Addressing the challenges the migration to LTE presents
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Operators around the world are facing tremendous challenges on data growth, operational efficiency and customer experience. LTE addresses these pain points in different ways – however getting the most out of your LTE network, meeting subscriber demands and developing new revenue growth plans are key drivers in the uptake of LTE as a technology. There has never been a more critical time to look at network evolution and get the most of your current assets while preparing a transition plan to LTE. AIRCOM International presents the lessons learned so far in first LTE roll outs, key steps to guarantee a cost effective and smooth plan to LTE, and how LTE will reshape the way networks operate.
Key points to be addressed during this webinar include:
• Lessons learned from first LTE deployments
• How to ensure a successful migration to LTE for operators, network strategy, spectrum management and support systems
• LTE Advanced and the future of mobile broadband, getting the foundations now
Tags; AIRCOM International, Archive, LTE, LTE, mobile broadband, networks, Networks, spectrum, telecoms.com
Thank you all for your questions. You can follow up direct at gary.wolno@aircominternational.com.
This Q&A is now closed.
Is there any Live LTE 1800 currently?, Is the interference between GSM and LTE as bad as percieved? What would you suggest, refarming or switching off GSM 1800 completely?
The interference only impacts the resource block on the edge of the band, and it’s only equivalent to 1x 200kHz GSM carrier. The LTE scheduler will modify the modulation scheme when interference is present however throughput will be lower on those resource blocks if the adjacent GSM 1800 channel is in use (in some cases the impacts are minimal however this would need a detailed assessment depending on your vendor etc..).
So no, GSM 1800 will not need to be switched off completely but it is recommended to have a guard band at present
Hi Steve. Do you know if LTE is being implemented in Spain by any operator?
Telefonica has launched commercial pilots in Madrid and Barcelona. Vodafone has annouced pilot networks in Madrid, Barcelona and Malage. Orange and Yoigo are also rolling out networks
From your experience so far (and/or your crystal ball) will the backhaul require mostly (or exclusively) fibre connections as contention must be kept to a minimum and the combined capacity must be high?
Where available operators will use Fibre to support LTE which has been the case with the large tier 1′s that have the ecosystem available. All operators do not have this luxary so other solutions such as using wideband microwave on 60/70GHz band with 500Mbps link speed can be used. This approach can be a temporary solution initially until Gbps fiber is installed or used for fallback links.
HetNets seem to play a bigger role in LTE. What is Aircom doing to capture the special planning and optimisation requirements for layers other than the macro layer?
HetNets are one of the main approaches to address capacity growth. Aircom is designing SingleRan (UMTS/LTE) and our planning tools support most RAN technologies and cell layering so an operator can investigtae and plan for various Hetnet Scenarios.
Has SON been deployed in any of the current networks? How many?
Some of the basic SON algorithms are already deployed in networks (software configuration, auto PCI and ANR). Additional features are being added to support more SON functionality by vendors, although operators are taking a conservative approach to rolling out more advanced algorithms
Do you see much interest from the Auto space for adopting LTE?
In the auto space both GM and Ford have annouced that they will be deploying M2M services within the next 3 years
do you expect many operators to decommission their GSM (2G) networks with the roll-out of LTE?
Initially operators will not decomission 2G networks, although as I mentioned in the webinar some are taking a more aggressive approach by decommissioning 2G in parallel to rolling out LTE (such as KT in Korea)
is the different spectrum frequencies used by the various countries/regions impacting on the device (UE) support for LTE i.e. is LTE a moving target for OEM vendors (handsets and dongles) point of view?
On of the biggest challenges for UE vendors is the large number of bands (32 FDD, 8 TDD) that it’s possible to implement on. Initially a subset of these bands have been used…but yes LTE is a moving target and will be dominated by the spectrum that is made available to operators
How is the MIMO gain simulated in Asset?
MIMO is supported extensively in ASSET including all different combinations of mode of operation single user, multi-user, spatial multiplexing, spatial diversity. The MIMO gains will depend on the number of antennas used, the MIMO mode of operation, whether there is a LOS/NLOS in a given location etc. all of these aspects are modelled in ASSET. Detailed information on the topic can be found on our user and technical documentation.
can you make the deck available?
The deck will be made available on the AIRCOM website for download (later today)
Hi Steve, with reference to your RAN / Backhaul planning and dimensioning tool, do you support RAN access planning and optimization (Microwave, fiber, DWDM) with capabilities to optimize routing, plan physical and logical layers, simulate MPLS, etc.
The AIRCOM RAN/Backhaul planning and dimensioning tools including microwave, fibre and DWDM The capabilities include planning of physical and logical layers, we do not have an explicit MPLS modelling capability although we have introduced an Ethernet/IP planning module in I-VIEW Dimension. We have some capabilities to do routing recommendation/analysis but not currently optimise routing.
I’m planning an LTE network.I have 1x12MHz FDD & 3X10MHz TDD spectrum.Is it possible to have TDD & FDD channels on the same Node B?How is the planning done?
Capabilities to support both FDD and TDD on the same eNodeB will be vendor specific, if that support exists than you can model that in our tools and plan the network accordingly.
In the simplest terms what you are planning is a multilayer network (i.e. FDD and TDD), the network planning objectives of the layers need to be clearly defined i.e. what services each layer is intended to provide, is there a complete overlap between the layers etc.. In a similar way to planning multiple frequency bands. Our ASSET planning tool supports simultaneous planning of TDD and FDD by a user.
Thank you,Steve.We intend to rollout LTE and our network is fully IP.We do not have 2G & 3G services.We are principally a mobile internet provider.Would we be needing the SGSN or GGSN in the network or we connect directly to some packet switch?
Is the backhaul capacity requirement of 200Mbps per Node B site realistic given that my traffic is strictly IP,no TDM services?
If site is using 10MHz, 3 sectors and MIMO 2X2 throughputs in range of 50Mbps x 3 could be achieved. With 4×2 MIMO it is over 200Mbps.
If fiber is available there is no significant difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps.
200Mbps is a guideline in this example, however realistically you would dimension the network for traffic in the area taking into consideration diruanal (time of day) profiles, traffic demand and expected growth.
From network topology poiint of view MME/SGW/PGW should exists. However, they can be combined into one physical node if load is not too high (some vendor support this today)