Telecom network supplier Ericsson announced new Radio System software and hardware — aimed at assisting telecoms to achieve LTE broadband speed of 1 Gbps.
Telecoms can ensure 1 Gbps peak broadband speed by making software additions to their existing commercial LTE networks.
The LTE network innovation from Ericsson is significant especially when a report OpenSignal indicating that the average 4G broadband speed was 13.5 Gbps globally.
Telecoms will be able to manage LTE data demands at a time when LTE subscriptions are expected to reach 4.1 billion by the end of 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25 percent.
Arun Bansal, head of Business Unit Radio, Ericsson, said: “Gigabit LTE, Elastic RAN, and new radio access and microwave backhaul products are all designed to help our operators become the frontrunners in their markets.”
Features of Gigabit LTE
# Three component Carrier Aggregation (CA) enables the user to benefit from up to 60 MHz combined bandwidth from different spectrum bands simultaneously
# 4X4 MIMO doubles the number of data streams being transmitted to the user’s smartphone, enabling up to twice the capacity and data throughput
# LTE 256 QAM encoding which packs more bits into the available spectrum
Ericsson Lean Carrier increases both the data throughput received by end users, and overall system capacity by reducing the interference caused by excess reference signaling across the LTE network.
The combination of these features delivers up to 100 percent increase in downlink peak data rates compared to three component CA alone.
With Ericsson’s new Elastic RAN, every Ericsson Radio System LTE baseband unit can coordinate with any adjacent one, whether in a centralized, distributed or hybrid network architecture. This architecture supports the operator’s migration to Cloud RAN.
With Elastic RAN, LTE basebands are interconnected through Ethernet transport networks, enabling the network to operate as one unified coordination area. Elastic RAN ensures that capabilities such as Carrier Aggregation (CA) and Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) can improve the user’s app coverage network wide irrespective of the baseband deployment scenario.
Ericsson also announced three Radio access products to complement its Radio System launched in Q1 2015.
# Radio 4415 with 4x40W output power supports 4×4 MIMO to increase capacity by doubling the available data streams
# Radio 2012 adds support for the 1.4 GHz Supplemental Downlink band, thereby adding capacity to the network
# Radio 2212 with 2x80W output power to facilitate spectrum re-farming as operators upgrade from 2G to 3G and LTE
Ericsson is adding new microwave Ericsson Radio System.
# MINI-LINK 6651 is a compact indoor unit with a link capacity of 1.9 Gbps (using 4096 QAM and a 112 MHz channel)
# MINI-LINK 6354 is a two carrier all outdoor solution for traditional frequency bands, providing a capacity of 2.8 Gbps using 4096 QAM and 112 MHz channels.
# Multi-band Booster provides a significant boost in performance and improved use of spectrum, by combining a wider high frequency channel with a narrow low frequency channel
# Compact antennas for the current MINI-LINK 6363, MINI-LINK 6352 and Fronthaul 6392
Mike Wright, group managing director – Networks at Telstra, said: “Ericsson’s latest LTE innovations, including Gigabit LTE will enable us to continue to raise the bar in terms of user experience across a wide range of applications and media streaming.”
Dragan Raguz, head of Transmission, Tele2 Croatia, said: “Microwave backhaul continues to play a very important role in the evolution to 5G.”
