4G LTE: Boosting Mobile Broadband Experience Upgrade

On May 17th, World Telecommunication and Informationization Day, ITU announced the theme of this year is "Broadband promotes sustainable development." The industry generally believes that the future mobile broadband penetration rate will continue to increase; countries around the world, especially developing countries, will benefit from the popularity of broadband (especially mobile broadband).

Broadband benefits the world, "mobile" and "developing countries" are key words

The United Nations issued a report last year saying that every 10% increase in broadband access in developing countries will bring about 1.38% of GDP growth. The latest ITU data also shows that as of the end of 2014, Internet users are expected to reach 3 billion, of which two-thirds are in developing countries. Global mobile broadband subscribers will also reach 2.3 billion, and 55% of these users are expected to come from developing countries. ITU expects that the fixed broadband penetration rate will slow down in developing countries. By the end of 2014, the global fixed broadband penetration rate will reach 10%. In contrast, the global mobile broadband penetration rate will reach 32%.

In China, the broadband access rate and penetration rate are continuously increasing, and the “mobile” trend is also very clear. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s mobile Internet business increased by 46% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2014, while fixed data and Internet services grew year-on-year. Only 6.9%. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, after the issuance of 4G licenses, the investment focus of all enterprises has begun to shift to the fields of mobile communications and transmission, and the capabilities of mobile communications networks and optical fiber broadband infrastructure have continued to increase. In addition, the rapid adoption of smart phones in China has further promoted the rapid growth of mobile broadband consumption. In 2013, Chinese smartphone users accounted for about 40% of total users.

In the world, 4G LTE has become the most advanced mobile broadband solution in the face of rapidly increasing mobile data demand, and it is also the fastest-growing wireless communication technology ever. According to the GSA data, 288 commercial LTE networks have been established in 104 countries around the world. As of March 19, 2014, there were 1,563 LTE terminals worldwide, which was a significant increase compared to 666 in January 2013.

LTE Common Standard Promotes Rapid Development of Mobile Broadband

As mentioned above, 4G will quickly increase China’s mobile broadband penetration rate. Compared with 3G's multiple communication formats, 4G has a very important advantage, namely LTE is a global standard. LTE supports two duplex modes, namely LTE FDD for paired spectrum and LTE TDD for unpaired spectrum. There is only a very small necessary difference between the two duplex modes. According to the Strategy Analytics report of the market research and consulting agency, “The two formats of LTE TDD and FDD share the same network architecture and protocol stack, and the key technologies and core processing processes at the physical layer are also the same. At the beginning of LTE design, 3GPP A single air interface technology that supports both FDD and TDD will be implemented as a very clear system requirement for LTE. It is hoped that both duplex systems will provide a greater economic scale. The report said, "The converged LTE TDD and FDD are As a booster of data rate and network capacity, unified standards are providing a solid foundation for LTE's global economic scale."

Regarding the common convergence of FDD and TDD, Mr. Alan Hadden, chairman of GSA (Global Mobile Equipment Suppliers Association), believes that "Because LTE is a globally unified, universal standard, both LTE FDD and TDD network deployment and user terminal manufacturing can greatly benefit from LTE's global economies of scale, and Li Yue, president of China Mobile, once said that “in the past five years, China Mobile has been promoting the development of TD-LTE (ie, LTE TDD) industry has always been a pursuit of convergence. TD-LTE and LTE FDD It is an LTE, but there are only two different forms of expression. TD-LTE can make the remaining frequency fully utilized and get a more efficient organization."

According to the plans of all parties, in 2014, China Mobile’s sales target for LTE TDD terminals will be 100 million units; China Telecom Tianyi Terminal sales will also reach 100 million units, including 36 million 4G terminals; and ZTE Corporation also said earlier, 2014 The global shipment target of ZTE smart phones is 60 million, of which 4G phones account for at least 40%. There is no doubt that 4G smart phones will become an important driving force for the development of China's mobile Internet.

Evolution of LTE phase, long-term coexistence with 3G

In the future, what is the development trend of LTE? Observe what leading companies do.

In the evolution of 4G LTE technology, LTE has a long-term evolution path. At present, Cat.6, carrier aggregation, and 300 Mbps speed are being paid attention to by the industry.

At the end of last year, Qualcomm announced the launch of its fourth-generation 3G/LTE multimode solution, including the latest modem chipset Qualcomm Gobi 9x35 and RF transceiver chips. The Gobi 9x35 is the first cellular modem based on a 20-nanometer technology to support up to 40MHz global carrier aggregation deployments on LTE TDD and FDD Category 6 networks, with download speeds up to 300Mbps.

Recently, Huawei announced that it successfully completed the LTE Advanced Category 6 connection test, and the download speed reached 300Mbps. The test uses Huawei SingleRAN equipment and Qualcomm's fourth-generation 3G/LTE multimode solution, the Qualcomm Gobi 9x35 processor. Huawei said that this trial is an important milestone in the development of LTE.

During the MWC, Qualcomm worked with Samsung, SK Telecom and KT to complete the world's first live demonstration of LTE Advanced Category 6 connectivity (up to 300Mbps download speed) via the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 smartphone used in this demo was specially developed for demonstrations using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor and the Qualcomm GobiTM 9x35 modem.

In the 4G era, consumers are also concerned about various experience-related performances such as mobile phone power consumption, graphics, photographing, and video processing, in addition to the important trends such as “Cat.6” and “carrier aggregation” related to connectivity. From a processor perspective, new technologies and leading technology levels will always be the first to explore the path. Qualcomm recently released the Snapdragon 810 and Opteron 808 processors, using a 20-nanometer process and supporting 64-bit computing. Snapdragon 810 also supports rich native 4K ultra high definition interface and video.

Of course, companies such as Qualcomm are gradually shifting the performance of high-end processors to mass-market processors. For example, Qualcomm did not completely "64-bit" in the "high-end market", after Qualcomm released Xiaolong 615/610 processor also supports 64-bit, support LTE dual card dual pass and global model to meet all the needs of the Chinese market; The first Xiaolong 410 processor released was the first Qualcomm chipset to support 64-bit, supporting dual SIM cards and three SIM cards, supporting Beidou, and facing thousands of LTE mobile phones.

In addition, the industry generally agrees and is practicing that long-term coexistence of 3G and 4G LTE complement each other. According to the picture outlined in the "Broadband China" strategy and implementation plan, the penetration rate of 3G/LTE users will reach 85% by 2020, and the total number of users will be 1.2 billion. LTE will basically cover urban and rural areas. It is worth noting that the plan indicates that the number of 1.2 billion users is "3G/LTE" rather than pure 4G LTE users. From this perspective, for a long time to come, LTE will complement each other with existing 3G services to ensure a consistent user experience and extensive coverage.

"1000x" and the way to deal with it

The rapid increase of the mobile broadband penetration rate and the rapid spread of the industrial Internet will bring about an issue that the industry must pay attention to: the explosion of data volume. Dr. Paul Jacobs, chairman of Qualcomm, stated that the current global mobile data traffic is doubling year-on-year, and we must prepare for the future growth of 1,000 times. The 1000x challenge stems from the rapid growth of mobile broadband in the past few years, and it is clear that its growth momentum will continue.

Qualcomm believes that more spectrum, more small base stations, greater indoor capacity, and greater intelligence are solutions. Qualcomm said that in the future, large base stations will co-exist with countless small base stations. Many of the technologies included in the HSPA+ and LTE Advanced networks can effectively address the interference generated by this Heterogeneous Network (HetNets), and some of these technologies are currently commercially available. It can be predicted that in the near future, the increase of 1,000 times of mobile data volume will bring heterogeneous networks to a whole new level, and small base stations will be deployed intensively and everywhere. Of course, all existing interference management technologies can come in handy. Earlier, Qualcomm also introduced the "neighborhood small cells," which are highly dense networks consisting of extremely low-cost, plug-and-play and open indoor small base stations. This kind of network can provide extremely high indoor capacity and provide good outdoor coverage and capacity for the nearest “neighborhood”.