LTE Advanced – 10 Times Faster Than LTE Demonstrated By Ericsson

Ericsson recently demonstrated LTE Advanced over the air in a mobile environment. The LTE Advanced mobile broadband was 10 times faster than today’s commercial LTE networks. The demonstration was based on commercial hardware compliant with 3GPP Release 10. The commercial operation is expected to start in 2013.

LTE Advanced, the next step of LTE (Long Term Evolution), is demonstrated to the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) in Kista, Sweden. Thus, consumers in Sweden were the first in the world to experience commercial LTE services.

The system, based on commercial hardware, was operating on a test frequency provided by the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS). This enabled Ericsson to demonstrate LTE Advanced functionality such as carrier aggregation of 3 x 20MHz (60MHz aggregated) over the air in a mobile environment for the first time.

LTE Advanced will further enhance the speed and capacity that will be needed in the Networked Society in the years to come. The technology is compliant with the 3GPP Release 10 global standard. Recently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) also selected LTE Advanced as one of the technologies that fulfills International Mobile Telecommunication’s criteria. The first stages of LTE Advanced are expected to be in commercial operation in 2013.

[advt]The enhancements introduced with LTE Advanced include carrier aggregation and extended multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) functionality. From a user perspective, this means that information can be retrieved and sent much faster, even when the network is congested. This, in combination with the faster speeds, improves the user experience significantly.

The demo system was based on Ericsson’s multi-mode, multi-standard radio base station, RBS 6000. Live traffic was streamed between the RBS and a moving van from which network performance could be monitored. In the demonstration, 60MHz of aggregated bandwidth was used, compared to the 20MHz maximum that is currently possible using LTE. In the downlink, 8×8 MIMO was used.

In 2010, the technology’s first year of operation, the number of users with access to LTE networks rose from 0 to 150 million people. Ericsson supplied the majority of these commercial LTE networks and has signed contracts with six of the world’s top seven operators ranked by 2010 global revenues.

Ericsson is the prime driver of open standards and has had a greater impact than any other player on the LTE specifications released to date. Ericsson expects to hold 25 percent of all essential patents for LTE in the industry.

Mr. Urban Landmark, Head of Spectrum Department of Swedish regulator PTS, says:

“Sweden is in the forefront when it comes to usage of mobile broadband. Sweden was both early with licensing of harmonized spectrum in the 2.6GHz and 800MHz bands, and the first country in the world where LTE was commercially deployed. The demonstration today indicates that mobile broadband technologies continue to evolve rapidly.”