Sunday, February 21, 2010

DOCSIS

This being my first project, should have been the first posting ! Nevertheless, here comes the brief intro of what is it all about.

Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-speed data transfer to an existing Cable TV (CATV) system. It is employed by many cable television operators to provide Internet access (see cable internet) over their existing hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) infrastructure.
DOCSIS was developed by CableLabs and contributing companies including ARRIS, BigBand Networks, Broadcom, Cisco, Conexant, Correlant, Harmonic, Intel, Motorola, Netgear, Terayon, and Texas Instruments.
The first DOCSIS specification was version 1.0, issued in March 1997, with revision 1.1 (adding quality of service (QoS) capabilities) following in April 1999. Because of increased demand for symmetric services such as IP telephony, DOCSIS was revised to enhance upstream transmission speeds; DOCSIS 2.0 was released in December 2001. Most recently, the specification was revised to significantly increase transmissions speeds (this time both upstream and downstream) and introduce support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). This version, DOCSIS 3.0, was released in August 2006. Cross-version compatibility has been maintained across all versions of DOCSIS, with the devices falling back to the highest supported version in common between both endpoints: cable modem and cable modem termination system (CMTS) The reciprocal is not true, however: if one has a cable modem that is, for example, only capable of handling DOCSIS 1.0, and the system is running 2.0, the end user will not be able to use the highest speeds the cable network is capable of delivering.

As frequency allocation band plans differ between U.S. and European CATV systems, DOCSIS standards have been modified for use in Europe. These changes were published under the name of "EuroDOCSIS". The main differences account for differing TV channel bandwidths; European cable channels conform to PAL TV standards and are 8 MHz wide, whereas in North American cable channels conform to ATSC standards which specify 6 MHz. The wider bandwidth in EuroDOCSIS architectures permits more bandwidth to be allocated to the downstream data path (toward the user). EuroDOCSIS certification testing is executed by Excentis (formerly known as tComLabs), while DOCSIS certification testing is executed by CableLabs. Typically, customer premises equipment receives "certification", while CMTS equipment receives "qualification".
Most cable systems in Japan utilize the North American version of DOCSIS, while some employ a variant of DOCSIS that uses upstream channels that are based on a 9.216 MHz master clock (as opposed to 10.24 MHz used in DOCSIS/EuroDOCSIS) resulting in upstream channel widths that are a power-of-two division of 6 MHz (as opposed to 6.4 MHz in DOCSIS/EuroDOCSIS).

3GPP LTE Channels and MAC

Here is some more stuff on LTE. The stack ain't ready yet in Sasken, but Iv moved out of it, there were other things calling ;-) Miss you MAC :'( would get back to u someday :)

http://www.eventhelix.com/lte/presentations/3GPP-LTE-MAC.pdf

Saturday, February 20, 2010

LTE Handset Development Gets Boost

Adoption of the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) initiative by the GSM Association this week will allow handset manufacturers to forge ahead quickly to provide handsets for Long Term Evolution networks.
The first LTE subscriber devices are expected to be data cards and dongles for Verizon Wireless’ LTE network, which is scheduled to debut in 25 to 30 U.S. markets later this year. Handsets are expected to follow, probably next year.
Approval of VoLTE, formerly known as One Voice, by more than 40 companies at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain this week clears the way for rapid development and deployment of handsets. “There will be handsets available earlier than we initially thought,” said Vivek Badrinath, an executive VP at France Telecom/Orange, who is chairman of the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance. “This view is supported by other major players.”
Verizon Wireless is expected to be the first major U.S. mobile carrier to offer LTE; AT&T has also committed to LTE, but will likely begin deploying its network in 2011. Other firms signing on to the VoLTE initiative include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.
“As mobile operators begin to deploy LTE, it is essential their networks are aligned around one, common standard for voice and messaging services,” said Alex Sinclair, GSMA’s chief technology and strategy officer.
Based on IMS (IP multimedia subsystem), VoLTE supports voice call service features like call waiting, call hold, and call barring. It is scalable and can serve large subscriber bases.
Verizon chief technology officer Dick Lynch also told a gathering at the WMC that LTE handsets appear to be ahead of schedule. “We’re in Phase 4 of trial work,” he said, noting that Verizon’s trial networks in Boston and Seattle should finish their testing phase in two months. “We will then be ready to go to our vendors and say we are ready to move into commercial deployment in a big way. We have seen more interest in development of chipsets and devices than we originally thought — we underestimated it.”
Another executive, Ericsson CTO Hakan Eriksson, concurred. “Handsets are coming faster than we anticipated,” he said. Ericsson is supplying infrastructure for many LTE networks, including Verizon’s.
The GSMA said international roaming specs for LTE calling are expected to be completed by the first quarter of next year.

The Evolution to LTE - Your Final Piece of the Jigsaw..

  • The leading conference & exhibition for the LTE Industry!
  • 1000+ attendees from 75+ countries
  • 150+ visionary speakers
  • 80+exhibitors, meeting rooms & hospitality suites
  • 40+ Press, Bloggers, Analysts and Media
  • 40% CxO & Senior Management level!
  • NEW for 2010 - featuring the prestigious Informa LTE Awards!

LTE World Summit 2010 looks set to build upon 2009's hugely successful event which attracted top operators from across the World. In attendance will be ALL the major LTE players, including all major operators, vendors, industry associations, industry press and bloggers and more! With over 80 stands and a comprehensive 6 track programme, plus two co-located conferences, you can expect a fantastic turnout in Amsterdam in May...
If you can only make one LTE event in 2010... make it this one!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Long Term Evolution









Wireless phone standards have a life of their own. You can tell, because they're spoken of reverently in terms of generations. There's great-granddad who's pioneering story pre-dates cellular, grandma and grandpa analog cellular, mom and dad digital cellular, 3G wireless just starting to make a place for itself in the world, and the new baby on the way, 4G.
Most families have a rich history of great accomplishments, famous ancestors, skeletons in the closets and wacky in-laws. The wireless scrapbook is just as dynamic. There is success, infighting and lots of hope for the future. Here's a brief snapshot of the colorful world of wireless.
First of all, this family is the wireless telephone family. It is just starting to compete with the wireless Internet family that includes Wi-Fi and the other 802 wireless IEEE standards. But it is a completely different set of standards. The only place the two are likely to merge is in a marriage of phones that support both the cellular and Wi-Fi standards.
Wireless telephone started with what you might call 0G if you can remember back that far. The great ancestor is the mobile telephone service that became available just after World War II. In those pre-cell days, you had a mobile operator to set up the calls and there were only a handful of channels available.
The big boom in mobile phone service really began with the introduction of analog cellular service called AMPS (Analog Mobile Phone Service) starting in 1981. And I would prefer to skip the story in between and talk about the latest stuff in the air.




LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the project name of a new high performance air interface for cellular mobile communication systems. It is the last step toward the 4th generation (4G) of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks. Where the current generation of mobile telecommunication networks are collectively known as 3G (for "third generation"), LTE is marketed as 4G. However, it does not fully comply with the IMT Advanced 4G requirements. Most major mobile carriers in the United States and several worldwide carriers have announced plans to convert their networks to LTE beginning in 2009. The world's first publicly available LTE-service was opened by TeliaSonera in the two Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo on the 14th of December 2009. LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) which will be introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8. Much of 3GPP Release 8 will focus on adopting 4G mobile communications technology, including an all-IP flat networking architecture. On August 18, 2009, the European Commission announced it will invest a total of €18 million into researching the deployment of LTE and 4G candidate system LTE Advanced.
While it is commonly seen as a mobile telephone or common carrier development, public safety agencies in the US have also endorsed LTE as the preferred technology for the new 700 MHz public-safety radio band. Agencies in some areas have filed for waivers hoping to use the 700 MHz spectrum with other technologies in advance of the adoption of a nationwide standard.

The LTE specification provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least 50 Mbps and RAN round-trip times of less than 10 ms. LTE supports scalable carrier bandwidths, from 20 MHz down to 1.4 MHz and supports both frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD). Part of the LTE standard is the System Architecture Evolution, a flat IP-based network architecture designed to replace the GPRS Core Network and ensure support for, and mobility between, some legacy or non-3GPP systems, for example GPRS and WiMax respectively.
The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD in the same platform, an improved end-user experience and a simple architecture resulting in low operating costs. LTE will also support seamless passing to cell towers with older network technology such as GSM, cdmaOne, W-CDMA (UMTS), and CDMA2000. So people, watch the 4G magic soon.

The first one


Wanted to start this one long ago, but there was something holding me back (something..ehhh..wish I knew !) So now that I visualize a substantial beginning (whats wrong in being hopeful ), welcome to my first blog posting!