NSN India head of Technology Amit Marwah on Wednesday said the mobile broadband solutions provider has enhanced its Smart Scheduler – targeting FD-LTE and TD-LTE networks — to deliver up to 50 percent higher uplink data rates at cell edge and up to 20 percent more uplink cell capacity.
The increase in uplink will benefit 4G LTE telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Aircel, Tikona, etc. These operators have BWA spectrum that can be used to offer TD LTE services.
Also, some of the telecom operators – Airtel, MTS India, Videocon, Uninor, etc. will look at FD LTE to launch 4G in the next 1-2 years.
The enhanced performance can be achieved on FDD-LTE and TD-LTE networks through a software upgrade on top of NSN Flexi MultiRadio Base Stations. NSN optimization services have gained valuable experience of optimizing LTE networks in advanced markets such as Japan and Korea, and can help to further fine-tune cell edge performance of the network.
NSN says on a 40MHz allocation of paired spectrum, operators can offer downlink data rates of up to 300Mbps.
Carrier Aggregation
The mobile broadband solution provider works with Bharti Airtel for launching 4G services in select circles.
Currently Indian BWA operators have got 20MHz of spectrum in 2300 MHz for TD-LTE. If in future auctions of 2300MHz spectrum operators choose to acquire additional 20MHz block in the same circles, they can leverage the benefits of carrier aggregation by combining the two 20MHz carriers to double the peak throughputs (eg. with 40MHz aggregated spectrum in 2300MHz operators can deliver upto 220Mbps of peak throughputs). Carrier aggregation scenarios can also be applicable in spectrum pooling/sharing scenarios, subject to government policies.
Amit Marwah, head of Technology, India Region, NSN on LTE, said 3GPP is further standardizing more carrier aggregation scenarios in future releases that could be relevant for India eg. TDD+FDD Carrier aggregation that will facilitate 2300 Mhz + 700 MHz or 1800 MhZ + 700 MHz carrier aggregation scenarios – which could be potential game changer in the way spectrum is used today.
Smart Scheduler
LTE works on frequency reuse of 1, unlike many other cellular technologies, which means same spectrum can be used throughout the network in all cells. As spectrum is one of the key requirements in India, LTE will help in delivering higher throughputs even with limited amount of spectrum.
“This performance is further enhanced by NSN smart scheduler that enables 50 percent more throughputs in UL at the cell edge as interference is dominant at the cell edges. This will help operators in India to deliver efficient mobile broadband network,” Marwah added.
VoLTE
There are multiple approaches for VoLTE and one of them is based on Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) that enable smooth handovers between 2G, 3G & LTE. eSRVCC also called enhanced SRVCC has recently been commercialized by NSN, that further helps in improving handover performance in these multi technology networks.
As Indian telecom operators will eventually have essentially all technologies deployed in their networks under the unified licensing regime and India being a voice dominated market this new launch from NSN will help them in creating the long term and cost efficient VoLTE strategies in their networks.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com