International. 4G Americas published an executive summary called Inside 3GPP Release 13: Understanding Standards for HSPA+ and Optimizations to LTE-Advanced. This condensed document provides an overview of the key functionalities for HSPA+ and the optimizations to LTE-Advanced present in Release 13 (Rel-13) of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
"It may seem like the tide of debates around 5G is accelerating, but in reality it's all going on within a normal cycle of developing mobile industry technology standards," said Teck Hu, Senior Manager of Standardization at Alcatel-Lucent, and co-leader of the working group that produced the Executive Summary on Release 13. "With seven billion connections currently using 3GPP standards, the roadmap for the future development of LTE mobile broadband will ensure a firm foothold for the next generation."
As outlined in this paper, the focus of the Rel-13 standards for LTE-Advanced includes:
- Active Antenna Systems (AAS), including enhancements to lifting beamforming and aspects of Self-Organized Networks (SON) for AAS
- Optimized signaling to support Cross-Site Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission and Reception (CoMP)
- Carrier Aggregation (AC) Optimizations to support up to 32 component carriers
- Optimizations to Dual Connectivity (DC) to better support multi-vendor deployments with better traffic handling
- Radio Access Network (RAN) Sharing Improvements
- Optimizations to Machine Type Communications (MTC)
- Optimizations to Proximity Services (ProSe)
- License-Assisted Access for LTE (LAA-LTE), in which LTE can be deployed on unlicensed spectrum
- LTE Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) (LWA) aggregation, where the data carrier can be served by lte radio link and/or Wi-Fi via LTE-WLAN aggregation
- Transmission to Multiple Users by Downlink Overlay (MUST) to transmit more than one layer of data to multiple users without separation of time, frequencies or space
HSPA+ also deepens its optimizations in the Rel-13, including:
- Support for Uplink Dual Band Carrier Aggregation (UL)
- Optimizations to reduce overhead in the control channel
The work also synthesizes other services related to networks, including:
- Introducing wi-fi integration optimizations to support Network-Based IP Flow Mobility (NBIFOM) and harmonize support for Wi-Fi voice and video services
- Optimizations to support Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT) over LTE, optimizations to Broadcast Multicast Multimedia Services (MBMS), and group-based optimizations (GROUPE) for public safety
- Optimize performance for MTC services by defining a Dedicated Core (DÉCOR) and Monitoring Optimization (MONTE)
- User-Level Congestion Management (UPCON) functionalities that enable the identification of cells and users in congestion situations in order to employ policy decisions that mitigate congestion
- Application-Specific Congestion Control in Data Communication (ACDC) to manage per-application access attempts
- Optimizations to the Serviceability Exposure (AESE) Architecture to expose valuable information to third-party application providers.
Vicki Livingston, Head of Communications at 4G Americas, said: "As standards for HSPA+ and LTE/LTE-Advanced continue to be developed in the 3GPP Rel-13, future network requirements and recommendations for the next generation of 5G technologies are being discussed simultaneously. Groups such as 4G Americas are contributing to the debate and coordinating with other organizations such as the NGMN Alliance, the 3GPP, the 5G PPP, the ITU, CITEL, ATIS, the Small Cell Forum, among others. Discussions in the 3GPP working groups are expected to move to the standardization of 5G in the Rel-14."
