By Telecom
Lead Team: Wireless infrastructure major Ericsson suggests a three-pronged
strategy to mobile operators to meet growing mobile broadband challenges:
ensure good HSPA coverage; ensure the highest-available data throughput is
available; and introduce new signaling states that handle the shift between
idle and connected more efficiently.
By ensuring their networks have the latest features enabled, operators will
deliver excellent smartphone user experience. They can also benefit from more efficient
handling of smartphone data traffic overall.
The adoption
of smartphones drives revenue for operators by opening up many more services
and applications to subscribers on the move. However, since smartphone owners
are much bigger users of e-mail, social networking and online video services,
smartphones put new demands on coverage, battery life and network capacity.
According to
IDC, ninety-two percent of smartphone users check their e-mail weekly and 55
percent connect to social networks. This user behavior triggers regular data
connections for updates, sometimes up to 100 times per hour. For poorly
configured networks, this may result in signaling congestion. This trend
represents both an opportunity and a challenge for mobile operators.
Ericsson said it has been working with ST-Ericsson to ensure that smartphones
can take advantage of performance-enhancing features, such as Continuous Packet
Connectivity (CPC), as soon as they are available from the network. This
feature improves power efficiency by allowing the smartphone transmitter and
receiver to be powered down when there is no data to be sent or received,
without the need to disconnect from the mobile network.
Smartphone power efficiency and network capacity utilization are also improved by
the use of HSPA+ 21Mbps modems, because higher bit rates enable shorter, more
efficient data sessions. For the user, 21Mbps modems improve the experience of
internet-based services by delivering more than double the speed available from
current 7.2Mbps devices.
There are now a number of new signaling states for HSPA that provide faster,
more efficient transition from idle to fully connected. Measurements made by
Ericsson in live networks have shown that keeping devices in the URA-PCH state
– rather than allowing them to drop back to idle mode each time a data transfer
is completed – reduces the number of channel establishment requests by more
than 50 percent.
Another feature that improves network efficiency is network controlled fast
dormancy. Rather than the device deciding by itself when to drop down to idle
state, this 3GPP-standardized feature returns control to the network. This
improves overall efficiency by preventing repeated dormancy and reconnection
requests.
