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The upsurge in demands for mobile data traffic coupled with the development of mobile broadband technologies such as HSPA and WiMAX have heaped pressure on CDMA operators, and accelerated the pace of evolution from CDMA to LTE. The question is, how to ensure that the CDMA-to-LTE evolution is going to take place smoothly?
By Sheng Songtao

Smoothly evolving

CDMA to LTE
MAY 2009 . ISSUE 49

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Main Topic

Smoothly evolving CDMA to LTE

The evolutionary path to LTE

temming from the rapid growth of mobile data services, operators now face the twin challenges of a drastic increase in data traffic demands and the need to reduce costs. To meet these difficulties and boost revenues from mobile data services, operators are currently planning to upgrade and evolve their existing mobile networks. At one point, the CDMA industry was hesitant about whether to choose LTE or UMB to lead future evolution. During the development process of the two competing technologies, leading CDMA operators such as Verizon (USA), KDDI (Japan), SK Telecom (Korea), and KTF (Korea) announced their alignment to LTE. As a result, the LTE industry chain is destined to rapidly mature and become more sophisticated than UMB. In November 2008, Qualcomm announced that it had abandoned UMB, by which time it was apparent that CDMA was destined to evolve to LTE. Wireless broadband technologies such as HSPA and WiMAX were also adding pressure on CDMA operators to accelerate the evolutionary pace of CDMA to LTE. High throughput, low delays, and low costs are the three basic requirements for 4G network development, which LTE is destined to realize. Firstly, LTE adopts the most advanced technologies such as OFDMA, SC-OFDMA, and MIMO, to achieve high throughput, with the minimum uplink and downlink throughput objectives being 100Mbps and 50Mbps respectively. Secondly, the flat network architecture of LTE can effectively reduce delays to less than 5ms on the service layer and 100ms on the control layer. Finally, the All-IP architecture, flexible spectrum utilization strategy, and SON technology offer LTE a great cost advantage. Several CDMA operators such as KDDI and Verizon are preparing to introduce LTE.

In spite of the rapid development of data services, voice services will continue to be a major source of revenue for CDMA operators in the long-term, though CDMA networks will continue to expand. The competition of HSPA/WiMAX technologies and the rapid growth of data services pressure existing network capacity, which has spurred CDMA operators to step up their LTE evolution plans. The accelerated process of transiting to LTE will also give rise to a stage in which CDMA and LTE networks coexist. KDDI recently unveiled its development strategy in which an LTE network will be deployed on the existing CDMA network to allow the interoperation of the two. Verizons strategy has also made it clear that its CDMA network, which was upgraded in 2007, will continue to operate in tandem with LTE. This is necessary in part because of the step-by-step nature of LTE deployment; LTE will initially cover high-traffic areas to provide large-capacity mobile broadband access services before gradually being extended to full coverage in phases. During the initial stage, CDMA networks will continue to carry low- and mediumrate mobile broadband services over a broader area. This three-dimensional service approach enables operators to flexibly formulate their operation strategies and provide diverse ser vices. Sprint Nextels brand, Sprint 4G, features CDMA/WiMAX coexistence as a typical example of a three-dimensional CDMA + OFDMA (LTE/WiMAX) network. Under this brand, Sprint Nextel has rolled out CDMA/WiMAX dual-mode handsets, and plans to enhance CDMA/WiMAX network interoperability and switchover to maximize the overall coverage and capacity strength of the three-dimensional network.

Two challenges for operators

During CDMA and LTE coexistence and CDMA-to-LTE evolution, operators face two challenges: 1) adequately protecting legacy investments during evolution while upgrading the existing

CDMA and LTE coexistence

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CDMA network; 2) guaranteeing QoE to avoid subscriber churn during network evolution. The first challenge requires a unified platform solution that embodies CDMA and LTE to ensure smooth evolution and fully protect existing investment. Sharing the hardware platform between the two is prerequisite for smoothly upgrading and evolving from CDMA to LTE. CDMA and LTE are fundamentally two different wireless technologies, and unifying them in terms of hardware imposes rigorous technical requirements on equipment vendors. Unified platform development represents a new approach to developing existing wireless technologies such as GSM, UMTS, CDMA, and WiMAX. If equipment vendors possess extensive experience in the unified platform technology field and apply it to CDMA-to-LTE evolution, they are better placed to design and deliver solutions for smoothly upgrading and evolving to LTE. In addition to platform maturity, the performance of CDMA and especially LTE across the unified platform is a priority issue. Equipment vendors must keep active in LTE research investment and remain at the forefront of LTE R&D in the industry. This is the only way for them to ensure the performance of the co-platform based LTE solution as well as smooth upgrade and evolution from CDMA to LTE. Vendors E2E capabilities maximize equipmentsharing in the CDMA-to-LTE solution, e n h a n c e C D M A - t o - LT E e v o l u t i o n smoothness, and protect operators investments. The second challenge requires the s o l u t i o n t o a u g m e n t C D M A / LT E interoperability and ensure that subscribers can seamlessly switch between CDMA and LTE networks. This poses a greater challenge to the overall strength and capability of solution providers. CDMA is a standard specified by 3GPP2 and LTE by 3GPP; solution providers can deliver a seamless CDMA/LTE evolution solution only by increasing long-term investment in both the 3GPP and 3GPP2 camps and by fully understanding their protocols and architectures. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said, It will take a while for the new (4G) network to

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be built ubiquitously. And we will have new multimode devices that will use 4G where its available, and when its not it will downshift to 3G to provide that ubiquitous data coverage. (Experted from CNET News)

Unified platform through the 4th generation BTS

In response to the challenges facing telecom operators, Huaweis wireless strategy integrates multiple access technologies into the same BTS platform, including CDMA, WiMAX, GSM, UMTS, and LTE. R&D teams are integrated to share technology and e x p e r i e n c e . To t h i s e n d , Hu a we i i s extensively researching the inter-mode utilization of sites, transmission resources, and antennas. At present, Huaweis 4th generation BTSs feature a multi-mode unified platform and have been widely commercially deployed by the worlds top operators, such as Telefonica/O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile, and China Telecom. The 4th generation BTS uses the industrys advanced software defined radio (SDR) technology and can flexibly switch between CDMA and LTE. The BTS comprises three basic units: remote radio unit (RRU), radio frequency unit (RFU), and base band unit (BBU). During CDMA-to-LTE evolution, the BTS can support both modes by upgrading the RRU or RFU and adding channel boards to the BBU. The CDMA/LTE frequency band has two possibilities based on global differences in frequency band planning: 1) LTE and CDMA share the original CDMA frequency band; 2) CDMA operates on the existing CDMA frequency bands and LTE operates on the new frequency bands (700MHz/AWS/2.1GHz/2.6GHz). Under the two different spectrum planning strategies, Huawei provides two methods for upgrading the RRU/RFU: 1) CDMA and LTE share an RRU, namely, one RRU/RFU is adopted to support both CDMA and LTE; 2) CDMA and LTE use different RRUs/RFUs in the same BTS. Under these scenarios, Huawei can customize ideal evolution solutions for different operators, minimize upgrade-

related network changes, and maximally protect operators investment. Huawei has long been committed to heavily investing in CDMA-toLTE evolution research. At the CITA International Exhibition held in April 2008, Huawei became the worlds first equipment vendor to demonstrate the dualmode application of both UMTS/LTE and CDMA/LTE in its 4th generation BTS. During the demonstration Huawei set a record for peak rate wireless transmission with a downlink speed of 173Mbps. On October 21, 2008, Huawei announced its completion of the worlds first multi-user mobility test for LTE, and its plan to release its commercial version of LTE in Q2 2009. This solution features advanced functions such as SON, adaptive MIMO, and intercell interference mitigation.

Converged core network solution

Huawei has developed a mature core network solution that uses the unified service node (USN) and unified gateway (UGW) to build logical nodes for different access networks. The solution can build the core network to maximally protect investment by accommodating multiple wireless access technologies such as CDMA, LTE, UMTS, GPRS/EDGE, and WiMAX via the same hardware platform. Huawei has also developed voice call continuity (VCC) for CDMA/LTE and radio resource management (RRM) sharing between CDMA and LTE, thus eliminating interoperability issues between the two.

Developing the industry chain

The three LTE organizations (3GPP, NGMN, and LSTI) have made important contributions to the LTE industry, and Huawei plays a key role in all three. Acting as vice chair in several 3GPP workgroups, Huawei is actively pushing for ward protocol development and improvements. As a member of NGMN,

it has established a specialized team to cooperate with NGMN to research on white books, SON, system structure, and network performance. In 2007, Huawei joined the LSTI and became a member of the LSTI Steering Board. Huawei remains committed to conducting crossvendor Interoperability Testing (IOT) and coordinating cooperation with terminal and chip vendors to stimulate the healthy development of the entire industry chain. Te r m i n a l s a r e i n t e g r a l t o t h e development of a complete solution and industry chain. Huawei has cultivated a consistently active attitude towards terminal R&D. Also, with notably strong R&D capabilities, the company is capable of rapidly responding to customization demands. Huawei actively seeks to cooperate with other terminal vendors and has established diversified terminal channels for self-development, cooperation, and outsourcing. This has provided strong terminal support for smooth evolution to LTE, and helped drive the robust development of the entire industry chain. Huawei has partnered with numerous CDMA operators to conduct pilot tests, and these have demonstrated that CDMAto-LTE evolution can well meet operator demands. The tests also gave the company extensive experience in optimizing the future CDMA-to-LTE evolution solution. Meanwhile, Huawei has got a deeper understanding of operator demands for CDMA/LTE interoperation and SON. At the end of 2008, Huawei inked the worlds first LTE/SAE commercial contract with the European operatorTeliaSonera to deploy an LTE/SAE network in Oslo, the capital of Norway. LTE is the direction of CDMA evolution, and CDMA/LTE coexistence is an inevitable phase in CDMA network development. A smooth evolution solution capable of underpinning future network evolutions and protecting existing CDMA investment forms the backbone of operators future development paths. Based on this, Huawei continues to carry out extensive R&D to guarantee smooth CDMA-to-LTE evolution and ensure solid and sustainable development for operators. Editor: Pan Tao pantao@huawei.com
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