiquitous mobile communications concept of O2 had also been deeply integrated into Telefnicas growth strategy. Telefnica Germany was a late entrant in Germanys well-developed mobile communications market. Its brand had considerable competitive advantages due to its transnational operations. With the prosperity of mobile broadband services in the previous years, however, Telefnica Germany was under heavy competitive pressure in a mature market where mobile communications penetration rate was as high as 131%. Facing the challenges, Telefnica Germany developed a new growth strategy and market objective. It was determined to take a leading position in terms of network coverage and performance. Telefnica Germany started large-scale network modernization in December 2007 in order to pave the way for mobile broadband services. It decided to first conduct large-scale upgrading and capacity expansion on its GSM and UMTS networks. Huaweis RAN solution was employed for this project to cover the entire southern part of Germany, including its richest and most industrially and commercially developed regions such as Bavaria and Baden-Wrttemberg. This upgrade included well-known industrial cities: Munich, which is Germanys second largest city; Stuttgart and Nuremberg, both of which are rich, beautiful and ancient cities; renowned tourist destinations such as the Knigssee (Kings Lake), the Schwarzwald (the Black Forest) and the Zugspitze (the highest peak of the Wetterstein Mountains as well as the highest
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Germany: MBB on the fast track mountain in Germany). Telefnica Germany successfully finished Germanys largest-scale network upgrade in September 2009. After the project ended, the UMTS voice service capacity tripled, the GSM voice service traffic increased by 10%, and all network KPIs were better than before the swap. The two-year total cost of ownership (TCO) decreased by 30%. Telefnica Germany partnered with Huawei again to launch Europes first ever commercial HSPA + MIMO network in Munich in November 2010. With a peak download speed of 28Mbps, it has brought Telefnica Germany subscribers rich applications including high-quality Internet TV, extremely responsive online games and highly reliable business data access. This has served to further improve the companys brand image. Telefnica Germany saw increasing brand influence and market share thanks to its proactive and firm mobile broadband service approach as well as continuous attention to technologies, subscriber requirements, and the improvement of network quality and user experiences. All of these have paved the way for the subsequent rapid growth of its mobile broadband services. become an inevitable choice for Telefnica Germany on the road to mobile broadband services. It officially announced on July 1, 2011 that it will provide commercial LTE services using the 800MHz band. This network is also the first commercial LTE network of Telefnica Group. In the early phase, Telefnica Germanys LTE network will cover villages to bring unmatchable mobile broadband service experiences to subscribers in remote areas. In the futu re, it will expand its LTE network into the 2600MHz frequency band to cover more urban and rural communities and provide more subscribers with high-speed mobile broadband services. It was not accidental that Telefnica Group selected LTE as the direction in which to develop mobile broadband services. It has been discussing LTE technologies and applications with vendors since April 2009 and announced in late September that it would start LTE/SAE technology experiments. Telefnica deployed experimental LTE/SAE networks in six countries including Spain, Britain, Germany, Czech, Brazil, and Argentina. It selected six vendors to provide equipment for this. Huawei was selected to conduct in-lab and field LTE tests for the subnetwork in Britain where the most stringent technical requirements and strictest tests were required. Huawei took the lead in finishing the tests in February 2010. Telefnica was very satisfied with its LTE test result. Meanwhile, Telefnica Germany and Huawei carried out the first LTE-friendly user test in Munich and Ebersberg. Several hundred users were chosen to experience the unprecedented highspeed mobile broadband services brought by LTE. Praise from the users gave Telefnica Germany confidence for rapid LTE deployment. Now it starts: With O2 LTE fr zuhause rural areas will finally have fast Internet access as well. Video streaming, fast downloads and online computer games are no longer an issue in rural areas. says Ren Schuster, CEO of Telefnica Germany. Covering blind spots in the countryside is only the first step of our LTE deployment. We will provide LTE services in cities once we meet all the requirements of the federal network authority. This may come true within several months at the earliest. With Telefnica Germany on the right track, there is no doubt the operator will make highspeed mobile broadband service experiences as ubiquitous as oxygen in the near future.
Editor: Li Xuefeng xuefengli@huawei.com

Committed to LTE
In 2 0 1 1 c o m p e t i t i o n h a s b e c o m e m o re intense in Germanys mobile broadband market. Subscriber demand for data services has been driving the commercial use of LTE, which has

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Weather the signaling storm

Huawei Communicate

Weather the signaling storm


High-performance smartphones with large screens are attracting increasing numbers of users and boosting operators profits, and yet they bring with them unprecedented signaling storms.
By Chen Yang

Storms rising

he widespread adoption of smartphones globally has ushered in the mobile Internet era. Data from research firm Gartner showed that the number of smartphones shipped globally exceeded 296 million units (a 72% year-on-year growth), accounting for 19% of the total shipment of mobile terminals. High-performance smartphones with large screens are attracting increasing numbers of users

and boosting operators profits, and yet they bring with them unprecedented signaling storms. First, the unexpectedly fast growth of mobile broadband (MBB) users and Packet Data Protocols (PDP). Based on data from the top 30 MBB networks deployed by Huawei, in 2010 alone the online 3G user numbers increased by 99%, 3G PDPs by 148%, signaling traffic per office by 268.71%, and data traffic per office by 199.80% over 2009. Second, frequent network congestion, dropped calls and user complaints. For example, since an operator launched

the iPhone, it had seen data traffic increase by 50 times, but legacy network resources had been unable to keep up. Smartphones have a great impact on network capacity, signal processing, and data transmission. Operators may face challenges like network congestion, overload, and frequent capacity expansion; thus, early preparation is required to ensure network stability.

Causes
PDP automatic activation
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Main Topic

Weather the signaling storm

Most smartphones automatically attach to the network and active a PDP context soon after being powered on, in order to access the Internet and obtain up-to-date information anywhere and anytime. In contrast, feature phones activate PDP only when accessing data service, and deactivate it after the data service is over. As a result, almost each smartphone subscriber has a PDP context and the average activation ratio is much higher, which places much greater pressure on the MBB network capacity as smartphone penetration increases.

signaling on the network increases sharply and the network congestion or overload occurs consequently. On the network of an operator, for example, the number of repeated PDP activations caused by failed activation accounted for 98.76% of the total PDP activations throughout the network, and the success rate of activation was lower than 3%, resulting in an extremely big waste of network resources.

Continuous virus scan


On an MBB network using public network addresses, the always-on smartphones are subject to external attacks. An intensive IP address scan/ sweep attack on terminals can evoke a paging storm, which will lead to CPU peak and frequent overloading of the signaling processing board. In general, fast dormancy and alwayson applications have made smartphone a main contributor to an MBB networks signaling traffic. Huawei statistics based on 30 MBB networks show that in 2010, the wireless connection signaling (service request/Iu release) per 3G user increased by 157.81%, and the wireless connection signaling took up 86% of the total signaling.

Fast dormancy
Smartphones consume large amount of power due to their large screen, long online time, and diversified mobile applications. To save power, smartphones have adopted fast dormancy technology. If there is no data transmission within a short time (usually 3 to 10 seconds), smartphones will automatically abort the wireless connection and switch to the idle mode. The connection will be reestablished when the data transmission is needed. All these generate large amounts of signaling traffic.

Always-on applications
Always-on applications like instant messaging (IM) and social networking services (SNS) etc. are popular among MBB users. These applications not only occupy resources related to wireless carrier, PDP, and IP, but also ask the client devices to send heartbeat messages to the server every several minutes in order to remain online. This also generates a heavy signaling load.

Taking proactive measures


To better solve the challenges brought by smartphones, operators need to plan their networks properly, and enhance the ability in signaling process and data transmission. In addition, operators need to optimize their network resources and deployment to ease the signaling traffic, guard against the signaling storm, and ensure stable network operation. Operators can also explore the features and impact of smartphones on their MBB networks so as to gain a new profit-generating model.

Abnormal signaling
A smartphone makes its best to be always online. If the activation fails due to breakdown of network node such as AAA or OCS server, no service subscription, and insufficient capacity, the smartphone will repeatedly try to activate PDP context. As a result, the activation 19
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Differentiated network management

Network visualization: Smartphones a re va r i o u s a n d t h e i r i m p a c t s o n networks are different. Huawei data shows that Android devices generate three times more signaling traffic than iPhone, and 22 times more than feature phones. The traffic models vary greatly due to different portions of smartphones on MBB networks. Huaweis visualization solution helps operators gain insight into their networks and understand the quantities, percentages, and signaling distributions of various smartphones. Operators can learn of the change in terminal types, quantities, and traffic models in a timely manner. In this context, they can accurately evaluate and forecast their network resources to avoid network congestion and properly build a highquality, safe, and stable network. D i f f e re n t i a t e d m a n a g e m e n t : With the increased penetration of smartphones, operators will face more complex and variable network resource usage. A differentiated resource and capacity management solution is needed to analyze network and discover resource bottlenecks in a timely manner. Huaweis network capacity management service monitors smartphone distribution, service composition, signaling and traffic model, then analyzes the usage of network capacity, transmission bandwidth, signal processing resource, IP address resource etc. This helps quickly identify resource bottlenecks, provide improvement advice, and achieve differentiated capacity management. Enhanced SGSN: Facing the impact of smartphones, network equipment should feature large capacity, powerful processing ability, and sustainable expansion to cope with the growing signaling and traffic pressures. Ba s e d o n t h e ATC A p l a t f o r m , Huawei SGSN is known for its large capacity, high integration, and high throughput. The SGSN is able to process 24,000 sessions per second, accommodate 12 million concurrent users and 24 million PDPs. This helps

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dramatically reduce the number of network elements and simplify the networks. Currently, Huawei SGSN has been widely deployed and gained increasing popularity among operators. For an operator with seven million MBB users and 100% smartphone penetration, only three sets of Huawei SGSN is needed (three more for 100% redundancy).

Relieving signaling impact


To r e l i e v e t h e s i g n a l i n g i m p a c t f r o m smartphones, operators can start from optimizing their network configuration and deployment, besides enhancing the equipment capability. Deployment optimization: Huawei network deployment optimization service relieves the signaling and resource pressures produced by smartphones. The optimization service covers network timer, IP address resource, network security, service configuration, and more. S m a r t D i r e c t Tu n n e l : D i r e c t Tu n n e l technology can help operators save investment on the user plan. However, with direct tunnel, both establishing and releasing a wireless connection lead to PDP updates in the Gn interface, dramatically increasing the GGSN signaling load. Smartphones make signaling overload or congestion easier in the direct tunnel scenario due to its active wireless signaling behavior. As a real example from an operator, when the number of direct tunnel users reaches 5%, the PDP update increases 600% prior to the launch of direct tunnel. When the number reaches 10%, the PDP update increases 11 times. Smartphones make direct tunnel a nightmare for GGSN. Huaweis smart direct tunnel solution adopts two-tunnel for smartphones, while direct tunnel for feature phones. This greatly reduces the number of signals processed by GGSN, and avoids signaling congestion.

time signaling load rush. This ensures a reliable and stable system, helping operators smoothly face the signaling storm. Suppressing the storm : Huawei provides a solution for the signaling storm triggered by terminals with no service subscription or by faulty network elements. The solution monitors the PDP activation signals of terminals. When the activation attempts exceed the predefined threshold, the solution automatically applies countermeasures based on terminal type, and eliminates the abnormal or repeated activations. Huawei smart paging solution is applicable for the signaling storm triggered by virus attack. GGSN first identifies the service type of the data packets and notifies SGSN; then SGSN decides whether to page based on the service type, service priority, and system load level. The SGSN will prioritize the services with higher priority, and discards the low-priority package if the system is overloaded. This reduces the signal load to the network, while ensuring the experience of high-priority user.

Ongoing innovation of SmartLab


Huawei SmartLab is an innovative lab that concentrates on smar tphone tests, mobile applications, traffic models, and solutions. Its research covers four major mobile operating systems of iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry, together with their various versions. The lab has also researched into applications like IM, VoIP, SNS, Streaming, and P2P. SmartLab has established long-term partnerships with operators worldwide. Joint efforts include testing the new features and impacts of smartphones and applications, identifying risks and new revenuegrowth point. Smartphones are changing the user habits and increasing operators income. Challenges and opportunities always come together smartphones are also bringing the signaling storm. The Huawei smartphone solution effectively reduces the signaling storm and ensures network and service stability. With its visualization capability, the solution helps operators precisely evaluate and effectively plan the network, provides warning for insufficient capacity, and avoids unnecessary network expansion. Editor: Pan Tao pantao@huawei.com
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Preventing abnormal storms


Operators need to act actively to the abnormal signaling storm caused by smartphones to ensure the network stability. In addition, active measures are needed to prevent the signaling storm in advanced. Guard against the storm: The Huawei SGSN provides powerful overload control and can ideally guard against signaling storm. The system can preserve 80% processing capability under a 10time signaling load rush, and 50% under a 64-

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Main Topic

Realizing the full potential of SingleRAN

Realizing the full potential of SingleRAN


Delivering exible resource usage and reduced OPEX, the SingleRAN solution has been playing a key role in building an efficient radio network, and its continual improvements can help achieve the full potential of SingleRAN.
By Bernhard Scholl

O
Bernhard Scholl joined T-Mobile International (now DTAG) in 2006. He is now Vice President for Radio Network System Design responsible for the GSM, UMTS and LTE radio network design in the various Deutsche Telekom affiliates. Prior to his current position he worked for Siemens Communications as Product Manager for UMTS base stations.

perating in 50 countries, we have about 150,000 base stations on different networks, with the smallest network having about 300 base stations, while larger countries have more than 50,000 base stations. We have nearly 100% 2G coverage in all our operations, but 3G is less; typically it is between 60 and 90% in different countries. We are adding LTE into our network portfolio by starting limited deployment. We also have around 4000 hotspots covered by WLAN. Additionally, we have Flash-OFDMM, 3G TDD, and CDMA systems; however, these three have been deployed on a smaller scale. Our major technologies are GSM, UMTS and LTE for wide coverage and macro deployment, due to the mature ecosystem. We a r e d e p l o y i n g S i n g l e R A N currently to all GSM sites, which are subject to the network modernization in Germany, hence 12,700 sites. The SingleRAN solution will make our network flexible and cost-efficient, while providing the best customer services.

Accommodating different standards


As an operator, when we deploy LTE or carry out modernization, we

would really want everything we build to accommodate other technologies such as GSM and UMTS, or combine the modernization directly with LTE deployment. When building a radio network, we previously selected a supplier for GSM, a second one for UMTS, and may be a third one for LTE. SingleRAN has enabled us to move away from this multi-supplier model by using multiple technologies per site. Huaweis base station, for example, can accommodate 900MHz and 1800MHz in one rack. Being highly integrated, these installations occupy much less footprint compared with the previous generations of RAN equipment. SingleRAN modules can be reused for different standards. This helps us reduce significantly the operational costs regarding spare parts, logistics, and training, while providing higher f l e x i b i l i t y f o r i n c re a s i n g t r a f f i c . In a d d i t i o n , t h e s i m p l e n e t w o r k architecture has also protected our investment, thanks to its single transport interface for all backhaul and the capability of handling either GSM, UMTS, or LTE in the current application case. Accommodating multiple standards in both the RF and transport layers, however, the current SingleRAN BTS architecture can be further improved at the baseband layer, which is still composed of standard specific modules.

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Huawei Communicate

In the future, the baseband should be capable of handling multiple technologies and provide redundancy across the modules.

Enhancing resource efficiency


Another major benefit brought by SingleRAN is flexible resource usage, including spectrum usage and using the air interface in the most efficient way with different technologies in parallel. Today, the most efficient power amplifier is the small narrowband power amplifier. On the one hand, we require increased power amplifier bandwidth to cover full band or multiple bands, and cope with fragmented spectrum. In addition, as we want to prepare for network sharing and protect our investment, we need to have a power amplifier with a full frequency band, which we can use for the flexible design of network sharing and have the highest efficiency in power consumption. We also need increased output power to cope with increasing traffic. On the other hand, we need to reduce power c o n s u m p t i o n t o d e c re a s e c a r b o n footprint and OPEX in general. In order to solve this dilemma and achieve the optimal balance between the output power, bandwidth and power consumption, SingleRAN should evolve and offer a more flexible power amplifier solution by which operational state is changeable via software.

researching the software management SingleRAN has enabled of SingleRAN, which aims to keep the us to unify our O&M teams software dependency between the GSM, UMTS and LTE parts as low as possible into one. We are also and minimize the downtime due to software upgrade. expected to have a single operation system, which can Single transmission exibly handle SingleRAN. helps to reduce the In this case, every SingleRAN t r aSingleRAN nsmission costs and helps the network architecture migrate to single network element can be IP-based transmission. Take Deutsche controlled by one network Telekom for example: we currently have more than 500 BSCs in Germany, and element manager. about 22 RNCs. In the future, we will flexibly handle SingleRAN. In this case, every SingleRAN network element can be controlled by one network element manager, while a consistency check can be delivered for multi-standard configuration management. Other features are also important, for example, plug and play when you plug a network device, e.g. a base station, it will be configured and network integrated in an automatic procedure. This functionality has currently been provided for the LTE as part of the SingleRAN solution, and the same functionality for the GSM and UMTS parts should also become available. This can greatly enhance operation efficiency.

have only one transport network and a co-location or co-rack solution of BSCs and RNCs. We will also introduce the IPSec solution for GSM and LTE traffic, including UMTS O&M traffic.

Enhancing resilience
To a v o i d s i n g l e - p o i n t f a i l u r e , SingleRAN requires additional redundancy and resilience concepts depending on the site priority and the required network quality. In this case, a network swap becomes quite c o m p l i c a t e d . In a b i g a re a , a s i n Germany, a swap will involve about one million customers on GSM, UMTS and LTE networks. We need an intelligent redundancy mechanism. For LTE, we can easily connect two different core networks; but for GSM and UMTS, it is not available yet. We are looking into these challenges and trying to improve reliability in order to avoid one single fault on a site causing massive loss of communications. Delivering flexible resource usage and reduced OPEX, the SingleRAN solution has been playing a key role in building an efficient radio network. We have already reaped the SingleRAN benefits and we expect to see more improvements to achieve the full potential benefits of this solution.
Editor: Michael huangzhuojian@huawei.com
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Decrease software dependency


In t o d a ys t y p i c a l d e p l oy m e n t situation, we would have three independent software packages, each to manage GSM, UMTS and LTE system. SingleRAN combines the individual packages, and a software upgrade enables the smooth evolution from GSM and UMTS to LTE. The introduction of LTE means an upgrade of the GSM b a s e s t a t i o n s . So m e t e s t e f f o r t i s required to ensure the high reliability of the SingleRAN radio network. We are

Changing O&M mindset


SingleRAN calls for a change of mindset. There are separate GSM, UMTS and LTE standards, and we usually assign separate expert terms and operation teams to tackle GSM, UMTS, and LTE networks. SingleRAN has enabled us to unify our O&M teams into one. We are also expected to have a single operation system, which can

22

Grameenphone secures the future


In 2010, Grameenphone (GP), the leading Bangladeshi mobile operator, and Huawei jointly began carrying out a country-wide radio access network swap project. The Head of Radio Planning at GP, Syed Md. Samshur Rahman, says that the project, which deploys Huaweis industry-leading SingleRAN solution, will bring increased coverage, meet the growing demand for data, retain the operators quality position in the market and above all make the network compatible with future technology.
By Ranajit S. Dam

Challenges and opportunities


COMMUNICATE: Can you describe the market background in the lead-up to the initiation of the swap project? Rahman: GP initiated the radio access network swap project in the middle of 2010. It was a six-operator market at that time, with a 60 million subscriber base. GP had a 44% share of the market, making it the largest operator in one of the fastest growing mobile markets in South Asia. However, even though it was a fast-growing market, the mobile sector in Bangladesh had great potential, as penetration was just 40% at that time. At that point, operators were expecting the majority of the traffic to come from rural areas. In addition, GP faced the challenge of retaining its distinct quality position in the local market. Also, like many other markets we were seeing massive growth in data traffic, which was one of the distinct features of the market. COMMUNICATE: What were the challenges that you wanted to overcome by swapping the radio access network? Rahman: We had to confront specific challenges prior to the swap project. Take our rural expansion strategy, for example. This was a challenge for GP, because when you want to develop a network in rural areas, costs are higher. On the other hand, this is a low-ARPU market. So, TCO was an overriding issue. Another predominant factor was the prevailing power

Syed Md. Samshur Rahman

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A new-generation access solution like SingleRAN is a suitable option as we think it to be capable of meeting the majority of our requirements. GP also expects to cut its power consumption by up to 40% through SingleRAN.

shortage all over the country; we were searching for a solution which could help us reduce power consumption. Finally, we were struggling to accommodate growth in data traffic while maintaining an expected level of QoS as we waited to evolve to 3G. From all of the above aspects, it was important for GPs business sustainability to find a suitable business partner that could provide a cost-effective network solution, was smart in accommodating data traffic through EGPRS, and would take care of OPEX, especially when power consumption was a matter of concern.

between dual band in 2G and some trunking efficiency enhancement options in the PS domain which are suitable for our network topology. Finally, one point I think I need to mention is about infrastructure sharing, recently introduced in the local market, which has become popular in a very short time. Since we consider GP to be the pioneer, Im hopeful Huaweis solutions will help us in terms of enhancing and promoting the business. COMMUNICATE: How do you expect SingleRAN will assist you in building an environmentally friendly network? Rahman: Our expectation in this regard is high, and we believe that Huawei, as our partner, will help us reduce power consumption significantly. From our trials prior to deploying Huaweis newgeneration SDR-capable modules, we have seen power savings of up to 50%. But in practice, we think, this will be somewhere between 35% and 40%. Once we are able to dismantle the majority of our air-conditioning units from the access sites, Im sure GP will be one step closer to becoming a green company. COMMUNICATE: With the Bangladesh telecom market beginning to move towards 3G, what features and modules has GP, as the leading mobile operator, adopted till date to enable smooth and cost-effective evolution to a 3G network in the future? Rahman: One of motivations in initiating this access network swap was 3G compatibility. The hardware we are purchasing is 3G compatible, and we have an SDR-capable radio unit at present. So hopefully, if technology-agnostic spectrum licenses are issued in the future, these preparations will help
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The benefits of SingleRAN


COMMUNICATE: Why did you choose SingleRAN? Rahman: We had been searching for a costeffective, compact, high-capacity solution which would help us reduce costs effectively, both in the core and access networks. Now this is a very important part of our business strategy. A newgeneration access solution like SingleRAN is a suitable option as we think it to be capable of meeting the majority of our requirements. The multi carrier technology in MRFU, we hope, will help GP create an optimum cost margin. The product seems robust in terms of environmental sustainability and we are looking forward to eliminating our air-conditioning system which is a key contributor to our access network OPEX. GP also expects to cut its power consumption by up to 40% through SingleRAN. In addition, I have seen some noteworthy features in the Huawei BSS like power sharing in hardware, efficient data traffic management

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us upgrade to 3G very quickly. Apart from this, I think the transport layer could be a major issue in our network. We have already implemented A over IP Solution in our core part. The process is underway to implement Abis over IP, which I think will help prepare the access transport layer. We are also using DWDM in our network, which will help enhance IP capacity further. Additionally, we are enhancing the capacity of the PS core network at the same time. We are confident that these preparations will lead to smooth transition to 3G.

Securing the future


COMMUNICATE: Operators today are looking to transition to an All-IP network. How are you preparing for the same? Rahman: Given the massive growth in data traffic worldwide, this is certainly a major focus area of operators. You have to get prepared from every aspect, from radio access, from transmission and also from core, to cater for the growth. We have already introduced A over IP Solution, so this is one step towards All-IP solution. And we are currently evaluating Abis over IP, and hopefully we will be able to start implementation by the end of this year. Apart from this, we are getting prepared in terms of access network capacity by introducing hybrid microwave and also exploring the feasibility of developing partnerships with fiber optics networks and infrastructure solution providers. In addition to SingleRAN, we will also deploy Huaweis SingleCORE, ngHLR (nextgeneration home location register), and IP STP (signaling transfer point) solutions. We hope the SingleCORE solution, with ATCA platform-based mobile softswitches, will help us build a more robust and flexible mobile network with a highly reliable and simplified architecture. All of this is expected to help GP move to an All-IP network, most probably by next year. COMMUNICATE: What is your future plan when it comes to evolving the mobile network? How do you expect Huawei to work with you in this area? Rahman: Like many other operators all over the world, GP will face challenges accommodating data traffic. Currently we are deploying SDRcapable radio and I think in near future if the 25
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regulator allows us to use technology-agnostic licensing, this will be give us the flexibility to select multi-access feasibility. And considering evolution of technology, I think HSPA or even HSPA+ will be a strong contender for our network in the near future and from a long term perspective LTE will be a good choice maybe in the next couple of years. The way I see it, it might not be good enough to cope with the data growth and eventually we might need to think about some other alternatives. I think it would be a good idea to have some hybrid form of access technology; it could be HSPA or LTE together with fixed broadband. In parallel, we need to promote localized solutions like pico and femtocells for dense metropolitan areas. Taking all of this into consideration, it is important for Grameenphone to find a suitable and efficient business partner, a vendor who can provide support in a majority, if not all, issues. I am sure our business partnership with Huawei will help us retain our business position, sustain our brand image and afford the capability to deliver to our subscribers the service we commit to. COMMUNICATE: How would you describe GPs partnership with Huawei till date? Rahman: The way the Huawei and GP teams worked together was a landmark. Some of the challenges we faced during implementation phase were pretty new and unique in nature that left a significant impact on quality. I really appreciate the approach we have demonstrated as a single team. I have been in this industry from almost the beginning of my career; it was really one of my greatest experiences. Prior to the initiation of this project, we had some expectations from Huawei, but we also had some doubts. Some of the specifications that Huawei provided at that time were, frankly speaking, too good to be true. In time, Huawei has demonstrated its strength in some key areas. My personal assessment is that Huawei is very strong in the PS domain. I could mention one example: Huaweis new generation RF product has a robust link budget resulting in effective enhanced coverage, especially in rural areas. If Huawei continues to treat operators as trusted partners, and lead them on the track towards excellence, my personal belief is that entire industry will benefit from this. Editor: Zhu Wenli zhuwenli@huawei.com

INTERVIEW

Convergence in the EPC age


Gabriel Brown, Senior Analyst with Heavy Reading, focuses on wireless data networking technologies with reference to how these technologies impact the wider mobile data services market. In this interview with COMMUNICATE, Brown shares his views on networks, technologies, and products in the EPC (Evolved Packet Core) age.
By Chen Jia

Convergence: The inevitable trend


COMMUNICATE: Global operators have been increasing investment in the field of mobile broadband services since 2010. Major operators have started or are preparing to build commercial or trial LTE-EPC networks. Speaking of building new LTE-EPC networks, interconnectivity between LTE and GSM/ UMTS, and network planning remain two concerns. What approach do you think operators will take to building networks? Brown: Operators today face a situation where GSM, UMTS, and LTE technologies coexist and will continue to do so for several years. They are therefore looking at how they can rationalize core network infrastructure and where possible move to a single, common core with the capability to support diversified services and technologies. Issues that merit attention include: First, of course, a focus on solutions that balance and moderate CAPEX and OPEX. During the early period of network rollout, when subscriber numbers and usage on new LTE networks are low, costs need to be controlled, but any EPC deployment must also be able to scale rapidly as LTE takes off. Second, there is software-defined core network equipment. Decoupling of application software from platform hardware has created opportunities for product innovation in the core network. Vendors are now able to more quickly

Gabriel Brown, Senior Analyst with Heavy Reading

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take advantage of advances in processor technology to rapidly evolve products. Operators can deploy equipment that is software-configurable across the generations of access technology, and which can be rapidly updated with new features through software. Third, the interoperability between LTE and GSM/UMTS and prevalence of smartphones pose unprecedented challenges to operators. The explosion in signaling traffic on mobile networks provides a strong argument for an integrated core network based on EPC. For example, an integrated MME-SGSN node provides a single mobility management instance that internalizes signaling flows within the platform that arise from LTE-toUMTS handovers. This has the potential to reduce integration complexity, lower operational costs, and improve the user experience. We believe that operators will evolve their networks to converged, flat architectures that will support GSM/UMTS/LTE access and, ultimately non-3GPP access as well. COMMUNICATE: As you pointed out, convergence will be the theme for future network deployment. In your opinion, what are the network technology drivers of a converged network? Brown: A common mobile packet core based on EPC is attractive to many operators. The very first commercial LTE networks have typically deployed EPC in parallel to the classic 2G/3G packet-switch core for reasons of risk reduction, expediency, and product availability. This will change as vendors release more capable products and we would expect operators to cap investment in classic 3G equipment and migrate to the new EPC platform over time. A combined GSM/UMTS/LTE bearer plane appears logical. Theres broad industry agreement that combined GGSN and PGW nodes in the bearer plane are advantageous from a CAPEX perspective, obviously, but perhaps more importantly due to a desire for common services, policy enforcement and charging across HSPA+ and LTE. With the growing adoption of multimode devices, this will be a common requirement. Some high-profile operators have already successfully implemented converged solutions in the bearer plane. Deutsche Telekom, for example, has adopted gateway common supplier for GGSN/ SGW/PGW nodes and Verizon Wireless has been

able to integrate the PGW for LTE access and HSGW for 3G access. There is far greater uncertainty about how to integrate control-plane nodes. The nature of the Evolved Packet System (EPS) architecture has an impact on packet core platform choices and product design. Handover requires the participation of core network nodes since there is no direct interface between eNodeB and RNC/ BSC. This results in frequent signaling interactions between SGSN and MME. In a combined MMESGSN, such interactions are internalized within the platform, which should improve operational efficiency, improve the user experience by reducing the latency and improve the reliability of LTE-toUMTS handovers. That said, integration of SGSN and MME is impacted by many other factors the type of handover required, the impact of direct tunnel and SGSN pooling, and the differing deployment models for MME and SGSN nodes, for example.

Convergence in control plane


COMMUNICATE: Operators and vendors are paying close attention to the situation in the control plane. Can you briefly analyze the critical issues in this area? Brown: Perhaps the most challenging aspect of EPC deployment is integration with the existing core network elements including the 2G/3G packet switch core, the circuit-switch domain, and with the services-layer infrastructure. This is a major challenge of architecture design and network planning and, from an implementation perspective, is perhaps the most technically complex part of an LTE network deployment. This complexity is unavoidable. But by combining the MME and SGSN elements, some of it can be mitigated. With both applications running within the platform, on common software, some of the integration challenges and responsibility for interoperability is transferred from the operator to the equipment vendor. Moreover, there could be integration cost savings from the fact that existing SGSNs wont need to be upgraded to S4 interfaces (which instead would be internalized), and these will be supported by the convergent node. In theory, there are CAPEX reductions available from integrated SGSN and MME equipment

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because only one node is needed instead of two. Reduction in operating costs should be achievable, as ongoing running costs related to network monitoring, troubleshooting, software updates, and so on, are reduced considerably. There is a drawback, however, in that SGSNs are typically deployed at one level of distribution out from the GGSN in the core by virtue of their role in mobility management and user-plane aggregation. MME equipment does not have a user-plane function and can potentially be more efficiently deployed centrally. This increases the complexity of the operator decision to consolidate core network elements. The second critical factor relates to mobility management and LTE-to-UMTS handover. Much of the signaling load between SGSN and MME is generated by handovers. Integration of MME and SGSN nodes will optimize the signaling process, thereby enhancing the user experience and making more efficient use of network resources. There are not yet capable LTE/UMTS handsets on the market, and handover capability has not yet been implemented in live LTE/UMTS networks. However, it was observed from GSM/UMTS networks that the integration of 2G and 3G SGSNs increased handover success rates by eight percent and reduced latency by 30 percent, While not an exact parallel, this provides some guidance for the type of performance gains that might be achieved with MME-SGSN integration. Such improvement will be important, particularly in the early phase of LTE network when interactions between LTE and GSM/UMTS networks may be frequent. Smartphone usage patterns means that reducing signaling load is a priority for many operators and converged MME-SGSN nodes can help with this. According to data from Huawei, for inter-RAT handovers, signaling can be reduced by 20.3% and 31.8% in Gn/Gp-based handover and S4-based handover scenarios respectively. There are of course some issues to be addressed. One Tunnel (also known as Direct Tunnel), for example, is a way to offload user-plane processing from SGSN devices by sending traffic direct from the RNC to the GGSN. So far, a majority of operators have tended to use One Tunnel for dongle traffic and retain the classic dual-tunnel model for smartphone users to avoid over-loading the GGSN with transaction-related service requests. How the use of One Tunnel evolves will influence the decision to combine SGSN and MME functions.

Convergence at product level


COMMUNICATE: The realization of the above mentioned benefits depends on product designs of equipment vendors. What do you think embodies the core competitiveness of products? Brown: The ability to integrate functions and scale control- and user-plane really comes down to the underlying hardware and software platforms chosen by vendors. It has to consciously be part of the vendors platform choice; trying to force a control-plane node into a data-plane role, or vice versa, doesnt really work over the longer term. Common hardware comprises sharing of racks, chassis, boards, and even physical interfaces among GSM, UMTS, and LTE. Board-level resource sharing is most challenging, but is now emerging as a must-have baseline capability. Sharing of CPUs, memory, and hard disk, is included in this. Sharing software resources is technically challenging and is multi-faceted. Perhaps most important is that a single user context can be supported by a common software resource, regardless of whether the user is connected by GSM/ UMTS or LTE. In this way, GSM/UMTS subscriber capacity, and signaling/forwarding processing, can be released to be re-used by LTE in the process of migrating the subscriber base. The subscriber license should be valid across technologies, so no new license is needed as GSM/UMTS subscribers are migrated to LTE. To conclude, operators should pay close attention to the underlying platform choices made by their prospective vendors. The most competitive platforms and products will provide the flexibility to evolve the network as the subscriber base and service mix change. Even if the operator does not wish to integrate network elements at the outset of the LTE deployment, the ability to combine assets at a later date has tremendous option-value. Being isolated with single-mode mobile packet core equipment will prove costly in the medium and long term. Our research shows that a majority of operators would like to deploy a common EPCbased core and I believe the market is moving strongly in that direction. Editor: Xu Ping x.ping@huawei.com

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MBB: The cost conundrum


How can operators keep costs down as they offer mobile broadband? Informa Telecoms and Medias Dimitris Mavrakis provides some clues.
By Ranajit S. Dam
s mobile broadband becomes ubiquitous globally, operators around the world face some similar problems: keeping CAPEX and OPEX low, securing return on investment, and dealing with users and devices that consume different amounts of bandwidth. Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, is an expert on mobile broadband and LTE, and he offers some pointers on making MBB profitable.

Cost challenges
COMMUNICATE: What are the major challenges facing operators looking to keep CAPEX and OPEX down as they offer mobile broadband? Mavrakis: This is a good question, and a multi-faceted one. Let me try and answer it in two ways. First, lets talk about developed markets, like the U.S., the UK and Germany. There, operators are faced with increasing traffic they have to manage; they not only have to carry this traffic, but also offer a good user experience. So they are making continuous investments, both in terms of CAPEX and OPEX, in order to meet this demand, but the ROI is not guaranteed. If you look at what operators have been marketing in these past years, it has primarily been mobile broadband subscriptions through USB dongles. And these bring significantly lower profits when compared with smartphones. So we are seeing a shift now, with operators trying to market smartphones more. Vodafone recently said: If a high-powered broadband user with a USB modem moved to another network, it would free up space for ten smartphone users.

Dimitris Mavrakis is a Senior Analyst with Informa Telecoms and Media. He is part of the Networks team, where he covers a range of topics including Next Generation Networks, IMS, LTE, WiMAX, OFDM, core networks, network APIs and identifying emerging strategies for the mobile business.

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Thus there are many challenges: keeping CAPEX and OPEX low, handling this traffic and also marketing it correctly to end users. In developing markets, like Africa and Asia, the challenge is to improve the penetration of mobile broadband services. So operators are usually building coverage, and then theyre expecting subscribers to come. Its a challenge, especially in big markets like China and India, because they have to build a huge network, with very high costs. So ROI may not be possible in the first few years. And thats also a big challenge: to put so much investment into the network in this current economic climate, and then wait for consumers to come. So there are challenges for operators from both developed markets and developing markets. COMMUNICATE: What can operators do to reduce cost per GB in LTE? Mavrakis: One parenthesis here is that the cost per GB is a very subjective metric, and it only makes sense when the networks are well utilized. But if were talking about return on investment, and the total cost of a network, there are many things that the operator can do. These things usually depend on the market. For example, a lot of operators will be able to share parts of the infrastructure, whether that is cell site sharing, backhaul sharing and other technology that they already have. But usually operators have a legacy infrastructure, and that means for LTE, they will require new base stations. The mechanics of the deployment can provide some cost savings. being viewed as the cash cow, if you may. COMMUNICATE: How can operators costeffectively accommodate the needs of both heavy and casual users? Mavrakis: This is both the beauty and the curse of mobile broadband. With voice, every user is the same. But in data, theyre not the same. A user may be a very light user, or a very heavy user. Traditionally, operators would charge the same. So they were using a voice-centric approach in mobile data. Its not the way it should be done. Now, with tiered pricing plans and bundles, this is starting to change. But it requires subscriber education as well. So there are several things the operator can do to increase revenue. Volume is one. You can have tiers of gigabytes that cascade. Some operators try to do speeds different speeds at different prices, but that is very tricky. And there are other things, like, for example, marketing synergies with other products. But it seems operators are still feeling their way around. They are focusing now on volume, but they could also try time and speed.

An ideal solution
COMMUNICATE: What kind of solution will help operators secure ROI? And how does Huaweis Single Strategy measure up in this respect? Mavrakis: Operators need a solution thats futureproof, as future-proof as possible. Also, it depends on what legacy they have, and what costs they can save; how much OPEX they can save by investing CAPEX. A lot of operators may completely replace all platforms with a single one. This may cost more in the short term, but will save them a lot of OPEX in the long term. The ROI will take longer than expected, because its a large investment up front, but most operators are in the process of refreshing their technology, because they want to support different networks GSM, UMTS, LTE, and even LTEAdvanced on a single platform. As for Huaweis Single Strategy: It has been very well received by operators. Some operators are using it to upgrade their networks; while some operators are using it as an LTE standalone. Also, it has the capability to shift to LTE-Advanced and other technologies and spectrums. And for these reasons, it has been well received. Editor: Long Ji longji@huawei.com
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Making MBB profitable


COMMUNICATE: According to you, what is the single biggest driver of profitability in MBB services? Mavrakis: It is clearly smartphones. Smartphones are the new driver of mobile data traffic. Weve seen the emergence of smartphones that cost less than USD100. And really, this is a great opportunity for operator to penetrate subscriber segments that were not possible before. Earlier, smartphones used to cost USD500 700, and these were offered in a subsidized way for the mass market. But with these cheap smartphones, and Android especially, operators have the opportunity to convert feature phone customers to smartphone customers, and get them to use data services. So in general, it is smartphones that are

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How to Operate

Cloud computing stepped decisively into the spotlight in 2011 with the emergence of clouds in various areas including computing, storage, security, and testing. This has encouraged operators such as Vodafone, China Mobile, and China Telecom to rapidly enter the cloud arena. What is the essence of cloud computing and how will it impact the Business Support System (BSS)?

Exploring the cloudified BSS


By Yin Chunlei

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y changing the business model from buying to leasing, cloud computing will inevitably change the division of work of all parties in the entire BSS ecosystem, including managed service providers, integrated ser vice providers, and software and hardware vendors. In cloud computing era, operators will outsource their BSS to cloud service provider and become end user of BSS cloud, allowing them to focus on SLAs and customer experience. BSS cloud service providers can also share resources on a larger scale through virtualized hardware and multiSEP 2011 . ISSUE 61

tenant architecture software, providing more operators with cheaper services, superior experiences, and improved efficiency. BSS vendors must prioritize mergers and acquisitions as long-term strategies through which to vertically consolidate the value chain and secure dominance in terms of market share and technologies. Only in this way can they survive and thrive by providing better BSS cloud service. BSS can be deployed in private or public cloud. Given the current technologies, the Internet-based public

cloud applications are more tolerant to delays, downtime, and data leakage. However, telecom operators have higher requirements on the service availability of a BSS. BSS failures can lead to decreased customer satisfaction and revenue loss. In addition, BSS customer data is a critical information asset and operators cannot control the data leakage in a public cloud. Therefore, most operators will lease or construct private clouds for BSS over the next five years. BSS must be cloudified to build a BSS could, and we will further discuss the features and principles of a cloudified BSS.

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Features of a cloudified BSS


W h a t a re t h e f e a t u re s a n d b e n e f i t s o f a cloudified BSS? According to The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, a cloudified BSS should have the following six key features: 1) Enterprise-wide sharing: A cloudified BSS should maximize the IT resource sharing rather than using separate IT systems for each region or subsidiary. The BSS can then encapsulate applications as services, and flexibly support business processes and coordination within or among enterprises by orchestrating these services. Additionally, multi-tenant mode enables a cloudified BSS to support autonomous and differentiated operations within different regions or subsidiaries. 2) SLA-driven dynamic deployment and scheduling, dynamic scaling-on-demand, and selfhealing mechanisms: The dynamic deployment and scheduling mechanism dynamically deploys or schedules applications based on SLAs to ensure that hardware can be fully shared and optimally utilized; dynamic scaling-on-demand evaluates service or data volumes to optimally pool resources and provide services that guarantee SLAs; selfhealing automates the troubleshooting of failures based on SLAs without affecting service quality or user experience. 3) Convenient access anywhere, anytime: Customers can smoothly access services from any access point via compact or virtual terminal devices. 4) Fully virtualized architecture: The storage, computer, and network infrastructure are all virtualized, while physical locations are transparent. Application software is independent of hardware. Multiple applications can run on the same physical computer; or multiple physical computers can be a logical computer to run a large-scale application transparently. 5) Dynamic data distribution, real-time synchronization, and lifecycle management: Dynamic data distribution in a data-centric context enables the BSS to support linear scalability and leverage hardware resources; real-time synchronization ensures high system availability; data lifecycle management serves as the basis for both dynamic data distribution and real-time synchronization. 6) Automated intelligent management: This covers the end-to-end monitoring and control

of the entire computing environment including applications, middleware and hardware. Little manual intervention is needed as the system automates SLA-based deployment and scheduling, dynamic scaling-on-demand, and self-healing. Realization of these six features position the cloudified BSS as an evolved system that can realize the goals beyond traditional BSSs: lowering construction and O&M costs; ensuring better service quality and QoE; adapting to rapidly changing business models and requirements. However, the SLA-based self-healing mechanism accelerates troubleshooting and improves QoE, full resource sharing reduces expenditure on hardware, and automated system management lowers O&M costs. The cloudified BSS differs from a virtualized BSS in several ways. Virtualization generally refers to the logical representation of physical resources; for example, host virtualization divides one physical host into multiple logical hosts, storage virtualization divides a physical storage pool into multiple logical storage devices, and desktop virtualization centralizes scattered physical desktop clients into one logical desktop client. Virtualization may enable hardware resourcesharing, but it cannot make a cloudified BSS. Storage virtualization, for example, is unable to dynamically distribute application data; equally, host virtualization cannot converge small-granularity hardware. While an important supplement for cloud computing, virtualization does not underpin the conversion process to a cloudified BSS.

Migrating to a cloudified BSS


Realizing the six major characteristics of a cloudified BSS to deliver its expected benefits presents considerable challenges in terms of operation management, processes, architecture, technology, and O&M management.

Integrated operations
The cloudified BSS is designed to enhance operating efficiency and lower costs, especially IT costs. Operators generally adopt separate operation management, for example, setting up different business units for fixed, mobile and broadband services while establishing branches based on regional divisions. Without operating synergy,
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How to Operate
Exploring the cloudified BSS this leads to poor efficiency and degraded service experience, meaning that inter-departmental service flows need to be streamlined to synergize. The transformation of operation modes and service flows requires management restructuring, which would take a considerable amount of time. Operating synergy not only enhances competiveness and efficiency, but also optimizes the sharing of IT resources such as hardware and software. Another difficulty involves the support mechanism for differentiated operations. To do so, operators need to convert business capabilities into services and then flexibly manage these services and their related processes. two to three times the average configuration) to meet peak hour traffic. Moreover, operators opt for static hardware configuration, which fails to reduce traffic pressures as applications have different peak hours. In this context, hardware utilization can be lowered to 30 to 40%. Applications must be deployed dynamically to maximize the hardware utilization rate and lower the IT costs. For example, a settlement system can free idle capacity to the CRM and billing systems during the day.

Isolated service and technology layers


The service functions in the system architecture of the service platform must be isolated from the infrastructure, including hardware, middleware, and databases. As a result, service functionality does not rely on a specific technology and the service platform would employ a distributed application and data structure. Isolating the service platform from the infrastructure also ensures that the optimal technology is adopted in terms of cost and efficiency. For example, a traditional BSS adapts well to centralized architecture in minicomputer mode, yet it cannot use lower cost blade servers. The rapid growth in users and services may compromise the system reliability and performance offered by centralized architecture; for example, a minor fault can affect QoE for a large user base. Migrating a legacy BSS to distributed database architecture involves a massive workload and is impractical. To ensure optimal cost and efficiency, the service functions and infrastructure should be removed from the BSS architecture.

Platform to meet SLAs


In terms of applications, a cloudified BSS requires full isolation between the functional and non-functional features. The functional features include business logic; the non-functional features cover system deployment, performance, reliability, scalability, and maintenance. The cloudified BSS can realize SLA-based deployment and scheduling, dynamic scaling-ondemand and self-healing without complicating operations. This assures SLAs through the service platform alone, allowing presentation logic, functional logic, data storage, and access logic to exist outside of the SLA. The service platform can deploy applications across the optimal hardware such as a highly reliable cluster based on a given SLA. As SLAs may specify times for response, processing and interruptions, the system can monitor SLA requirements and implement dynamic scaling to meet these requirements. If a service platform detects an increased traffic load but the system responds slowly, the platform can reroute the traffic and allocate a new server to share the load while still meeting the SLA. After lowering the system load, the platform can then reroute traffic again to reduce the number of servers required. Data access can also decrease speeds to an extent that breaches SLA requirements if the data in a data table increases. In this case, the system can dynamically divide and then distribute a data table among multiple databases. It can also change the data route and assign the access request to multiple databases to ensure that the SLA is met. If a fault occurs in a database, host, or storage device, the system self-heals based on SLA specifications. A legacy BSS must be maximally configured (at 33
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Smart and automatic O&M


A cloudified BSS demands smart, automated O&M. Manual maintenance frequently interrupts services and is prone to human error even a simple upgrade can degrade service quality for a considerable time. In contrast, operators can enhance QoE by presetting rules to automatically upgrade and troubleshoot faults. Huawei continues to explore the cloudified BSS and is active in fields such as automated management, distributed application architecture, and distributed data access. Huawei is making a decisive contribution to the next-generation cloudified BSS and is ready to assist operators to deliver added value. Editor: Xue Hua xuehua@huawei.com

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A closer look:

IPv6 commercial deployment


The commercial deployment of IPv6 is not just a simple shift to IPv6. Instead, it represents a large-scale and very challenging transformation of existing networks and services. Commercial solutions that target the unique features of networks and services with IPv6 can meet the requirements for migration to IPv6 and improve service experience in a way that enables its successful commercialization.
By Qin Hao

stimation predicts that global Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses will be exhausted soon. Two solutions are to either deploy IPv6 or prolong the IPv4s life and employ a different solution. The problem with the former approach is that the IPv6 industry chain is not nearly mature enough, and incompatibility between IPv6 and IPv4 means that existing services cannot be directly inherited. Adopting IPv6 too early could significantly disrupt services. Retaining IPv4 necessitates the application of Network Address Translation (NAT) technology to reuse public IPv4 addresses and increase the utilization rate. Doing so could solve the IP address shortage in the long term. Operators must analyze both methods and select the optimum solution.

Deploying IPv6 involves various aspects of the network and service system and can be achieved through three major routes: dualstack (DS), tunnel, and protocol translation.

Dual-stack
This is an ideal, end-to-end deployment solution with equipment simultaneously supporting both IPv4 and IPv6. Instead of replacing IPv4 in its entirety, it allows IPv4 and IPv6 to coexist. DS can support IPv6 by upgrading existing network equipment without changing network architecture. H o w e v e r, t h i s s o l u t i o n h a s o n e o b v i o u s disadvantage: IPv6 will consume huge amounts of equipment resources in the existing network. Most key resources must be allocated between IPv4 and IPv6, such as the routing table; L2 index table; stream table; Access Control List (ACL); Quality of Service (QoS) queue; and the equipments control resources, such as the Central Processing Unit

Three major routes to deploying IPv6

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How to Operate
A closer look: IPv6 commercial deployment (CPU), user management function, and strategy control tables. In most current networks, IPv4 services generally consume more than 50% of equipment resources. The introduction of IPv6 would require large-scale network renovation, which is unacceptable in terms of both cost and investment protection.

Tunnel
This solution can transmit different protocol messages through message packing and does not require the network to fully support DS. There are two ways to implement the tunnel solution: 6in4 and 4in6. The 6in4 tunnel solution retains the existing IPv4 network architecture and carries IPv6 on IPv4 sometimes called 6rd (IPv6 Rapid Deployment). This is commonly adopted on a small scale in the early stages of IPv6, with the IPv6 gateway deployed in the networks core position to centrally connect IPv6 through the tunnel and minimize network upgrades. However, with the rapid development of IPv6 services, a centrally deployed IPv6 gateway would fail to handle the continuously growing IPv6 ser vice volum e, li mi t i ng i t s application to the initial stage. The 4in6 tunnel solution introduces IPv6 on a large scale by building network architecture that supports IPv6 across the board. Existing IPv4 services are directly inherited and carried on IPv6 and are regarded as IPv6 services. This solution applies to scenarios involving new networks or networks that do not plan to use the DS design. Carrier-Grade NAT (CGN) DS-Lite technology is typically used for this solution. This solution yields obvious benefits. It enables direct and quick singlestack IPv6 deployment, which can directly inherit IPv4 ser vices and avoid the network resource pressures affecting DS networks. When IPv4 users occupy private network addresses en masse, different users are marked and distinguished through IPv6 tunnel 35
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The commercial deployment of IPv6 is not simply a network upgrade to accommodate IPv6 services; it brings a host of new and complex challenges to network and service development.
addresses. However, DS-Lite technology usually only allows the CGN gateway to be centrally deployed. The large volume of IPv4 services poses high requirements on the reliability, scalability, and performance of the CGN gateway.

The commercial deployment of IPv6 is therefore not simply a network upgrade to accommodate IPv6 services; it brings a host of new and complex challenges to network and ser vice development. These are as follows:

Changes in user identification and management


IPv6 introduces a new allocation m e c h a n i s m f o r n e t w o r k p r e f i xe s that allocates a range of addresses to terminal networks. This allows terminal networks to access more terminals, which is necessary for the emerging services like M2M, and also changes the terminal access mode. Compared with the existing networks that manage individual users PCs, terminal networks act as a terminal network cloud and focus on managing access for many terminals within that cloud. This is a revolutionary change to identifying network users that requires a significant shift in user operation management methods. The extensive use of IPv4 private network addresses requires the deployment of a NAT gateway for address conversion. The levels of NAT deployed affect the ability of services to pass through the NAT. Normally, one NAT level needs to be deployed at the users home gateway for address conversion and reuse among terminals within terminal networks. The other level is required on the operator side for address reuse among different terminal networks. This two-level structure greatly complicates services traversing through the NAT. Though User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Punching can partially solve this problem, traversing remains an issue for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)-based applications and applications that do not support UDP Punching. Furthermore, the traversing UPNP mechanism generally adopted by service systems is unsuitable for a 2-level NAT. The number of NAT levels must be reduced for networks in which it

Protocol translation
This technology mainly enables inter-communication between IPv4 and IPv6, such as NAT64 and NAT46. Due to the complexity of translating protocols and the limited adaptability and compatibility of services, current protocol translation technology is not ready for commercial deployment. As terminals or service systems evolve from IPv4 to IPv6, the need for intercommunication between IPv4 and IPv6 is rare. The usual approach adds support for IPv6 instead of simply changing IPv4 to single-stack IPv6. In addition, the mass deployment of IPv6 generally requires that service providers solve protocol switching alone, with little for operators to do at the network level. Therefore, operators rarely consider p rov i d i n g m a s s s w i t c h i n g a b i l i t y between IPv6 and IPv4. Considering the cost demand of single-stack IPv6 for mobile terminals, some mobile operators may plan to provide the NAT64 solution in the MBB service field for mobile terminals.

IPv6 service deployment: Challenges to networks

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is extensively deployed. For example, removing the NAT at the terminal networks gateway and keeping the level at operators equipment reduces NAT traversing requirements for services. However, this complicates the management of terminal networks IPv4 private addresses, access of the terminal network cloud, and user identification management. Neither introducing IPv6 nor using IPv4 private addresses to connect users solves the problem of managing and identifying the terminal network cloud. To do so requires radical changes to operators current operation management systems.

based, user-centric NAT management and the ordered, controllable allocation of IP address and port resources. This differs from the requirement on existing ordinary NAT equipment, which is to enable carrier-class operations, and is a key issue that must be addressed.

Challenges to service perception and service optimization with multiple network integration
A traditional stovepipe network carries one service over a single specific network. However, with the trend for integrating multiple networks, various closed service networks will eventually be integrated and massive amounts of service terminals will need unified IP addresses. In this case, all traditional closed services will become open services, raising the problem of service identification as the service isolation and identification models of the VLANs and VPNs that accommodate traditional closed services cannot be used. Therefore, a new service identification and perception model is required to optimize services and improve service quality so as to facilitate the successful commercial deployment of IPv6.

Challenges to network scalability and investment protection


As IPv6 is a new family of addresses and is incompatible with IPv4, its introduction would occupy the network equipment resources that currently focus on IPv4. Simply upgrading the equipment that currently operates high loads of IPv4 services on existing networks is inadequate. To increase network scalability, layering would be generally necessary to traverse network equipment that does not support IPv6 or the dual-stack resource capacity. However, even if tunneling technology is used, the differences in deployment solutions still culminate in unfeasible workloads and network renovation costs. Therefore, the decision to adopt IPv6 must consider network scalability and the utilization of existing network equipment to protect existing investment.

Challenges to multi-topology logic network management and the flexible allocation of network resources
As the IPv6 protocol is incompatible with IPv4, IPv6 has different logic network requirements. If IPv4 and IPv6 coexist on the same physical network, different logic network topologies and requirements for network bandwidth on links would be created, which results in the problem of allocating resources between different logic networks. For some years, networks have adopted the single-plane, single-protocol management model. However, IPv6 would require operators to manage multiple logic networks to facilitate O&M, which greatly increases the complexity of network management and maintenance. Generally, the commercial deployment of IPv6 brings many new challenges and requires extensive transformation of current networks. This, inevitably, has directly affected the commercialization progress of IPv6.

Inter-communication among more address families


The adoption of IPv6 will bring a new IPv6 address family. To solve the IPv4 address problem, many IPv4 private network addresses would need to be deployed. In addition to the existing IPv4 public addresses, the network will simultaneously accommodate three address families, all of which need to communicate with each other. For optimized service access, parallel communication from IPv4 to IPv4 and from IPv6 to IPv6 is advisable. However, in some situations, communication between IPv4 and IPv6 is unavoidable, which requires carrier-class NAT gateway equipment and protocol conversion equipment. To guarantee high performance and meet the requirements of commercial operations, the carrier-class NAT is necessary to implement policy-

Advice on commercial deployment of IPv6


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How to Operate
A closer look: IPv6 commercial deployment The strategy for IPv6 adoption is generally the deployment of a pipelinebased and multi-plane network. It is relatively simple at the backbone network level as equipment performance at this level is guaranteed and the DS and dual-plane solutions can be used for either All-IP or Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networking. The P equipment for MPLS does not require upgrading to IPv6 and can connect to the IPv6 network through the logic IPv6 plane (6 Provider Edge (PE)/6 VPN Provider Edge (6vPE)). The networking architecture of metro networks is complex and diverse, and involves numerous equipment models. This makes it impossible to simply adopt the DS and multi-plane solutions; the tunnel solution must be added to enable traversing through and communicating with incompatible networks. Depending on the scenario, there are many possible tunnel solutions, including the L2/L3 pipelines, user pipeline, and in special cases, pipeline jointing. IPv6 uses a per-user, per-networkprefix terminal identification mechanism. With the ne w access requirements of the terminal network cloud, the management of the tunnelsensing or network-sensing terminal network cloud requires corresponding technical renovations to manage and control the users of current broadband services. In addition, depending on different networking architectures for metro networks, requirements for IPv6 access architecture in the real world might differ, such as in the case of centralized or distributed Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS) networking. In different stages of IPv6 adoption, networking solutions can vary depending on the number, density and the distribution of IPv6 users. In the initial stage of IPv6 adoption, centralized IPv6 access networking architecture is advisable as it enables a re l a t i ve l y l ow n u m b e r o f f a i r l y centralized users to obtain IPv6 access through a small number of IPv6 BRAS. The main technology of this architecture is the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) wholesale solution, the advantage of which is that the BRAS gateway equipment in the current network does require an upgrade to facilitate DS. The BRAS can send users IPv6 services to a small number of centrally deployed DS BRAS for wholesale processing. In the future, when IPv6 is deployed on a large scale and IPv6 access architecture must be upgraded to distributed network architecture, centrally deployed IPv6 BRAS equipment can be pushed to the network edge for use as ordinary IPv6 BRAS. Doing so effectively solves the inheritability issue and protects equipment investment. In summary, to enable broadband services in an IPv6 environment, the overall solution should comprise the management architecture of the terminal network cloud with tunnel-sensing or network-sensing and hierarchical user access architecture.

Operating solution integrating BNG and CGN


The inheritance of traditional IPv4 is mainly realized through the deployment of the carrier-class CGN, a key attribute of which is its capability to realize commercial operations. Address reuse allows public IP addresses and port resources to be shared among users. Effectively and efficiently allocating address resources and implementing differentiated operation controls based on requirements can increase address utilization efficiency and enhance the ability to operate and manage services. In current IPv4 ser vice operating systems, the BRAS is basically the main player for management and control. After carefully combining and associating the CGNs address resource management function and the BRASs user-centric operation management system, the CGN strategy can implement management according to BRAS users. This realizes an operable, user-centric NAT control ability that facilitates management and allocates IP addresses and port resources, thus maximizing the resource utilization rate. The CGN strategy can be dynamically issued through Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) as part of the operators current strategy management platform to simplify strategy management requirements. Combining this mechanism with tunnel-sensing broadband access architecture can use the same NAT public network addresses, port conversion, and terminal network CGN strategy control measures, such as identical session number control for all terminals within the terminal network cloud.

Pipeline-based, multi-level broadband service access solutions with tunnel sensing


In the IPv6 era, access of the terminal network cloud is a new form of user access for broadband services. This demands that multiple terminals within a terminal network are identified as one user, and that they share centrally allocated network resources, such as public network addresses and port ranges. For users adopting IPv4 private network addresses, tunnel-sensing access technology can uniquely mark and manage users, and isolate them through the tunnel. The primary NAT of the terminal network gateway can be removed, leaving only the NAT of the operators network. Tunnel markings can be added to the NAT to identify users during address conversion. Users private network addresses can overlap to reduce NAT levels and increase the NAT-traversing success rate of services. 37
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Business-level seamless BNG POOL & CGN POOL reliability solution


Many real-time services such as voice and video have high reliability demands. Equally, high-availability data services

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such as financial services and games also require high reliability. To ensure the reliability of the BRAS and service router (SR) equipment connected to IPv6 and the CGN equipment inherited from IPv4, data between different devices is dynamically synchronized in real-time. The Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) mechanism detects network or equipment failures. If a failure occurs, services can switch to backup equipment in real time at a speed of 50ms to ensure seamless service continuity, carrier-class reliability, and high QoE. To increase equipment utilization, the active-standby mechanism can be applied at the port or VLAN level through the fine-granularity virtualization of active-standby status, with the equipment providing mutual backup. The POOL solution can protect high volumes of equipment to form N:1 and N + 1 pool protection ability, which ensures the reliability of large amounts of services.

IPv6 service perception and smart optimization


Operators can introduce IPTV in the initial stage of IPv6. As a closed service in an independent network, IPTV does not need to interact with external networks and operators can easily connect the entire industry chain and migrate to IPv6. However, given the integration of Telecom, Internet and Broadcast, IPTV will become an open service and IPTV terminals on the integrated network will consume massive amounts of IP addresses. This means that IPv6-based IPTV must be considered for future network integration. The high-value ser vices offered by operators require higher QoS to enable network integration, the key to which is improving service perception, intelligence and quality. To avoid degrading QoS through packet loss, integrating the service-layer control i d e n t i f i e r a n d t h e c o r re s p o n d i n g

content-caching mechanism on network equipment enables the integrated service-layer control module close to network equipment to quickly obtain content from the content cache and re-transmit lost packets. When an IPTV user changes channels, content provisioning is rapidly achieved as the network can quickly obtain the initial programming from the cache to switch channels and ensure high QoE. Monitoring each stream can mitigate IPTV network transmission quality issues such as packet loss, delays, or jitter by implementing end-to-end troubleshooting and quality monitoring. Providing better quality services in the IPv6 era will help drive migration to IPv6.

requires operators to manage and maintain multiple logic networks. Using visualized IPv6 network and service management tools to provide visualized DS network multi-topology management coupled with visualized routing management and real-time DS traffic monitoring comprises a must solution for network management in the IPv6 era.

Unified platform & flexible architecture


Introducing IPv6 necessitates a large number of new service modules for networks, such as IPv6 BRAS/SR, CGN, Content Cache, and 6PE/6vPE. These functional modules require different networking architectures and technology combinations in different stages of IPv6 adoption. Using the same network platform can help unify various IPv6 functional components onto one platform. Combining components flexibly based on services and user needs meets the control requirements for complex services, improves network scalability, and raises the resilience of network architecture. Editor: Pan Tao pantao@huawei.com
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Visualized networks & service operation and maintenance


A DS network has two different logic networks IPv4 and IPv6 with different network topologies and bandwidth requirements. Therefore, adopting IPv6 will change the singlenetwork operation environment of the IPv4 era to a multidimensional network operation environment that

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Solution
Maximizing MBB profitability with SingleRAN Evolution

Maximizing MBB profitability

with SingleRAN Evolution


Smart device users and network capacity are growing explosively, and on global mobile networks, data traffic is expected to surpass voice traffic for the first time. Operators have to figure out a way to handle the impact of this data traffic surge and maximize their profitability.
By Li Chunlin
n the mobile broadband (MBB) era, the rapid growth of smart devices and their applications has caused mobile traffic to double every year. According to a forecast, MBB traffic will grow 500 times in the next 10 years. Traffic distribution, however, is often unbalanced: 20% of sites account for 80% of data traffic while 20% of users consume 80% of traffic. Therefore, network capacity must be expanded to cope with this flood of data and improve MBB user stickiness. Also, services must be personalized to increase revenue from mobile networks. All these will bring operators challenges such as more complex network design, network optimization, and network management in their mobile network development and evolution. Hu a w e i i s k n o w n f o r k e e p i n g abreast of operators, having an in-depth understanding of the business needs and models for MBB, and focusing on the challenges and pressure facing operators. Since launching its SingleRAN solution in 2008, Huawei has again led the industry by proposing the SingleRAN Evolution solution for MBB network design. Featuring improved radio frequencies (RFs) and site efficiency, accurate capacity coverage, and consistent end-to-end QoE, the solution can help operators cope with the impact of growing data traffic on mobile network development and evolution from every aspect possible and maximize their profitability by deploying efficient, s u s t a i n a b l e , a n d p ro f i t a b l e M B B networks.

Broader: Site-level capacity expansion


Site investment represents the largest part of an operators expenditure. Finding the best way of continuous site capacity expansion to maximize site value is key to efficient MBB network deployment. When it comes to Huawei, it mainly takes the following three approaches to expansion. The first is to continuously increase the bandwidth of site RFs and improve spectral efficiency. Exploring the value of frequency resources and increasing its efficiency is the goal that Huawei has been pursuing relentlessly in the following ways.

Multiplication: Dual transmitter and high power to double throughput


This is to improve spectral efficiency through multiple-input and multipleoutput (MIMO), and expand the single-site capacity by supporting multimode and large-capacity configuration through high power. Most of Huaweis base station products support optimization through MIMO, and the maximum power supported can be 1 x 125W. A single module can support the large-capacity configuration of two transmitters and multiple modes.

Collaboration: Broadband RRU for more frequency collaboration and aggregation

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Huawei Communicate

At the end of 2011, Huawei will become the first company in the world to launch the first broadband RRU the 4mRRU (Multi-band, Multi-carrier, Multi-mode, and MIMO RRU), supporting both 800MHz and 900MHz on a single amplifier. And it will go on to launch the combination of more frequencies to meet the need for more network co-developments. Using the 4mRRU will dramatically simplify site configuration, reduce the number of modules, and save on TCO. The smooth cross-frequency evolution can further support the sharing of resources such as power between different systems and increase throughput. At the same time, a single module supporting multiple frequencies can dramatically simplify the antenna feeder, reduce insertion loss, and boost coverage.

network or a 20% gain for individual users. The third is to split a cell into smaller sub-cells, which is also known as the 6-sector solution. This solution can expand network capacity by 80% through the tight frequency reuse technology. With Huaweis 3mRRU, which is only 12L and the industrys smallest RRU, the 6-sector solution can be deployed at the site easily and quickly.

Closer: Network-level capacity increase


The distribution of MBB traffic is very uneven over different regions, and the data traffic to the most popular site is seven times higher than that to an average one. Solving the capacity issue with the busiest sites and allowing for easy connections at higher rates for subscribers is key to the overall mobile network capacity expansion. Due to the scarcity of spectrum resources and the difficulty in site acquisition, it is almost impossible to introduce new frequencies or deploy more base stations, which may result in extremely high costs. Meanwhile, the traditional single-layer macro-network coverage is no longer able to carry such dense data traffic. The multi-layer HetNet coverage architecture has come to the rescue. The micro base stations in the multi-layer HetNet have such features as small footprint, supporting

Accuracy: AAS for accurate coverage


The adaptive antenna system (AAS) transmits signals to communications objects (receiving terminals) centrally. It minimizes the directivity of non-communications objects (interfering terminals), and has the natural technical advantage of accurate coverage. An AAS product is not just the simple integration of antenna and the RF module, as it also provides other functions such as BF to enhance network performance and can significantly increase capacity through technologies such as independent antenna tilt, cell division, and beam forming. In addition, it reduces the number of components to be installed on the tower and save on OPEX. In the future, Huaweis AAS will support multiple frequencies and multiple modules to meet diversity requirements and realize the goal of building simple and clean sites. Huawei has been awarded the industrys first contract for the commercial AAS deployment in the UK, which will be completed before the end of 2011. The second measure is the enhancement of algorithms, involving technologies such as MIMO Prime, MIMO, DC, IC, and CA. Usually, the gains that MIMO has brought to operators rely on the penetration of MIMO terminals. However, Huaweis MIMO Prime solution, incorporating its proprietary technology, does not rely on any type of terminals. Additionally, using the dual-transmitter module, the MIMO Prime can achieve an average 11% increase in throughput for the

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Solution
Maximizing MBB profitability with SingleRAN Evolution

Full portfolio of LPN Traffic map Location planning

Load based bias eICIC Power reduction + ICIC

SingleSON

Accurate

Clean

Automatic

Easy

Easy deployment Easy planning Easy backhaul Easy site

Cooperative

Cooperative mobility Co-RRM

Fig. 1 Advantages of collaboration between multi-layer networks

multiple transmission modes, and plug-and-play. Furthermore, in combination with the traffic map, they can accurately locate the real hotspot sites and help operators deploy cells in the right areas more accurately and efficiently. Looking ahead, with the development of cloud computing, macrocells and microcells will be able to coordinate more closely and efficiently. Huawei mainly uses Micro and Femto/Pico as supplements to mobile networks so that they can be brought closer to subscribers. Meanwhile, to coordinate multi-system and multi-layer networks, the SingleRAN Evolution solution adopts a centralized SON Server of a higher level in its architecture to extend the features of SON to the support for HetNet The self-configuration of small base stations, the load-balancing between multiple macro and micro layers, and the coordination of interference between multiple macro and micro layers are good examples. They help implement self-configuration, self-optimization, and selfmaintenance from single-system networks to multisystem networks as well as multi-layer networks. Huaweis innovative SingleHetNet solution has advantages in site planning and deployment as well as the collaboration between multi-layer networks, as shown in Fig. 1.

In the MBB era, without the layered service level agreement (SLA), high-value users and services would not enjoy the priority to access network resources and therefore often be subject to the interference from other users and services. As subscribers are the most valuable asset for operators, possible loss of subscribers will become the biggest risk to operators during the process of network development and upgrade. Ensuring the smooth network development and evolution and maintaining a satisfactory level of QoE is the top priority for operators. Also, ensuring good QoE is key to the successful operation of MBB networks, which often involves the following two aspects.

Visualized operation
Network visualization will become the basic capability of an MBB network. In combination with the perception of services and devices and the analysis of network resource information and subscription information, this capability a l l ow s o p e r a t o r t o i d e n t i f y p ro b l e m s a n d optimize networks and service deployment. From visualization through analysis and policy making to network optimization, the entire process ensures that the operator can deploy and operate an endto-end MBB network. Huaweis visualized IP O&M solution can realize the visualization of users, services, ISPs, and devices. And it can even visualize the radio

Smarter: Improved O&M efficiency


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Huaweis IP O&M solution can even visualize the radio resources on the RAN side, laying the foundation for matching MBB value and radio resources. In addition, it has solved a series of problems for operators whose wireless bearer networks have gone IP.
resources on the RAN side, laying the foundation for match MBB value and radio resources. In addition, it has solved a series of problems for operators whose wireless bearer networks have gone IP. IP features such as pipeline, connectionless and the intrinsic absence of carrier-class OAM. Causing such problems as the inability to monitor the quality of services carried over wireless bearer networks, and difficulty in and extra long time for locating a failure with IP bearer networks, these features can dramatically reduce OPEX and improve QoE.

Lean operation
In this age of MBB, data traffic on an operators network is growing disproportionately faster than its revenue. Data traffic from mobile devices generates a large proportion of operating income; web browsing is now the most popular mobile data application, where users hope to be able to browse web pages anytime and anywhere. On a traditional wireless broadband network, however, services compete for limited bandwidth resources concurrently in equal terms despite the number of services, and bandwidth resources will not be allocated to web browsing first. As a result, sometimes it is very hard for users to enjoy services at high speeds and with low delay. In particular, during the traffic peak, the web-browsing service is often preempted by other services, leading to

poor QoE. Therefore, providing subscribers with the needed network capacity and better QoE to stimulate their usage is critical to the successful operation of the MBB networks. However, due to the unbalanced development of the MBB industry chain and the operators MBB strategies, low-value data traffic is aplenty in MBB pipelines, such as data traffic from portable devices that generates little operating income. With the further improvement of bandwidth, the percentage of low-value data traffic in MBB traffic will further increase accordingly in 2013 it may exceed 80%, while their contribution to operating income will continue to decrease. In addition, a small number of subscribers use the P2P service to download music and videos. These downloads often consume large amounts of system resources, resulting in an unbalanced allocation of network resources and high CAPEX for operators and negative impact on other services that are sensitive to delays. In this context, operators need to adopt a smarter service package management strategy and develop a new management model for these subscribers, to smooth the bandwidth demand during peak time and to avoid the situation where a small number of users drive up the CAPEX and affect the QoE of most users. Huaweis deep packet inspection (DPI) function enables deep-level service identification, to identify web-browsing service and P2P service through packet analysis, and to enable differentiated operation by allocating high-bandwidth resources to web-browsing service first and restricting P2P traffic during busy hours. This can shorten the loading time of the web-browsing service and greatly improve QoE. Meanwhile, during nonbusy hours, high-speed P2P downloads will not be restricted, enabling P2P users to fully enjoy the convenience of high-speed MBB networks. In the future, Huawei will have more offerings including video and IM with respect to the DPI protocol and services, to enable operators to differentiate their services according to the needs of different subscribers, depending on different applications and contents. In light of the agreements with subscribers, operators can also provide timely, high-quality, and specific services that meet users expectations and personalized needs, therefore increasing their willingness to buy. Editor: Pan Tao pantao@huawei.com
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Solution
GL1800 Refarming: A cost-effective way to win in MBB

GL1800 Refarming

A cost-effective way to win in MBB


Spectral resources are not inexhaustible, a fact that is becoming increasingly obvious as demand for them keeps growing. This is requiring operators to conduct proper planning for and use these resources efficiently. By Chen Yifang
obile broadband is ushering in a brand-new era of communications, in which wireless network traffic will grow explosively by up to 500 times in ten years. Traditional GSM voice subscribers are no longer satisfied with low-speed data access. This has led to some tough questions: What is the right way to leverage the spectral resources of the existing networks? How should the increasing demand for mobile data services be addressed? What should be done to protect the existing network equipment investment and ensure smooth evolution to LTE? Mobile operators worldwide are desperately looking for the answers, and the GL1800 Refarming solution has been proved to be one of the best.

1800MHz: Silver frequency band


The 1800MHz frequency band is now used mainly on GSM networks the world over, according to 3GPP in its definition of frequency bands for radio communications. It is also one of the bands defined for LTE FDD, others including DD800MHz and 2600MHz. In addition, Band 3 of 1800MHz has the richest spectral resources, as its paired FDD spectrum bandwidth reaches 75MHz. More than 50 operators in over 20 European countries each have more than 10MHz 43
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bandwidth in this band, according to statistics from existing networks. Mainstream Asia-Pacific operators in countries such as China, Australia, and Singapore also each have more than 10MHz bandwidth. This basically guarantees access to spectral resources for 1800MHz frequency refarming. More importantly, voice traffic carried over GSM900 and GSM1800 is decreasing due to the increasing penetration of 3G services, subscriber migration, and 3G traffic being mostly carried over the 2,100MHz band. Frequencies in the 1800MHz band can therefore be gradually refarmed to be used for more advanced LTE networks. The 1800MHz band features lower propagation and penetration losses than the mainstream 2600MHz band for LTE. It achieves wider coverage as it can multiply the coverage radius of a single LTE station, slashing the number of sites and reducing carbon emissions while ensuring high-quality coverage. That will greatly reduce TCO for operators and bring end users better mobile broadband QoE. The GL1800 Refarming solution results not only in significant savings on expenditure for new spectral resources but also faster LTE network deployment. In actual deployment, operators may also opt to reuse sites or even equipment based on the status of their existing network equipment, realizing smooth evolution to LTE from GSM. When it comes to purchasing new bands and planning new networks, a refarmed 1800MHz band can play a greater role among the existing spectral resources. It is a real silver frequency band.

Three technologies critical to refarming


To come up with an effective 1800MHz frequency refarming solution, three critical technologies need to be taken into account. The first is about how to reallocate frequencies and control interferences between neighboring GSM and LTE frequencies. The second is about the method of migrating GSM voice service subscribers to release part of the 1800MHz spectrum. And the third is how different networks should be coordinated. For frequency reallocation, there are two mainstream methods commonly used in the industry, namely full refarming and partial

refarming. Full refarming is suitable for mobile operators with well developed GSM and UMTS networks and rich spectral resources. The number of GSM/GPRS subscribers is decreasing as 3G services are growing and these subscribers are being migrated to 3G networks, leading to fewer loads on the GSM network at 1800MHz. Therefore, the 1800MHz spectrum can be fully refarmed to be used for LTE networks, while all the voice services are borne by GSM900. Partial refarming is suitable for the operators with limited spectral resources who have no UMTS networks and have difficulty in subscriber migration or who have a large number of GSM subscribers that will remain stable in the short term. These operators need to consider how to retain the existing subscribers and provide competitive high-speed mobile data access. They may therefore phase in the band refarming to LTE by 5MHz or 10MHz spectrum bandwidth. Partial refarming is done by two methods the sandwich method and the edge allocation method. The sandwich method releases the middle portion of the 1800MHz band of an operator to LTE by 5MHz or 10MHz spectrum bandwidth. Portions on both ends are still used by GSM. As for the edge allocation method, it allocates either end of the band possessed by the operator to LTE and keeps the other end for GSM. The sandwich method is recommended, given the GSM frequency reuse plan, interferences between frequencies and, in particular, interferences with other operators. Control over interferences between GSM and LTE can be done within the frequency band owned by an operator without needing to coordinate neighboring bands of other operators. Also based on the preceding two frequency refarming methods, space division may be used to effectively reduce mutual frequency interferences between GSM and LTE. Operators may push refarming from cities to suburbs, or vice versa, from the perspectives of network loads and subscriber needs. They may first refarm some frequencies for LTE to satisfy the demand for mobile data in urban areas, for example. As for non-urban areas, they do not need to refarm frequencies and may instead keep using their own full-bandwidth GSM bands since there is no strong demand for high-speed mobile data services in these areas. Mutual interferences of the same band between LTE and GSM should be avoided, as they often take place when this same band is used for LTE in urban areas and still for GSM in non-unban
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Solution
GL1800 Refarming: A cost-effective way to win in MBB areas. Geographically, a transitional zone may be set between a city and its suburbs, where this band is left unused, to spatially prevent interferences caused by the use of the same band for both technologies. Migrating their GSM voice service subscribers is a tough choice for operators, who have to increase the data access capacity of the existing networks they have to reduce the bandwidth of GSM and accommodate existing subscribers at the same time. There are now two critical technologies to deal with this issue: half-rate voice (HRV) and aggressive frequency reuse (AFR). HRV bears the same number of voice service subscribers with a half bandwidth. AFR saves on bandwidth by 25 to 50% depending on configurations ranging from S2/2/2 to S7/7/7. Operators may employ those technologies flexibly. Coordination between GSM/UMTS and LTE networks is another critical issue in frequency refarming. It guarantees load balance between different types of networks and the inheritance of voice services, while providing network selection priorities based on services, loads, and subscriber characteristics. Meanwhile, mobility should be guaranteed between the two networks, including handover and interoperability between the CS and PS domains. 3GPP has already defined the coordination between heterogeneous networks and set down specifications, laying a foundation for coordination between networks using different technologies. As can be seen from RF modules to antenna feeder deployment schemes, the core issue with deploying a new LTE1800 network on top of the existing GSM1800 network is the RF modulebased antenna feeder solution. There are three deployment schemes by scenarios: The first scheme is completely separating RF modules and antenna feeders. As GSM1800 RF modules do not support multi-mode capabilities and have limited transmission power, RF modules and antenna feeders are separated to ensure the quality of coverage. This scheme is characterized by high investment, the requirement for a site, and difficulties in deployment. The second is separating RF modules but sharing antenna feeders. This scheme is suitable for scenarios where RF modules multi-mode support capabilities or operating bandwidths are limited. Though requiring new RF modules, the scheme allows for the sharing of the antenna feeder system through combiners to save on the space where antenna feeders are mounted. The negative side of this scheme includes the addition of combiners and, typically, additional 3dB insertion loss, which affects the transmission power to some extent. The third is sharing both RF modules and antenna feeders. This scheme fully reuses the existing antenna feeder system and RF modules with no need to add any hardware after they come out of the base bands CRPI. Nonetheless, this scheme requires RF modules to have multi-mode capabilities and higher operating bandwidths, guarantee use in discrete frequencies at 1800MHz, a n d s u p p o r t f u t u re b a n d w i d t h i n c re a s e s . Meanwhile, they should accordingly have higher transmission power. In Huaweis SingleRAN solution, the RF modules feature multi-mode capabilities, dual channels, full bandwidth, and high power, helping operators save on CAPEX and facilitating network deployment. The solution is the best choice for GL1800 refarming. The 1800MHz band is one of the main frequency bands commonly used by mobile operators, and also an effective supplement to the GSM900 network. In the foreseeable future, with mobile data services leapfrogging, traditional GSM voice service subscribers will be gradually migrated to UMTS or LTE networks. Given current spectral resources, the GL1800 Refarming is one of the best solutions for keeping network competitiveness, reducing investment and rapidly deploying LTE networks. Editor: Chen Yuhong chyhong@huawei.com

Three schemes for refarming solution deployment


If the preceding technologies are preconditions for deploying the GL1800 Refarming solution, then equipment performance and evolution capabilities are tied to the TCO, and the progress and feasibility of network deployment. As the first of its kind, Huaweis SingleRAN solution supports GSM, UMTS, and LTE as well as the five bands of DD800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz, and 2600MHz, in the same cabinet. Its advantages become more outstanding in GL1800 deployment. This solution supports sharing of stations, transmission, maintenance, and RF. It helps operators evolve smoothly to LTE1800 from GSM1800, or realize coexistence of GSM and LTE in the 1800MHz band. 45
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Exploring subscriber data management for MBB


Subscriber data is the core asset held by operators. In the mobile broadband era, how can they effectively manage subscriber data when shifting from a service-oriented to subscriber-oriented model?
By Yu Qian

ver a period of around eight years, mobile networks have seen a 2000fold increase in downlink speed, a technological leapfrog that took 20 years for fixed networks to realize. The rapid development of All-IP networks, the integration of telecom networks, and the variety of access modes have revolutionized network construction for operators. The emergence of massive volumes of Internet applications, however, has made it clear that they cannot simply remain pipeline providers and that the data traffic and subscriber base deriving from pipelines form the real sources of revenue. The culmination of this trend for operators is an inevitable shift from service-oriented to subscriber-oriented networks, one key process of which is subscriber data management.

Frost & Sullivan predict that the global market for subscriber data management will reach USD 2.78 billion in 2012 and that quality of customer experience (QoE), not services, will become the decisive factor that gives operators a competitive edge. This emphasis on QoE positions subscriber data rather than network infrastructure as the core asset, the effective management of which requires an effective solution.

Subscriber Server (IMS HSS), and core networks System Architecture Evolution (SAE) HSS for various functions such as authentication and positioning. Subscriber data management is a datacentric ecosystem for providing diverse and open interfaces that enable the services derived from subscriber data.

Subscriber ID Management/ Single Sign-On


While ISPs usually only retain information about virtual users, operators hold actual subscriber information relating to billing, which includes names, addresses, contact details, payment accounts, and credit records. This gives operators an innate advantage over ISPs when providing services such as ID Management (IDM) and Single SignOn (SSO). Given that each service requires authentication and that each ISP employs its own process, subscriber are burdened by having to remember user names and passwords for each service, which degrades QoE. By adopting unified
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Subscriber data management: An ecosystem


Subscriber data management involves the enablers that use the data. All subscriber-related information a n d f u n c t i o n s i n c o re a n d va l u e added ser vice (VAS) networks fall under the scope of subscriber data management, including service data, behavioral data, real-time data and historical information. Such data is used by network elements (NE) such as the Home Location Register (HLR), I P Mu l t i m e d i a Su b s y s t e m Ho m e

Subscriber data: The core asset

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Solution
Exploring subscriber data management for MBB ID management, operators can share subscriber accounts with ISPs to realize account association. When subscribers connect to the Internet through operators networks, they can directly access the Internet applications for which they have already been associated. This not only improves QoE and the competitiveness of operators, but also increases traffic for ISPs, realizing a multiple-win situation for operators, ISPs, and end users. oriented operations, subscriber data management is following a similar path. User Data Convergence (UDC) with flexible data model currently stores the data of multiple NEs as defined in 3GPP R9, which has evolved from 3GPP R99/R4/R5. Current trends require that the subscriber data management system is a total solution that allows for stronger data management, faster data access, and smarter data analysis.

Location-based services: The next killer service


Currently users can obtain location-based services through the Global Positioning System (GPS) and wireless communications networks. However, GPS signals are difficult to acquire in cities, especially buildings. As operators are the sole source of commercial users exact locations, they can dominate in the location-based service realm by transferring information based on policies to ISPs, such as subscriber location, preferences, and credit. Notably, providers of mobile operating systems (OS) such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft are actively collecting such information from wireless communication networks via terminals. When completed, this will challenge operators monopoly in the subscriber data area. Therefore, operators must accelerate their collaboration with providers of location-based services and adopt the technical means to block this form of data collecting. Evidently then, subscriber data management is central to operators MBB operational strategies. By providing three services authentication, payment, and location operators that hold real information on millions of end users can easily profit from ISPs, either under a collaborative or profit sharing model. In the GSM era, China Mobile successfully established a mutually beneficial partnership with ISPs, receiving 15% of revenues from ISPs for providing authentication and payment services. Additionally, operators can analyze user behavior through pipeline records via Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology as a foundation for target marketing.

Convergent
Currently, subscriber data is distributed among different silo type functional components in operators networks. As each service function has an independent data management system, the same subscriber data may have multiple versions in multiple systems, which causes problems with data synchronization and inconsistencies in QoE. For example, voice services are provided by three different NEs: the HLR, the SAE HSS and the IMS HSS under GSM/UMTS/LTE networks. Subscriber data inconsistencies among the three NEs can lead to call connection or forwarding failures. In the MBB era, subscriber data management should support convergent management in multiple scenarios; for example, GSM/UMTS/LTE; FBB/ MBB; and Telecom, Internet and Broadcasting. The same subscriber data could be utilized to guarantee services for subscribers anytime and anywhere via any access mode. The MBB era will witness many more basic services being integrated with VAS, such as Quality of Service (QoS) strategy management for IP access, subscriber location, and IM services. However, all must share the same information across multiple systems. With the help of a well-designed data model that can be flexibly extended and provides a userfriendly tool for editing the model itself, subscriber data management can facilitate rapid on-site customization to support ever-changing Internet applications and drive mobile network-Internet integration. The convergence of subscriber data demands data repository with much higher capacity and considerably more powerful processing capabilities to cater for massive amounts of subscribers. Although the centralized storage of subscriber data helps reduce OPEX, the demand for reliability and security is rising.

New direction of subscriber data management


Just as network development has evolved from network-oriented to service-oriented to subscriber47
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Open
In the MBB era, users communications demands are shifting from basic services such as voice and SMS

Huawei Communicate

to a more diverse and personalized range of services. The Long Tail effect of the Internet will also frame MBB services. Similar to Internet services, each personalized service can only have a small subscriber base, which forces operators and ISPs to quickly introduce ongoing services that cover more people, while maximally cutting OPEX to enable more services. An open subscriber data management system underpins diverse VAS, facilitates business development, and enables operators and ISPs to focus on service development and accelerate new service provisioning. Combining the subscriber data management and service provisioning platforms is an inevitable choice if operators hope to cope with long-tail services. Rapid service development necessitates open and general interfaces for subscriber data management. Traditional data access interfaces such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and Structured Query Language (SQL) are all extremely useful. Equally, compatibility with the industrys general programming interfaces, such as Oracle Call Interface (OCI), is essential to simplify migration to a feasible level.

an insufficient parameter to confirm subscribers real role; if a subscriber is in a soccer stadium, for instance, it is unclear whether he or she is a fan or a worker. However, by analyzing and comparing subscriber location data over the past one or two years with match schedules at this stadium, it is obvious if the subscriber is a soccer fan, and also a fan of which team. Such data would be highly valuable for advertisers of soccer-related vendors. To realize such business intelligence in subscriber data management, a complete record of subscribers historical behavioral data is required. This is therefore a vital aspect of subscriber data management upon which operators are currently focusing.

Subscriber data repository formed with SingleSDB


H u a w e i s S i n g l e S u b s c r i b e r Database (SingleSDB) solution meets the requirements of subscriber data management in the MBB era, providing mature and convergent subscriber data management products. The SingleSDB solution separates front-end applications from back-end data storage. Front-end applications do not store any data. There are 11 types of NEs already implemented: the HLR, IMS-HSS, SAE-HSS, Equipment Identity Register (EIR), Mobile Number Portability (MNP), Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), Bootstrapping Server Function (BSF), Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA), Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM), Domain Name System (DNS), and Diameter Routing Agent (DRA). Each application supports, geographical disaster recovery, smooth expansion, pool management, and real-time switching and load-sharing between active and standby equipment. A single cluster can support 100 million HLR subscribers or an equivalent number of other subscribers. All subscriber data is saved at the back end based on a reliable design

Smart
The subscriber data repositor y concentrates the data in a network and yields complete records of subscriber historical behavior. Operators can derive great value from combining this data with other types of information, such as usage habits, preferences, and social connections. Realizing such business intelligence in subscriber data management can improve operators understanding of subscribers, increase their accuracy in targeting markets, control the value chain, and raise ARPU. Operators can open subscriber data to third parties and cooperate with content providers (CPs) and service providers (SPs) to develop new two-sides business models. For example, subscriber locations can change at any time, making this

comprising three-level tolerance and two-level disaster recovery. The ultralarge capacity of its high-performance memory database can support 200 million subscribers for each service. The recommended physically isolated deployment ensures that a fault in one service does not affect others. To meet the needs of current services and future expansion, the SingleSDB solution suppor ts the three-layer mapping of data models in the back-end database. The three-layer mapping of the application view, unified subscriber data model, and storage model complies w i t h t h e 3 G P P s U D C s t a n d a r d and is the culmination of Huaweis experience in a broad range of VAS as well as the 11 NE applications. With the SingleSDB providing a simple and user friendly GUI editing tool for data models, operators can quickly update and expand subscriber model to support new services. The SingleSDB also provides a Data Federation module for operators who cannot or do not wish to change their incumbent networks. The module can integrate the currently available data of incumbent networks into a unified subscriber data model and application view. The solution facilitates a smooth transition to the MBB era and can further reduce the risks involved in subscriber data management. Fo r So u t h A f r i c as C e l l C , t h e dramatic increase in subscriber numbers, call volume, and new services caused its HLR to fail in terms of capacity and reliability. By deploying the Huawei SingleSDB solution to build a new and highly reliable subscriber data management system, the operator not only overcame the legacy problems, but was also able to integrate its databases to realize all subscriber data with unified storage, unified management, and unified service provisioning. Cell Cs OPEX and CAPEX have since reduced and its service deployment ability has improved, giving the operator a wellhoned competitive edge in the market.
Editor: Chen Yuhong chyhong@huawei.com
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LTE-Advanced: The leading technology in the new MBB era

LTE-Advanced: The leading technology in the new MBB era


In 1Q 2011, 3GPP released the first version of the LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) protocol: LTE-A Release10. LTE-A has evolved from LTE technology to meet the requirements of IMTAdvanced, the fourth generation of mobile communications systems. LTE-A technology can dramatically increase the peak rate, peak spectral efficiency, average rate, average spectral efficiency, and celledge user performance. It improves networking efficiency across the entire network and will become the mainstream future wireless communications technology, riding the wave of the new MBB era.
By Shi Yong
he number of mobile users and mobile broadband users continues to grow rapidly, with the CAGR of the latter group increasing by 104% between 2007 and 2011. Infonetics estimates that the number of global mobile users will reach 5.2 billion in 2011, mobile broadband users will hit 5 billion, and traffic growth per user per year will exceed 50% over the next 10 years. As such, network traffic will grow by a staggering 500 times, requiring LTE-A to step in and underpin the required huge network capacity.

Key technologies of LTE-A


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LTE-A expands and enhances the basic LTE platform. It is characterized by flexible and effective spectrum utilization, higher spectral efficiency, simpler and optimized network architecture, and the ability to cut TCO and provide more services. LTE-A is backward compatible with LTE and represents its smooth evolution. LTE-A needs to support a bandwidth of up to 100MHz, a downlink peak rate of 1Gbps with an increased spectral efficiency of 30bps/Hz, an uplink peak rate of 500Mbps with an increased spectral efficiency of 15bps/Hz, and expand downlink and uplink MIMOs to 88 and 44 respectively. In t ro d u c i n g t h e f o l l ow i n g k e y technologies into LTE-A realizes these requirements: Carrier Aggregation (CA), Enhanced MIMO, Coordinated Multipoint Tx/Rx (CoMP), Heterogeneous Network (HetNet), and SelfOrganization Network (SON).

typical scenario that downlink bandwidth is greater than uplink bandwidth. CA not only dramatically increases spectrum resource utilization, but also helps operators flexibly combine bandwidth and solve spectra discontinuity to increase the users peak rate and network throughput. CA also poses no additional requirements on terminals receiving ability. Therefore, LTE-A terminals with a receiving ability of over 20MHz can receive multiple component carriers simultaneously, while LTE Rel.8 terminals can normally receive one component carrier.

Enhanced MIMO
Given that frequency resources are increasingly scarce, increasing channel c a p a c i t y t h ro u g h m u l t i - a n t e n n a s has been widely adopted in multiple standards. Notably, this is a key way of increasing LTE-As peak and average spectral efficiencies. LTE Rel.8 supports one, two, or four transmitting antennas on the downlink, two or four receiving antennas on the terminals, and a maximum of four layers of transmission on the downlink. On the uplink, LTE Rel.8 supports a single transmitting antenna on terminals and a maximum of four receiving antennas at base stations. The multi-antenna transmission mode of LTE Rel.8 includes open-loop MIMO, close-loop MIMO, beam forming, and transmission diversity. In addition to single-user MIMO, LTE also uses a multi-antenna transmission approach multi-user MIMO to increase spectral efficiency, which enables multiple users to use the same wireless transmission resource through space division. Based on LTE Rel.8, LTE-A supports a maximum of four transmitting antennas on the uplink. If the physical uplink shared channel (PUSC) adopts the single-user MIMO, LTE-A can support up to two codeword streams and four transmission layers. The PUSC can also improve transmission quality and coverage of uplink control information through transmission diversity. LTE-A supports

up to eight transmitting antennas on the downlink and can transmit two codeword s t re a m s a n d a m a x i m u m o f e i g h t transmission layers. This further increases the throughput and spectral efficiency of both uplink and downlink transmissions. On the downlink, LTE-A supports dynamic switching between singleuser MIMO and multi-user MIMO, and further boosts the performance of downlink multi-user MIMO through enhanced channel state information feedback and a new codebook design. LTE-A multi-antenna technology increases the peak and average spectral efficiencies and dramatically enhances capacity and coverage to improve network performance.

CoMP
CoMP enables cell-edge users to coordinate and simultaneously receive signals from and send signals to users of multiple cells. Downlink performance can be dramatically improved if the transmitted signals from multiple cells coordinate to avoid mutual interference. On the uplink, the signals of multiple cells are received and combined. If multiple cells are coordinated and scheduled simultaneously, inter-cell interference can be suppressed and the signal-to-noise ratio of the received signals can increase. Based on the relationships between the nodes to be coordinated, CoMP is mainly divided into two modes: intrasite CoMP and inter-site CoMP. Intrasite CoMP covers collaboration within a single site. As there is no restriction on backhaul capacity, large volumes of information can be exchanged between multiple cells within a site. In t e r - s i t e C o M P c ove r s m u l t i p l e site collaboration, which has higher requirements on backhaul capacity and delay. Currently, the performance of inter-site CoMP is limited by backhaul capacity and delays. CoMP includes downlink CoMP transmission and uplink CoMP reception. Uplink CoMP reception increases a celledge users throughput by receiving the
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CA
To meet peak rate requirements an uplink speed of 500Mbps and downlink speed of 1Gbps LTE-A must support a bandwidth of up to 100MHz. However, it is extremely difficult to find such high continuous bandwidth in currently available spectrum resources. Therefore, LTE-A integrates the key technology, Carrier Aggregation (CA), to fully utilize the spectrum resources scattered in multiple frequency bands. This not only enables high bandwidth, but also ensures backwards compatibility with LTE. The highest bandwidth currently supported by LTE is 20MHz. LTE-A aggregates multiple carriers that are backward compatible with LTE to support a bandwidth of up to 100MHz. LTE-A adopts three forms of CA continuous CA within the band, non-continuous CA within the band, and non-continuous CA outside of the band to aggregate multiple continuous or non-continuous component carriers. Given the asymmetry of uplink and downlink traffic, LTE-A can also aggregate asymmetric carriers in the

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Leading Edge
LTE-Advanced: The leading technology in the new MBB era users data by coordinating multiple cells. Downlink CoMP transmission adopts two forms of collaboration joint processing and co-scheduling/beamforming depending on whether service data is obtained on multiple coordinated points. Joint processing occurs when multiple cells coordinate and act as a single virtual cell to serve terminals together. This usually obtains better transmission gains but has higher requirements on backhaul capacity and delay. Collaborative dispatch/beam forming dynamically exchanges information among multiple cells and coordinates the corresponding scheduling and transmission weights to minimize interference among multiple cells. The terminals must measure the channels of multiple cells and provide feedback, including the expected precoding vector from the serving cell and the interference precoding vector from the neighboring cells that produce strong interference. Coordinating the schedulers of multiple cells assists each cell to reduce interference on its neighboring cells when transmitting beams. This ensures the signal strength expected by the users of a cell. CoMP is a key LTE-A technology that effectively increases the average capacity of cells and the signal-tonoise ratio for cell-edge users. Although CoMP increases system complexity, its capacity and coverage advantages greatly outweigh its disadvantages.

On the path of LTE evolution to LTE-A, Huawei has fully addressed the main challenges facing mobile broadband networks. It has also designed and developed a range of leading products and solutions including 3mRRU, 4mRRU, AAS & AAA, and the HetNet with micro/pico/ femtocell solution.
can deploy more base station antennas to realize advanced MIMO technology. These measures raise expenditure and deployment complexity, greatly limiting the network performance evolution potential of a traditional macrocell. HetNet technology significantly increases network throughput and overall network efficiency by distributing low-power nodes in areas covered by macro base stations to form a heterogeneous system with different node types offering the same coverage. Low-power nodes include micro, pico, remote radio head (RRH), relay, and femtocell. Increasing small, low-power stations is cheap, flexible, and effectively increases network throughput. Small stations not only accurately offload the hotspots of the macrocell, but also cover macrocell blind spots. The key to HetNet is the collaboration of macro base stations and micro base stations, especially in terms of interference coordination and interoperability.

HetNet
Statistics show that 80% to 90% of future network throughput will take place in indoor and hotspot nomadic scenarios. Indoor, low-speed, and hotspot application scenarios will rise in importance in the mobile Internet era, requiring operators to use new technologies to enhance the user experience of traditional cellular networks in hotspot scenarios. In a traditional macrocell network, operators can obtain more spectra or add base stations (such as cell splitting) to increase supply capacity. Alternatively, they 51
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Huaweis innovations
Huawei is actively involved in the 3GPP work group with 1 chair, 3 vice chairs, and 32 reporters. Huawei

standard body comprising many senior experts continually contributes to core LTE/LTE-A technologies, based on their specialist knowledge of market demands, and rich product R&D and commercialization experience. At CTIA Wireless 2010, Huawei demonstrated LTE-advanced. Offering the worlds fastest downlink data transmission rate at 1.2Gbps over 40 times faster than current commercial 3G networks Huawei again set a new speed record for mobile broadband networks. On the path of LTE evolution to LTE-A, Huawei has fully addressed the main challenges facing mobile broadband networks. It has also designed and developed a range of leading products and solutions including the 3mRRU solution which features the lightest and smallest dual-transmission module in the industry, with ease of installation and maintenance; the 4mRRU solution which helps reduce the number of sites and modules to be configured, cut down combination insertion loss, simplify antenna system, save on TCO and support 5-band and 3-mode; adaptive antenna system (AAS) & adaptive antenna array (AAA) which, through integration of RF module and antenna, boast the simplest site installation, with improved site efficiency, saved TCO, enhanced network performance via beamforming, and boosted network capacity via cell splitting; and the HetNet with micro & pico & femtocell solution, which effectively offloads hotspots and covers blind zones in supplementing macro network, featuring easy and cost-efficient deployment of low-power nodes. These solutions offer multiple advantages including smaller and lighter modules, lower TCO, and the full utilization of available frequency bands to increase spectral efficiency and enhance system capacity. In the future, LTE-A will become the mainstream MBB technology. Huawei will continue to innovate and lay a solid foundation for LTE and LTE-A products and solutions to ensure MBB becomes broader and smarter.
Editor: Xue Hua xuehua@huawei.com

Huawei Communicate

Evolution and deployment of

LTE
By Chen Qunhui

Four approaches to mobile broadband voice


n the near future and after the evolution from TDM to IP and from traditional switches to softswitches, mobile voice services will evolve to mobile broadband (MBB) voice services. In terms of network evolution, it will mean the evolution of GSM/CDMA/UMTS to LTE on the radio network side and the evolution of CS to IMS on the core network side. Over the last few years, there have been multiple views, technologies, and evolution paths for LTE voice services. At last, four approaches have been accepted as possible commercial choices. The first approach is based on circuitswitched fallback (CSFB). LTE just provides data services, and when a voice call is to be initiated or received, it will fall

back to the CS domain. When using this solution, operators just need to upgrade the MSC instead of deploying the IMS, and therefore, can provide services quickly. However, the disadvantage is longer call setup delay. However, in most cases, the CSFB solution is suitable as an interim solution prior to the deployment of IMS supported services. In addition, it can also be used to handle voice calls in the scenario of LTE roaming. For example, when the network in the visited network does not have the IMS or when the IMS roaming protocol is yet to be deployed, CSFB can provide voice-call service for inbound LTE roamers. The second approach is based on simultaneous voice and LTE (SVLTE), which is the dual radio handset approach. In this approach, the handset works simultaneously in the LTE and CS modes, with the LTE mode providing data services and the CS mode providing

the voice service. This is a solution solely based on the handset, which does not have special requirements on the network and does not require the deployment of IMS either. The disadvantage of this solution is that the phone can become expensive with high power consumption. Currently dual radio handsets featuring CDMA 1x and LTE are already available and used by some CDMA operators as an interim solution prior to the deployment of IMS, while dual radio handsets featuring GSM/ UMTS and LTE are not yet available. The third approach is based on the usage of over-the-top (OTT) services, using applications like Skype and Google Talk to provide LTE voice service. LTE boasts features like broad bandwidth, low latency, being always-online, and All-IP, creating natural convenience for the development of OTT and making OTT voice calls almost barrier-free. However, we should also note that now
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Evolution and deployment of VoLTE and in the foreseeable future, the voice call service is, and will still be, the main revenue source for the mobile operators. So handing the LTE voice service over completely to the OTT actors is thus something which is expected to not receive too much support in the telecom industry. Compared to OTT, telecom operators have their own unique advantages in providing LTE voice calls, such as user ID resource, standardbased interconnection, QoS assurance, the ability of handover to CS, and tariff package bundled with data service. In the future, the percentage of OTT calls may increase drastically, especially for the long-distance call. However, the call service provided by telecom operators will still be the mainstream for a long time. The fourth approach is the IMS-based VoLTE. IMS has become the core networks standard architecture in the All-IP era because it supports multiple access modes and a wide range of multimedia services. After developing and maturing over the last several years, IMS today has crossed the chasm to become the mainstream choice for VoBB and PSTN network migration in the fixed-call field, and has also been identified as the standard architecture for mobile voice service by 3GPP and GSMA. Of the above approaches, both CSFB and SVLTE rely on the CS domain to provide voice service and both have some limitations. They can be used as the interim choice and non-mainstream application, which we call pre-VoLTE. Only IMS can provide a voice solution with the QoS assurance based on LTE. In other words, the IMS-based VoLTE is the inevitable path for the development of the wireless and core network technologies. For the operators, deploying VoLTE means opening up the road for the evolution toward MBB voice service. In the long run, this will create value for the operators in two aspects: One of which is increasing the utilization rate of wireless frequencies and reducing network costs, because for voice service, LTEs frequency utilization rate is far higher than that of the traditional systems more than four times higher than that of GSM. Another important advantage is that it will improve user experience, as IMS-based VoLTE service will be significantly better compared with a traditional CS based service. For example, the introduction of HD voice and video codec will significantly improve call quality. The call setup time of VoLTE will be dramatically shortened compared with the pre-VoLTE options. Tests have proven that the call setup time for a VoLTE53
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based call has decreased to more than half when comparing with call based on CS. Finally, the seamless integration with the Rich Communication Suite (RCS) offers the opportunity to generate many new and attractive services.

Development stages
Stage one: Pre-VoLTE applications emerge with LTE hotspot coverage
Initially, LTE focuses on hotspot coverage, mainly providing MBB data applications for users with data cards and tablet PCs. However, there will also be some early-stage LTE voice applications. The first is the voice service based on the soft clients, in the form of LTE data card + soft client + PC, which can meet voice needs in some specific scenarios and help operators make preparations and accumulate operating experiences for the deployment of the handset-based VoLTE in the future. The second is the form of LTE CPE + fixed phone. Some European countries, such as Germany, use this form to provide broadband access and voice call service for users in the remote regions. The third is the early-stage LTE phones supporting CSFB and SVLTE. Some operators have launched interim applications: For example, Verizon has announced that it will support SVLTE, while AT&T has announced that it will support CSFB.

Stage two: VoLTE applications on the rise with LTE continuous coverage
At this stage the operators will have increased the coverage of LTE, and be able to provide voice services, especially in cities and densely populated areas. Meanwhile, the advent of LTE smartphones in large numbers will have driven the development of VoLTE. The operators will launch IMS-based commercial VoLTE services at this stage. However, prior to this, the operators need to have a long preparation period for the following reasons. On the one hand, VoLTE involves many new technologies and requires necessary tests and trials; on the other hand, the deployment and integration of IMS takes time, and some systems in the existing networks such as MSC, HLR, and IT systems may need a corresponding consolidation or upgrade. We think that it is necessary for the operators to begin preparing for VoLTE one year in advance or even before.

Huawei Communicate

In addition, LTE coverage at this stage is still limited. The operators need to take advantage of the width and depth of traditional CS coverage to provide seamless voice service. This involves the interoperability of LTE and CS, and operators need to consider two technical issues here. The first issue addresses two options for the provision of service after LTE users have roamed to the CS domain one is to process the voice call completely through MSC, and the other is to get connected to the IMS domain through MSC to provide the voice call service. The second option is the IMS centralized service (ICS) architecture defined by 3GPP, which needs to upgrade MSC to EMSC (enhanced MSC). The second issue is the handover from LTE to CS during a call 3GPP has defined the single radio voice call continuity (SRVCC) technology for this.

Stage three: VoLTE becoming the mainstream with full LTE coverage
At this stage, either LTE coverage has become quite complete, or LTE and other MBB technologies such as HSPA can form seamless networks, to make the MBB voice service a mainstream application and gradually replace the traditional CS. Of course, this will be a significantly long process.

Network deployment strategy


Simplifying network architecture
IMS is more complex than the traditional softswitch technologies. Moreover, the introduction of VoLTE, especially its interoperability with CS, has further increased system complexity. Such complexity is reflected in the n u m e ro u s n e t w o rk e l e m e n t s a n d complex interactions, and simplifying the solution architecture becomes the top priority. This can be achieved in the

following ways. Fi r s t o f a l l , a d o p t a c o m m o n architecture. Huaweis SingleCORE architecture is based on this concept, enabling network elements such as CS and IMS to be designed based on the completely identical hardware and software platforms, making deployment more flexible, resource utilization more efficient, and operation management more convenient. It has natural advantages in supporting multi-network service integration and evolution. Second, integrate numerous functions in a smaller number of network elements based on a common architecture. For example, Huaweis MSC-S is built in with MGCF, mAGCF, SRVCC IWF, CSFB Proxy, IBCF, and IM-SSF functions. MGW is built in with IM-MGW, IBGF, and VIG functions and the SBC equipment will support P-CSCF, ATCF, and ATGW. Additionally, the operators should adopt the real FMC design to achieve converged and simplified networks in multi-service and multi-access scenarios. Although the IMS standard is designed for this, the real FMC and multi-service access still face many challenges in product implementation and commercial deployment, which should be taken into consideration at the beginning of IMS deployment. One challenge is the need to support multiple voice access modes and signaling protocols. Another challenge, which is especially of concern currently, is that the service processing unit, the telephony application server (TAS), needs to process multiple voice services under various mobile and fixed access modes, including VoBB, PSTN, and VoLTE as well as the customized services of some operators. As a matter of fact, some operators have already found that the IMS deployed previously cannot support VoLTE, so they have to replace some equipment.

After several releases including 3GPP R8/R9/R10, as well as the improvement by GSMA, VoLTE standards and technologies are already mature. In 2011, the industry has two significant developments: One is that more and more tests and trials are taking place, the other is the advent of the LTE smartphones.

Reducing the impact on the existing network


The deployment of VoLTE involves almost all the core network elements, instead of just simply adding an IMS.
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Evolution and deployment of VoLTE Adjustment of or interconnection to the existing networks equipment is often the hardest part. To this end, we should think about how to reduce or even eliminate the adjustment of existing network equipment such as MSC/HLR on the one hand. On the other hand, we should also think about the coexistence and integration with the existing network equipment. To support SRVCC for handover to CS and CSFB for inbound roaming, the operators should upgrade the MSC. However, large-scale network upgrade is difficult, involving a long cycle and high costs, and therefore should be avoided during the initial period of VoLTE development if possible. Functions such as SRVCC/CSFB can be centrally deployed to one or a small number of MSCs. If its difficult to upgrade the existing networks legacy MSC, we suggest that a new MSC be introduced to serve as the MGCF, SRVCC IWF, or CSFB Proxy, to replace upgrading legacy ones. In addition, although ICS is taken as the target architecture in the future, deploying ICS would require the upgrade of MSC-S throughout the network in the initial stage of VoLTE. This is too costly for many operators. Huaweis VoLTE solution provides two options: deploying ICS or not deploying ICS. In the model of not deploying ICS, after LTE users have roamed to the CS domain, the service is completely processed in the CS domain, and there is no need to trigger it to IMS. This can not only avoid MSC upgrade and shorten time-to-market, but also increase the equipments processing efficiency. For the deployment of HLR/HSS, we suggest that an overlapping solution is used initially, which is to overlap a converged HLR/HSS to manage LTEs user data, and to keep legacy HLR for traditional CS unchanged. This can avoid the huge work of upgrading HLR throughout the network at the very beginning. In addition, the deployment of VoLTE involves many network elements such as IMS Core, TAS, SBC, and converged HLR/HSS, and some network elements may be already in existence for certain services such as VoBB. As such, the new equipment introduced to VoLTE should be easy to be integrated with the existing networks equipment. For example, CSCF and TAS may be from different vendors, and the IOT and integration between them should be addressed. quality and faster call setup speed, but these reasons are not sufficient for replacing the traditional CS. More abundant applications beyond voice are required in MBB stage. On the other hand, facing the competition from OTT, telecom operators need to provide similar or more competitive services. RCS or the simplified one, RCS-e, introduced by some European operators can provide rich communication experiences, including IM, image and video sharing on the basis of voice service as well as the integration with the Internet services. Therefore, the RCS is expected to be widely adopted and deployed. In a sense, the development of VoLTE cannot do without RCS. Operators should consider the integration with RCS when deploying VoLTE, and because both of them are based on IMS, the seamless integration of VoLTE and RCS is also possible.

Accelerated commercialization
After several releases including 3GPP R8/R9/ R10, as well as the improvement by GSMA, VoLTE standards and technologies are already mature. In 2011, the industry has two significant developments: One is that more and more tests and trials are taking place, the other is the advent of the LTE smartphones. In the core network field, all the major IMS vendors have plans to support VoLTE, and are actively conducting tests and trials with the operators. What is especially worth noting is that in May 2011 IMTC (International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium) organized the industrys first VoLTE IOT test in Hawaii, during which, Huawei exclusively provided an entire suite of the LTE/EPC/ IMS network equipment and completed the test of interconnection with the terminals. In September 2011, MSF (Multi Service Forum) will also organize an IOT test involving multiple vendors. In 2011, some terminal manufacturers such as Samsung and HTC announced the first LTE smartphones. This was an important milestone for the LTE industry. However, these terminals mainly support CSFB and SVLTE. Based on the progress of mainstream chip makers and handset makers, it is expected that smartphones that support the IMS-based VoLTE and SRVCC will become commercially available in 2012. Some operators in North America, Russia, Middle East, and Europe are expected to become the first providers of VoLTE services from 2012 to 2013. Editor: Li Xuefeng xuefengli@huawei.com

Enriching service experience


VoLTE will provide better voice and video call 55
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