MBB Experience with HSPA+

HSPA+ Solution

HSPA+ is leading technology to achieve MBB era development with mature UE support. According to the GSA, Huawei launched 88 commercial HSPA+ networks, 36 are commercial 42Mbps Dual Carrier HSPA+ networks worldwide.

HSPA+ further enhances the users experience and makes these services more affordable by lowering costs through increased capacity. The development of HSPA services to HSPA+ is the key factor to achieve MBB era. HSPA+ will be leading technology in future. The key benefits of HSPA+ are as follows. HSPA+ enhances mobile broadband with data rates up to 168 Mbps In R9 enables up to 42 Mbps downlink data rates. HSPA+ doubles the data capacity over HSPA and more than doubles voice capacity over WCDMA, Reducing the cost of delivering voice or data services (more efficient voice over HSPA+ can also be used to free up data capacity) HSPA+ enhances the end-user experience with lower latency, faster call set-up time, improved always-on experience and a longer talk time HSPA+ multicarrier further enhances the broadband experience HSPA+ R8 doubles the data rates to all users and can significantly increase the bursty application capacity, e.g., Web browsing HSPA+ is the optimal solution for single and aggregated 5 MHz carriers Provides similar performance as LTE for the same bandwidth and using the same number of antennas HSPA+ is the natural evolution of HSPA at a lower cost Enabling an incremental and cost-effective upgrade that leverages existing assets HSPA+ has mature UE lifecycle to support the technology.

The Smartphone support capacity range from 7.2 Mbps to 42Mpbs. Dual carrier is the main technology to achieve high capacity for single user at the moment. Chipset to support 84Mbps are expected to be available in 2013Q2. Total of 245 HSPA+ devices has been launched compared to 92 in previous year.

Huawei HSPA+ Solution

Huawei has developed HSPA+ technology according to the 3GPP standards. Huawei HSPA+ solution staring from 2009 as HSPA+ phase 1 based on 3GPP R7. Huawei HSPA+ solution helps operator to meet the challenges of MBB era. HSPA+ enhancements are released in RAN11, RAN12, RAN13 and RAN14. HSPA+ solution addresses the capacity challenges from basic building block to higher capacities. Higher modulation provides operators easy and cost effective solution to increase single user capacity without any major change in the network. 64 QAM modulation can achieve single user throughput up to 21Mbps. Enhancement in layer two provides flexibility and improves the cell edge throughput.

DC-HSDPA
Dual cell with same coverage
Dual carriers
Sector antenna

Multi Carrier RRU

DL up to 42 Mbps

Main highlight of Multi carrier aggregation is to increase single user throughput for MBB experience. DC-HSDPA improves the throughput and QoS of end users in the whole cell area even on the cell edges. Theoretically, DC-HSDPA with 64QAM can provide a peak rate of 42 Mbit/s in the downlink. This rate doubles the peak rate provided by only 64QAM. This feature improves the frequency utilization and increases the maximum downlink rate. It can reduce 17%-20% latency compared with single carrier.

Evolution in mobile networks has lead to high data rate demand on the uplink. Uplink data rates have been improving and in RAN 14 maximum uplink data rate is 23Mbps. DC-HSUPA allows a UE to transmit data simultaneously on two uplink carriers that provide the same coverage. When used with uplink 16QAM, DC-HSUPA can provide a 23 Mbit/s uplink peak rate. Without uplink 16QAM, DC-HSUPA can support an 11.5 Mbit/s uplink peak rate.