LTE World Summit 2013

RAN Evolution Beyond Release 12

Takehiro Nakamura
NTT DOCOMO, INC.

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FRA concept
Support for traffic explosion
Beyond 500x in 10 years

QoE for various applications

Future Radio Access

Gbps-experience data rate, Reduced latency, Battery saving

Massive device connectivity

Reduced control signaling, More simultaneous pipes

Intelligent network with low cost & high robustness

Support of diverse environments (small cells & higher frequency bands), Energy saving

Future Radio Access (FRA) will provide a total solution to satisfy the requirements by future drivers
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Capacity
Higher system capacity:
Report ITU-R M.2243 (IMT.UPDATE): 1530 times traffic growth is envisioned between 2010 and 2015 Mobile data traffic is continuously growing over DOCOMO network
Approx. 1.6 times per year (2004 2009) Approx. 2 times per year (2010 2011) Approx. 12 times traffic growth is envisioned between 2011 and 2015 Traffic volume

Traffic growth forecast

The main drivers are smartphones, video services and high-speed data access

~ 12x
~ 2x

Mobile data traffic is expected to grow to x500~x1000 in 10 years (2010 2020)

2010 2011

2015 Fiscal Year

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Directions of evolution: The Cube

A set of radio access technologies is required to satisfy future requirements
Required performance
Spectrum efficiency Traffic offloading
TRx TRx TRx TRx TRx TRx TRx TRx

WiFi

Non-orthogonal multiple access

Controller

3D/Massive MIMO, Advanced receiver Study for new interference scenarios

Current capacity

Network densification
Hotspot Dense urban Shopping mall Cellular network assists local area radio access

Tx-Rx cooperative access technologies

Spectrum extension
Existing cellular bands Very wide

Higher/wider frequency bands Super wide

New cellular concept for cost/energyefficient dense deployments

Frequency

Efficient use of higher spectrum bands

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Evolution paths for FRA

Further LTE enhancements
Macro-assisted small cell enhancement (Phantom cell) Further general LTE enhancements Should prioritize the achievement of more big gains over backward compatibility Consider new spectrum allocations of WRC-15 and beyond Some technical components may be applied to further LTE enhancements

Future Radio Access

Potential new RAT

Potential New RAT

Big gain

LTE-C
Performance

LTE-B
LTE-Advanced LTE Rel-8/9
Pico/Femto

Macro-assisted small cell enhancement (Phantom cell)

Rel-14/15,
Further LTE enhancements

Rel-12/13
Rel-10/11
CA/eICIC/CoMP for HetNet

WRC-15
~2020

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~2015

Year

FRA technical concept

Combined usage of lower and higher frequency bands
Higher frequency bands become useful and beneficial! Existing cellular bands
(high power density for coverage)

Higher frequency bands

(wider bandwidth for high data rate) Very wide (e.g. > 3GHz) Super wide (e.g. > 10GHz) Frequency

No coverage issue any more Can provide very high throughput using wider bandwidth Big offloading gain from existing cellular bands

FRA technical concept

Future cellular enhancements New RAT for higher frequencies

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Phantom cell concept

Proposed macro-assisted small cell Phantom cell
Split of C-plane and U-plane between macro & small cells in different bands
Macro cell Existing cellular bands

Phantom cell
Higher frequency bands
C-plane: Macro cell maintains good connectivity and mobility using lower frequency bands
(RRC: Radio Resource Control)
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U-plane: Small cell provides higher

throughput and more flexible/costenergy efficient operations using higher/wider frequency bands
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Massive MIMO BF gain

Beamforming (BF) gain with massive antenna elements
2GHz
/2

Increasing number of antenna elements by X 4GHz 1) Increase of BF gain by X 2) Decrease of BF width by 1/X
L
min G

Distance between antenna elements /2 reduced by half doubles the number of antenna elements (/2)/2

min /2 2G

Massive MIMO in higher frequency bands

Compensation of increased path loss & Improved spectrum efficiency

Improved coverage and spectrum Massive MIMO efficiency for super dense small cells in higher freqeuncy bands
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Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)

More efficient multiple access scheme Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA)
W-CDMA Radio resource allocation Non-orthogonal (CDMA) LTE Orthogonal (OFDMA)
More details on NOMA concept and initial results are presented in this WS.

FRA Orthogonal (OFDMA) + Superposition/Cancellation (NOMA)

Link adaptation
Multiple access image

Fast TPC
(TPC: Transmission Power Control)

AMC
(AMC: Adaptive Modulation & Coding)

MUPA/AMC
(MUPA: Multi-User Power Allocation)

Non-orthogonal assisted by power control

Orthogonal between users

Superposition & interference cancellation

Why NOMA? Multiple access using interference cancellation itself is very old technology (for uplink in particular) Evolution of device processing capabilities for interference cancellation Moores law: 100x processing power after 10 years In OFDMA, frequency-domain signal processing becomes possible Exploitation of path loss difference among users Multi-path fading was exploited by OFDMA, but path loss still needs to be further exploited
NOMA utilizes path loss difference for efficient user multiplexing 9

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FRA real-time simulator

The potential perfomance gains of applying key FRA technologies are demonstrated using FRA real-time simulator. Demo Scenario
Spectrum extension x NW densification
Efficient exploitation of higher frequency bands using small cells

Key technology for small cells

Massive MIMO

Key technology for macro cells

Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA)

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FRA real-time simulator

Macro Cell Only Macro + 12 small Cells, 100 MHz BW@3.5 GHz

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FRA real-time simulator

100 MHz BW@3.5 GHz 200 MHz BW@5 GHz 400 MHz BW@10 GHz

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FRA real-time simulator

400 MHz BW@10 GHz 600 MHz BW@20 GHz With Massive MIMO

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Summary
We presented our views on requirements and potential key techologies for Future Radio Access (FRA):
Macro-assisted small cell, i.e., Phantom cell, and Massive MIMO are promising approaches for higher/wider frequency bands towards the long-term future Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising technology for future cellular enhancements

FRA technical concept

Future cellular enhancements New RAT for higher frequencies

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