Qualcomm and Teleepoch Enter Into a 3G CDMA Subscriber Unit License Agreement, October 6, 2007

MTN chooses Cambridge Broadband Networks for multi-service wireless network in Rwanda, October 6, 2007

Brazilian government to publish 3G bidding rules soon, October 6, 2007

KTF 3G service suffers from technical problems, October 6, 2007

Argentina’s Personal lunches 3G service in Rosario, October 6, 2007

Russia has it's first 3G network, October 6, 2007

AT&T could drop Alcatel-Lucent as 3G mobile network supplier, October 6, 2007

Enea Extends License Agreement with ZTE for 3G Handsets, October 2, 2007

LG to unveil premium handsets in Brazil, October 2, 2007

KTF 3G subscribers doubled in less than 3 months, October 2, 2007

3G policy in India will be non-uniform, October 2, 2007

- previous news

CDG's Technology Forum evaluates 3G improvements

May 10, 2006

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) reported that CDMA2000 operators and vendors gathered last month in San Francisco at the CDG's semi-annual Technology Forum to discuss new methods to expand CDMA2000 network coverage and capacity, and further improve quality. Some of the proposed techniques include interference cancellation, 4G vocoders, SIP header reduction, digital RF transmitters, cross layer optimization and mobile transmit diversity. These cutting-edge technologies can potentially increase the CDMA2000 network capacity by 35-50%, improve capacity utilization by 2-7 times and reduce content delivery time by 40-60%.

"As voice and data traffic increases and the demand for more bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications grows, operators are looking for new methods to expand capacity and improve the performance of their existing networks," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. "There are a number of innovative solutions available to CDMA operators. The Technology Forum and other CDG events are excellent venues for operators and vendors to discuss them."

At the San Francisco Forum, vendors presented a number of their latest products. For interference limited systems and systems near capacity, TensorComm reported that their Interference Cancellation product, when applied to the mobile baseband, can provide gains of up to 6 dB and can increase user data throughput by as much as 50%. Mobile Transmit Diversity solutions, such as Magnolia Broadband provides, can increase capacity from 35% -- 50%. LGE is also looking at interference cancellations techniques at the receiver side to achieve similar results. These solutions could provide carriers with CAPEX (capital expenses) and OPEX (operating expenses) savings as well as significant improvement in QoS and user experience.

Higher capacity throughput can also be achieved by use of multiple beams asymmetric azimuth antenna arrays. TenXc Wireless' solution deploys the use of spatial processing adaptive digital beam forming array antennas at the base station. Simulation results show that throughput per sector can be increased by 1.8 to 1.9 times by using "bi-sector" array antennas.

Vocoder technology has been improving at a fast rate, and the new 4GV vocoder from Qualcomm offers capacity enhancements of up to 40% compared to EVRC, without trading voice quality. This vocoder is optimized for VoIP applications for both narrowband and broadband applications on the 1xEV-DO Rev A architecture for superior wideband voice quality and capacity impact comparable to EVRC.

SIP header reduction to support delay sensitive applications is another technical enhancement. The current SIP message size is too large to meet call setup requirements for delay sensitive applications, such as PoC, VoIP, VT, etc. Nortel presented an access independent IMS-based solution that can meet these non-negotiable call setup requirements. By only sending the dynamic information, this technique will further improve throughput, as well as the user experience.

Cross Layer Optimization, provided by Venturi Wireless, addresses the challenges of IP over the wireless environment. The company is working on improving content delivery time by 40 -- 60% and to providing a consistent user experience necessary to drive the adoption of the latest multimedia services. Venturi says this optimization delivers better capacity utilization and 2 to 7 times improved throughput.

TCP is not able to optimally contend with the characteristics of the Internet and the characteristics of the air interface at the same time. An optimization solution provided by ByteMobile modifies and tunes TCP's transmission algorithms to perform better over the air. Dynamic data reduction optimization reduces the size of this data with a variety of techniques including but not limited to compression.

PulseWave RF discussed their Digital RF Transmitter technology that can achieve a cost reduction of 20% per BTS while providing PA that are smaller in size with lower power consumption.