Nokia Siemens Networks researchers have successfully demonstrated Relaying technology proposed for LTE-Advanced, enabling an 'exceptional end-user experience delivered consistently across the network'.
Completed in Nokia Siemens Networks research facilities in Germany, the demonstration is said to illustrate how advances to Relaying technology can further improve the quality and coverage consistency of a network at the cell edge – where users are furthest from the mobile broadband base station.
According to NSN, relaying technology, which can also be integrated in normal base station platforms, is cost efficient and easy to deploy as it does not require additional backhaul, says NSN. The demonstration of LTE Advanced means operators can plan their LTE network investments knowing that the already best-in-class LTE radio performance, including cell edge data rates, can be further improved and that the technological development path for the next stage of LTE is secure and future-proof.
Stephan Scholz, Chief Technology Officer of Nokia Siemens Networks, said: "Demonstrating improved cell edge and indoor-user data rates is an important milestone for coverage scenarios. It further strengthens the position of LTE as the major mobile broadband technology. Consumers will enjoy an even richer user experience thanks to higher throughput everywhere in the cell, while operators will be able to deploy their networks in a more flexible and cost efficient way.
"LTE Advanced is the next step in the evolutionary development of LTE technology. Nokia Siemens Networks performs extensive research activities for LTE-Advanced in developing this important technology which will be decisive to our customers in the future."
Performance enhancements have been achieved by combining an LTE system supporting a 2×2 MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antenna system, and a Relay station. The Relaying operates in-band, which means that the relay stations inserted in the network do not need an external data backhaul. They are connected to the nearest base stations by using radio resources within the operating frequency band of the base station itself. Towards the terminal they are base stations and offer the full functionality of LTE.
LTE-Advanced is currently being studied by 3GPP for Release 10 and will be submitted towards ITU-R as the 3GPP Radio Interface Technology proposal. The improved cell coverage and system fairness – meaning offering higher user data rates for and fair treatment of users distant from the base station – will allow operators to utilise existing LTE network infrastructure and still meet growing bandwidth demands.
The demonstration has been realised by using an intelligent demo relay node embedded in a test network forming a FDD in-band self-backhauling solution for coverage enhancements. With this demonstration the performance at the cell edge could be increased up to 50% of the peak throughput. Nokia Siemens Networks is the forerunner in LTE. In 2006 the company was the first to demonstrate LTE technology with data speeds in the 160Mb/s range as well as a successful handover between LTE and HSPA, and continued breaking records in 2007 by demonstrating a multiuser field trial in an urban environment with peak data rates of 173 Mb/s.