By Telecom Lead Team: The
ITU Radiocommunication Assembly has approved a series of recommendations and
resolutions on the IMT-Advanced technologies and initiated further studies for
the development of global mobile broadband communications.
The Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-12) was chaired by
A.R. Jamieson of New Zealand. Over 500 participants from 102 countries
discussed new directions in radiocommunications. Held every three to four
years, the Radiocommunication Assembly deliberated the future direction of
radiocommunications and reached significant decisions that will impact the
future of radiocommunications worldwide in an increasingly wireless
environment, ITU said in a press release.
The Radiocommunication Assembly, like the World
Radiocommunication Conference starting next week, represents a landmark in the
life of ITU’s radiocommunication sector. This Assembly has once again
demonstrated the central role that the radiocommunication sector plays in the
global development of information and communication technologies,” said ITU
Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure.
With the completion of an intensive program developed by
ITU’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) to stimulate development of the future
IMT technologies and following a detailed evaluation against stringent
technical and operational criteria, ITU has determined that “LTE-Advanced”
and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” should be accorded the official
designation of IMT-Advanced.
IMT-Advanced systems include new capabilities that go
beyond IMT-2000, widely deployed since 2000 and referred to as 3G mobile
technology. ITU has now specified the standards for IMT-Advanced, the next step
in global wireless broadband communications.
IMT-Advanced provides support for broadband wireless data
and brings major improvements. These include increased spectrum efficiency to
handle more users at higher data rates per radio channel; a fully packet-based
architecture for reduced costs; lower latency leading to more responsive
Internet and multimedia applications; improved radio resource management and
control to enhance quality of service, and new capabilities for the radio
interface such as wideband radio channels and multiple-input and
multiple-output (MIMO) for the use of multiple antennas at both the
transmitter and receiver end to improve communication performance.
The RA-12 also decided to conduct further studies related
to the development of a continuous time standard to address the concerns of
countries that use the current system of the leap second in Coordinated
Universal Time (UTC). These studies will involve further discussions within the
ITU membership and with other organizations that have an interest in the matter
related to the suppression of the leap second and will be referred to the next
Radiocommunication Assembly and World Radiocommunication Conference scheduled
for 2015.
RA-12 approved Resolutions to focus studies on new
radiocommunication techniques and applications, such as cognitive radio
systems, and on the potential for radiocommunications to act as a catalyst to
reduce the impact of human activity on the environment.
RA-12 agreed on changes to streamline the working methods
of the ITU Radiocommunication Sector in adopting recommendations and elected
the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the Study Groups that will conduct the work
in the next four years.
