5G Application Scenarios The development of 5G networks starting in 2019 is generally believed to bring changes not limited to people’s daily life. It will support the evolution of Internet from mobile internet to intelligent internet, which will influence the industrial-ecology deeply. The international standard organization 3GPP defined the three main application scenarios of 5G: e...

SK Telecom on September 12th announced that together with Nokia, it has successfully implemented the world’s first cloud-based SDRAN (Software-Defined RAN) - also known as Cloud RAN - over a real commercial LTE network through a demonstration performed in its Network IT Convergence R&D center. "SK Telecom today announced that together with Nokia, it has successfully implemented the...

I recently heard someone in the industry saying "While LG U+'s Vice President Sang-chul Lee is into IoT, KT's Chairman Chang-kyu Hwang is so into 5G. Whatever solution you propose, if it is for KT, it has to have "5G" in its title to, at least, get attention." Of the Korea's big 3 operators, KT has been most aggressive in sharing its strategies, network architecture, core technologi...

It's been only a year and a half since we excitedly introduced the Evolution of Mobile RAN Architecture in LTE/LTE-A Era (C-RAN) last April. And today we are discussing the same for 5G era already. Key transitions from 3G to 4G included i) network architecture change from coverage-based to capacity-based, and ii) introduction of new 4G element, X2 interface. Specifically, cells became s...

For the rest of the Q3 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here In its second demonstration of LTE in Unlicensed spectrum ("LTE-U", LAA in 3GPP term) conducted last month - 7 months after its first demonstration where it showed 300 Mbps through CA of 20 MHz at 2.6 GHz and another 20 MHz at 5.8 GHz, LG U+ successfully achieved 600 Mbps through carrier aggregation (C...

For the rest of the Q2 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here At Barcelona's Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015, KT demonstrated a variety of new 5G, Hetnet and IoT technologies and services. Of all those presented, below we will focus on our most interested topics, WiFi-related pre-5G technology, LTE-Hetnet (LTE-H) and LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U), and see how t...

For the rest of the Q2 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here HFR, a Korean specialist in Optical and Radio Networking technologies, presented its newest In-building DAS, C-RAN Fronthaul and Carrier Ethernet solutions at Mobile World Conference (MWC) 2015. 1. In-building DAS HFR unveiled uRadioTM (DRS product), an upgraded version of its precedent In-buil...

For the rest of the Q2 2015 issue of Korea Communication Review magazine please click here Contents 1. Background of Antenna-Integrated RRH 2. Features of Antenna-Integrated RRH 3. Outlook for the Antenna-Integrated RRH Market 4. Installation Issues in the Small Cell Market * RRA is a brand name of antenna-integrated RRH by the author's company 1. Background of Antenna-...

3. RAN Architecture Evolution Strategies SK Telecom introduced C-RAN right from the very early stages of the LTE service commercialization (January 2012) as an effort to achieve higher mobile network operation efficiency and more cost savings. As a result, most of the company's RAN is now in C-RAN architecture, where macro BBUs are separated from RRHs, and moved to centralized locations...

2. Inter-cell Coordination Evolution Strategies CA improves network capacity by broadening frequency bandwidth, whereas inter-cell coordination technologies do the same task by enhancing frequency efficiency. Inter-cell coordination is designed to manage radio resources more efficiently by having cells in different sites share user and/or cell information with each other. Inter-cell coo...

SK Telecom is the #1 mobile operator in Korea, with sales of KRW 16.6 trillion (USD 15.3 billion) in 2013, and with 50.1% of a mobile mobile subscription market share in 2Q 2014. It launched LTE service back in July 2011, and now more than half of its subscribers are LTE service subscribers, with 55.8% of LTE penetration as of 2Q 2014. Due to LTE subscription growth, more advanced device feat...

In the CoMP scenarios defined in 3GPP Release 111 and Release 122, CoMP is used within a single eNB (intra-eNB) with ideal backhaul only - in restricted areas in Release 11 among eNBs (inter-eNB) with non-ideal backhaul as well - in more expanded areas in Release 12 According to NGMN3, ideal backhaul refers to one with latency of 2.5 usecs or less and capacity of 10 Gbps or higher, whe...

In this post, we will talk about “jitter” introduced in the fronthaul network of LTE C-RAN. As shown in the figure on the right, jitter refers to the skew or variation in time or phase of a digital signal exchanged between communication systems. This jitter can eventually cause errors during the data and clock recovery process at RRH. Then, why should we be worried about jitter...

HFR is probably most known as a vendor of wired/wireless network equipment like Mobile fronthaul, Carrier Ethernet, FTTx, etc. Today, we are going to hear from Dr. J.H. Lee (jongheonlee@hfrnet.com), CTO of HFR about one of its most popular solutions, flexiHaulTM, a mobile optical access solution. 1. Welcome! Thank you for being with us. Can you tell us a little bit about HFR first?...

1. Traditional RAN Architecture and Issues 1.1 Issue No. 1: Degraded service quality and network performance due to inter-cell interference 1.2 Issue No. 2: Increased costs of building and operating cell sites 2. Degradation of service quality and network performance due to inter-cell interference: Prevented by reducing X2 distance 3. Costs of building and operating cell sites: Reduced...

In C-RAN (Centralized/Cloud RAN), the more RRHs are covered by one CO (BBU hostelling site), i) the fewer COs are required, and ii) the more BBUs can be centralized at one CO. This allows for the most efficient utilization of BBU resources, thereby significantly reducing CAPEX/OPEX. For this reason, the maximum separation distance between RRH and BBU should be secured. This distance is cons...

Our question in this post is: Why does the CPRI link between BBU (at CO) and RRH (at Cell Site) in C-RAN require a ultra high Gbps bandwidth? Before you read this post, we advise you to read our previous post, "CPRI (1): Emergence of C-RAN and CPRI overview". The CPRI link capacities required between BBU and RRH in the C-RAN architecture are as follows: Table 1. CPRI data rates...

Emergence of C-RAN (Separation of Baseband and Radio, and Baseband Centralization) Today, global LTE operators are competing with one another more fiercely than ever, under the pressure to provide better service quality and higher speed. Conventional Internet traffic has been increasing steadily. What's more, mobile traffic resulting from OTT video services, such as YouTube, Mobile IPT...