By Telecom Lead Team: Ericsson has developed a new
solution in order to triple uplink capacity in HSPA networks. This allows
operators to offer high uplink data speeds to large number of users. This is a
part of strengthening the presence of Ericsson in mobile broadband business. In
2011, Nokia Siemens Networks said that mobile broadband will become one of the
focus areas for the company.
In line with the growing number of smartphones connected
to a mobile network and usage of data-generating applications, uplink capacity
is becoming more important. This is the next important step to meet global
smartphone service demands, according to a press release from Ericsson.
Ericsson claims that on January 25, 2012, the
wireless equipment major demonstrated that over-the-air uplink throughput for
simultaneously active devices in a cell was increased from around 4Mbps to more
than 12Mbps.The demonstrated capacity is an unprecedented figure for a 5 MHz
WCDMA carrier.
For this, Ericsson combined its commercially available
receiver technology, Ericsson Interference Suppression, with
4-antenna radio base stations. There is no need to upgrade cell phones or
consumer devices in order to achieve this gain.
Interference Suppression is a base station receiver
technology for WCDMA/HSPA that can vastly improve uplink speeds by
increasing the network capacity. This is done by using advanced software
algorithms in the base station that greatly reduce the negative effects of
uplink interference that is today the bottleneck in many HSPA networks.
Improving uplink capacity with these technologies offers
operators an elegant way to further serve a greater number of customers, who
increasingly choose to upload information from mobile devices to cloud services
for example sharing photo over social networks.
We have proven that Ericsson’s unique Interference
Suppression is a giant leap forward and it will be the new reference for WCDMA
uplink performance for years to come. This can even be further enhanced by
combining it with multi-receive antenna technologies. Because these
technologies work with existing devices, operators that implement them will
instantly benefit from the attractive gain,” said Nils Viklund, director WCDMA
RAN at Ericsson.
The new solution is significant as Ericsson’s
latest Traffic and Market Data report revealed, mobile broadband
subscriptions increased by 60 percent year-on-year in 2011, and are expected to
number almost 5 billion in 2016.