Category Archives: General

What Is the Impact of Mobile Telephony on Economic Growth?

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GSMA and Deloitte released their first report on the impact of various mobile services on economic growth. The report ‘What Is the Impact of Mobile Telephony on Economic Growth?’ provides the first estimates of the impact of mobile data usage on GDP growth in developed and developing markets.

Key findings of the report include:

  • A doubling of mobile data use leads to an increase of 0.5 percentage points in the GDP per capita growth rate across the 14 countries;
  • Countries characterised by a higher level of data usage per 3G connection have seen an increase in their GDP per capita growth of up to 1.4 percentage points;
  • A 10 per cent rise from 2G to 3G penetration increases GDP per capita growth by 0.15 percentage points; and
  • In developing markets, a 10 per cent expansion in mobile penetration increases productivity by 4.2 percentage points.

Full Report: What Is the Impact of Mobile Telephony on Economic Growth

Highest Throughput Using Existing Mobile Technologies

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Data rate is the new backbone of new generation mobile technology. Most of the new development are performed around this. I discussed earlier how Qualcomm is trying to use the existing technologies and some new concepts to increase data rate thousand fold.

In general we need to make use of unused spectrum as well as implement policies like Authorized Shared Access. Apart from effective use of spectrum small cell technologies like Macro, Pico, Femto and relay-based cell structures need to be promoted. HetNet is another big area where there is scope of huge improvements.

I tried to collect all the webinar from Qualcomm’s “1000X Data Challenge”.

The 1000x mobile data challenge

The 1000x challenge: More Spectrum – How, how much and from where?

The 1000x challenge: Small Cells everywhere!

Way To 1000X Data Rate In Mobile Communication

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Mobile data rate is never at its peak in the history and it won’t be sufficient anytime soon in near future. GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, HSPA+, LTE or LTE-Advanced none of these technology will ever will make the data hungry mobile devices happy. Why because it’s a never-ending story.

I was watching a football world cup qualifier match two days ago at Malmo stadium between Sweden and Kazakhstan and trying to update my status on Facebook. This was the most horrible experience I have with mobile communication till now. Till the end of the game I could not access network. I was using my Samsung Galaxy S III which is a HSPA+ (42 Mbps) modem inside but that was not enough to get some basic data connectivity.

LTE 1000x Througput

Yesterday evening I got this awesome white paper from Qualcomm called “1000X Mobile Data Challenge”. The presentation is all about making the present and future wireless network more efficient to get best throughput. Here is a small excerpt from the whole presentation.

The main areas where wireless infrastructure can be improved is broadly divided into:

  • More spectrum
  • More small cells
  • More indoor cells.

More Spectrum

Analysts predict that the mobile broadband traffic will double every year. According to a ITU study Europe will need 1.7 GHz of spectrum by 2020, which is double the amount currently allocated.

Spectrum is a rare resource and the only way to use it is getting the best out of it. All the underutilized spectrum should be used efficiently.

New policies like ASA (Authorized Shared Access) can help to use unused spectrum. ASA takes advantage of the Cognitive Radio techniques that were originally developed for the unlicensed TV White Space and uses them to facilitate sharing in a given spectrum band by multiple licensed networks

Because the spectrum is licensed, ASA licensees can ensure spectrum access and they can allocate capital to build network infrastructure

  • Since ASA spectrum is licensed, it becomes possible for the ASA network to provide predictable quality of service (QoS)
  • 3G/4G Mobile Broadband Networks Using ASA: macro cells, pico cells, femto cells
  • Support for FDD and TDD
  • Support for Carrier Aggregation
  • Additional carrier can utilize ASA spectrum to provide increased capacity
  • ASA Macros can be deployed in key cities where additional citywide capacity is needed
  • Pico cells can be deployed at key areas where additional capacity is needed Current Pico cells use traditional licensed spectrum. New ASA Pico cells can provide additional capacity using ASA spectrum in addition to traditional licensed spectrum

More Small Cells and Indoor Cells

Small cells like macro, pico, femto will definitely going to open up any new opportunities in the future.

Macro : Conventional base stations that use dedicated backhaul and open to public access. Typical transmit power ~43 dBm; antenna gain ~12-15 dBi.

Pico: Low power base stations that use dedicated backhaul connections and open to public access. Typical transmit power range from ~ 23 dBm-30 dBm, 0-5 dBi antenna gain;

Femto: Consumer-deployable base stations that utilize consumer’s broadband connection as backhaul; femto base stations may have restricted association. Typical transmit power < 23dBm.

Relays–base stations using the same spectrum as backhaul and access. Similar power as Pico’s.

Heterogeneous Network: A deployment that supports macros, picos, femtos and relays in the same spectrum. HetNet is a big way to reduce load from big cells but the biggest disadvantage is interference. With better interference management HetNet will definitely help.

Will these steps help me update my Facebook status next time?

Tricks to Read and Understand 3GPP Specifications

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3GPP specifications are backbone of 3G, IMS, HSPA, Enhanced UTRA technologies. To understand a certain aspect of a protocol stack or encoding of PDUs or to study deep into physical layer one need to understand the respective specifications.

 

The specifications are developed taking into consideration that they should describe the behaviors of certain layer but the implementations in most of places are left to the developers.

For a beginner studying 3GPP specifications are really difficult. There are various reasons.

3GPP Specification Are Interlinked

Each specification in 3GPP has many referenced specifications. So when one tries to understand one specification he end up following many. This happens to many new 3GPP professionals.

3GPP Specifications Do Not Cover Examples

It is always handy to have some real time examples with the theories. As many part of 3GPP specification are left implementation dependent, they do not cover many examples.

Also encoding and decoding of PDUs also are described without examples (e.g. encoding of RLC or MAC PDUs).

Some Specifications Are Very Big

Specifications like RRC (Radio Resource Control, 25.331) are huge in size. Some of them contain more than 1000 pages. So most of time it is very hard to complete the specification.

So Many Technologies

Sometimes beginners find it difficult to know what technology to follow. As 3GPP specifications cover UMTS, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, HSPA, IMS, LTE and many other technologies, it is very hard for a beginner to know what he or she needs to read.

Apart from above few problems there are many more problems may arise while one starts following the specifications.

To understand a specification or part of the specification one need to follow some simple guidelines. These guidelines may not be the strict ones but these can help a lot while reading a specification.

Know What You Want To Read

This is the most important thing before opening any specifications. For example if you want to know detail about cell reselection, you should start with idle mode specification 25.304.

Apart from that one should know for which specification version one is looking for. The specifications are version numbered from Release 99 till Release 11. Not all NW vendors or UE manufacturer supports all releases.
So before downloading any specification from 3GPP website make sure exactly what you are looking for.

Study The Respective Specification First Then Go To The References

It is always get confused easily if you start following the references before reading the specific part.

For example you want to study about PDU structure of MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol, you should study the PDU structure from MAC specification (25.211) before going to other specification like RLC (Radio Link Control) protocol to study MAC SDU (Service Data Unit).
This way you will stick to the part what you are looking for.

Take A Printout When Necessary

It is good for the environment not to take printouts, but it is always helpful to make printout of the part you are just studying.

This works for many engineers I talked to. They like to read from paper printouts more than reading from computer screens. This is because it is always handy to write notes on the printouts and putting markers on important points.
You may use the computer screen to read the reference documents.

Follow What You Are Studying

Master of all is a good term. But it is achieved through small steps.

When you start reading a specification try to follow the whole. This way the fundamental of the protocol layer or technology can be understood easily.

If your professional career is based on RRC (Radio Resource Control) protocol try to read the main part of the specification and then the communication between Upper layers and lower layers.

Sometimes exceptions can be done here when you need to understand a small part for your work. Then you can study deeply in that part.

Examples Can Solve Your Problem

This is always true that examples can help you a lot to understand certain parts of specification.

In most of the time it is hard to get good examples. In those cases try to study and make a specific examples yourself.
For example you want to study RLC (Radio Link Protocol) AM (Acknowledge Mode) PDU structure.

Try to make an example of different way the PDU can be encoded.

Always Good To Ask

It is always good to ask questions to colleagues and co professionals when needed.

But before asking any question to other make sure that you studied the part completely so that you should not waste others time. This will make the discussion complete and relevant.