LTE will be the basic mutual consent of the communication industry as 4G application is rising!

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is having a blast as all major telecommunication service providers around the world are showing their supports. The 3GPP, the important agreement with several major telecommunication players as the core, is aggressively promoting the LTE evolution technology based on HSPA+ on the foundation of the standardized version specification of 3GPP Releases 7 and 8. The LTE mentioned herein combined with HSPA+ is based on the FDD version.

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) predicts that there will be 14 telecommunication service providers entering the LTE commercialization this year, and 31 more are planning to do so in 2012. Verizon, the largest CDMA company in the United States, announces to select Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to be their LTE equipment suppliers, and is planning to introduce the LTE commercial network into their entire IP network. The commercialization is expected in Feb 2010.

In Asia, many service providers in countries such as Japan (NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, SoftBank), China (China Mobile, China Telecom), Korea (KTF, SK Telecom), Hong Kong (SmarTone, Vodafone), and the Philippines (Piltel) are planning to bring in LTS in the next a few years. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan has approved the 4 major mobile service providers in Japan to start their LTE network service this year. NTT DoCoMo will start their LTE service this year, and KDDI and Soft Bank will follow in 2011～2012. In Taiwan, Chunghwa Telecom is working with Ericsson on the establishment of the experimental LTE network for the next generation mobile communication technology. In China, the government is stepping on the gas pedal for the TDD-cored TD-LTE standard, and China Mobile is expected to launch a large-scale outdoor test for the 3rd stage TD-LTE, which is expected to go into commercialization in 2012～2013.

The major communication chip manufacturers, including Qualcomm, Infineon, LG, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and 4M Wireless, have prepared to launch their LTE device platforms, and major test equipment manufacturers like Agilent, Rohde & Schwarz, LitepPoint, Anritsu and Keithley are ready to provide their own testing solutions. To avoid putting all the eggs in one basket, the chip manufacturers will place their bets on both sides, i.e. TD-LTE and WiMAX. The WiMAX service providers of Taiwan are playing safe by setting their feet in LTE. This is to say that LTE will be the basic mutual consent of the global communication industry into the 4G era.

LTE will be here with the 3.5G network for a very long time, as it is likely that LTE is used in urban areas that are crowded with people, whereas the coverage at rural areas requires HSPA and EV-DO or WiMAX. Therefore, for terminal, cell phone and mobile network access card applications, the key is still the multi-functional chips. The dust is not likely to settle for LTE standard until the 4G international communication standard development conference held by ITU in Oct 2010. The interactions with HSPA+ require thorough consideration for the planning of business mode and network establishment for LTE, and the telecommunication service providers at different regions have to meet halfway for their different patterns of evolution.

Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth 3.0 + High Speed will come to a fierce battle mano a mano!

The Wi-Fi Alliance is about to launch the latest Wi-Fi Direct standard, and products are expected to come out in the middle of this year. On the other hand, the first products equipped with Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed are expected to launch at the beginning of this year. Both sides will have a fierce battle in the consumer electronic appliance market, and beware of the bayonet charge!

The primary feature of Wi-Fi Direct is that Wi-Fi Direct allows linking and transmission between any Wi-Fi devices even without Wi-Fi network, hot spot or connection to Internet. In the past, the traditional PAN solution was confined in a single indoor compartment, and this limitation is about to be breached by Wi-Fi Direct, which allows the transmission coverage expands directly to every corner of the indoor environment. The Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed promoted by the Bluetooth SIG is a fearsome match. It emphasizes the high-speed wireless transmission of large files, for example, media images, video and audio clips, and is compatible to older versions and features interoperability.

Both the Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed use Wi-Fi protocol adaptation layer (PAL) or Wi-Fi to enhance high-speed transmission, and both sides are capable of two-way communications, indicating a certain degree of overlapping in terms of functions. On top of that, PCs and family networks are taken as the next primary fields of applications for the Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed, which emphasizes that it supports transmission of data like multimedia images and video clips just as well as Wi-Fi can. Therefore in application, both the Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed will inevitably go into competition of certain degree. Seeing this, WLAN chip manufacturers will improve themselves based on their completive superiority in WLAN and express that they too can provide similar features in the field of Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed.

The Bluetooth SIG predicts that this year, the Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed will take up 23% of all Bluetooth devices, and that number will go even higher to 61% in 2011. On the other hand, the Wi-Fi alliance is optimistic that the new Wi-Fi Direct will stimulate another new wave of Wi-Fi applications. The new Wi-Fi Direct application on design table as of now will be focusing on printing photos directly out of cameras, music sharing, synchronized linking, display of images on TV from mobile phones.

Wi-Fi Direct transmission covers greater range than the Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed does, is faster, has the advantage in software upgrades as well. However, there is always the concern that Wi-Fi is questionable in the security of mobile devices. The security design is somewhat complicated to use and affects the smooth network access and the compatibility between transmitting and receiving devices. Also, there have already been more than 2 billion Bluetooth devices circulating around the world, and the market prediction says that the 1,000,000,000th Wi-Fi terminal device will not come out until the end of 2011. The popularity of Bluetooth really helps the promotion of the Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed. Who will be the last one standing? Wi-Fi Direct or Bluetooth 3.0＋High Speed? Or they just each have a piece of their own sky? It will get clearer maybe in the 2nd half of this year.

Everybody has the eyes on the short-range wireless high-speed transmission HD, and WirelessHD, WiGig and WHDI will still be the three largest pieces of the pie!

This year, the technology that allows high-speed wireless transmission of full HD (1080p) video and multimedia data within a short range is going to be what the major consumer electronics manufacturers and chip manufacturers are working very hard to develop. So far the technologies that may transmit uncompressed high-definition video images wirelessly at nigh speed in a short range are 60GHz WirelessHD and WiGig, and 5GHz WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface).

At present, the global members of the WirelessHD group exceed 40. It is an RF transceiver with the core of SiBEAM semiconductors that combines the low-cost CMOS process and the key beam steering antenna. The WiGig Alliance, established on May 7 2009, focuses on the 60Hz band for multimedia data transmission, IP network data access and multiple system service.

Table 1: Primary specification for the short-range high-speed wireless Full HD video transmission

Prepared by: Chung, Jung-Feng

The funny thing is that many major players of consumer electronics and chip manufacturing are betting their money on the both, i.e. joining both the WirelessHD and WiGig groups. These players are, for example, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, NEC, Mediatek, Intel, Broadcom and Toshiba. Despite that both groups adopt the 60HZ band which is widely used for commercial purpose without the need of authorization, the proprietary features are very distinctive in terms of development standard and specifications. The WirelessHD group requires that only the members of group may share the development results and testing solutions with one another, and the WiGig group also demands no revealing of its specifications to outside of the group.

On the other hand, the WHDI association announced last December the completion of WHDI 1.0, and the Israeli company AMIMON is in charge of chip technology. The WHDI standard emphasizes the transmission rate of up to 3Gbps and the capability of penetrating walls within the range of 100ft. It also features multi-room wireless transmission of HD video images at 1080p/60Hz.

The reason that the market has high expectation for short-range wireless transmission of HD images is because it is the answer to the messy cabling in the digital family environment while improving the convenience of transmission. The influence to the quality of HD images is not as great as packaged transmission does. The application of Wireless HD in digital families has a problem that the products are a bit of expensive as the products make higher profits. They are expected to start in a market for specific small population as they are more willing to accept the price difference. If used in IT systems, WiGig is expected to have a large quantity of application, but consumers may be conservative about the prices. WHDI has the edge of the spectrum application and mature chip designs.

Looking at the long run, the short-range wireless HD transmission technology will eventually replace wired transmission. No matter which specification stands out, it still has to come down to what the major consumer electronics manufacturers have in mind and whether they are willing to accept the specs and standards and take them into the primary account for the future products.

The improvement of WiMAX transmission coverage capability will make the relay station technology a focal point

To further expand the coverage of radio communication base stations and improve the signal coverage after the degradation of radio waves, technologies such as pico-cells, femto-cells and relay stations have become the key to improve the quality of the next generation 4G communication. Among all, the relay station is looking very promising. It is expected that the relay station technology will mature this year and there will be a wider range of applications.

As the application of relay stations is getting mature, it changes the situation that the quality of radio communication relied heavily on the establishment of base stations for better coverage. With the relay stations coming out, there is no need for cabled backbone network for supports, and the equipment is cheaper and it is faster for cabling. It not only helps the insufficient number of base stations, but also reduces costs for land acquisition, network establishment and construction schedule. Compared with pico-cells and femto-cells, relay stations have the relative advantage in terms of costs and the difficulty of establishment.

In particular during the establishment of mobile WiMAX network, the signal transmission capability is limited at the user end, and how to improve the signal transmission at the user end becomes a key to increase the coverage of WiMAX. For current mobile WiMAX standards, there are 802.16j and 802.16m (WiMAX 2) derived from IEEE 802.16-2004 (802.16d) and IEEE 802.16e-2005 (802.16e). The 802.16j defines the Transparent Relay Station and Non-Transparent Relay Station patterns. The former is primarily used to amplify the transmission signals at the user end, improve the transmission quality and increase the data transmission rate, whereas the latter is established at the boundary of base station coverage, allowing users not covered by the base station to access the service via the relay station. The transparent relay station serves just to improve the transmission at the user end and increase the network coverage.

Considered 4G, the developing 802.16m is going to be compatible downwards with IEEE 802.16j Multi-hop Relay (MR) standard and 802.16e MS standard. This will improve the multiple connections and relay for wireless broadband, solve the insufficient indoor penetration of WiMAX system, maintain the transmission rate of system, reduce the number of stations to be established, allow lower station transmission power, provide flexibility for network establishment, and relieve the stress of operation costs.

However, relay station is still a fairly new technology, and there is still room for improvement. That includes the problems of switchover of relay stations providing service and the synchronization between the relay station and user end. In addition, relay stations require simultaneous reception of the signals from both the base station and the user end. Sometimes the signal levels from both ends do match, and that is one of the problems to be solved.

When establishing relay stations, it is necessary to consider the solution for indoor penetration, as this is the key to the market’s acceptability to the relay station technology. The functions that the transparent relay station provides should be enough for the market demand for the improvement of indoor wireless communication and transmission penetrability. Therefore, the transparent relay station is likely to be adopted in the market this year.

The market has high expectation as the dust is settled for the G.hn family network standard!

Transmission of multimedia and A/V contents through telephone wires, coaxial cables and power lines existing in every household is always the battle zone of which the commanding leadership is the trophy to all relevant companies. Last October, ITU announced the approval of ITU-T G.hn household network standard, which allows transmission of multimedia and A/V data through coaxial cables, standard telephone wires and power lines at the transmission rate of 1Gbps and supports plug and play. Market analysts predict that the G.hn chipsets will come out at the beginning of this year, and this is going to create quite a stir in the digital household transmission and video applications.

HomeGrid Forum is exactly the driving force behind the ITU-T G.hn standard. The Forum has quite an army of members, including Intel, Infineon, Panasonic and TI, as well as British Telecom, Aware (merged by Lantiq this October), DS2, Gigle Semiconductor, Best By, Ikanos Communications, Sigma Designs and Westell.

ITU-T G.hn standard is kind of like the 802.11n standard for household network environment, as the range of applications for the both emphasizes the high-speed transmission of multimedia and A/V contents. The ITU-T G.hn standard will be first embodied on IPTV and HDTV. In the future in the digital household network environment, the ITU-T G.hn will allow the seamless connection among household appliances, such as set-top box, household hub, computer, audio/video appliance, DVD player, household automation and home security system.

However, the ITU-T G.hn standard is not the only big fish in this pond. There are competitive predators like IEEE P1901 and HomePlug as well. The HomePlug Powerline Alliance is working on the AV 2.0 standard, which is expected to launch at the beginning of this year. On the other hand, the IEEE P1901 work group approved its power line transmission standard last December. The draft is expected to complete in this November. These three major players are thinking about get their standards compatible with one another, and therefore, ITU is working on the new G.9972 standard that allows G.hn equipment to co-exist with other technical standard such as IEEE P1901. The extended G.hn standard that supports SmartGrid is currently being developed. IEEE P1901 has approved the PHY specification that includes G.hn as well.

But in fact, the technical gap among the three standards still has to be resolved. OFDM modulation and wavelet modulation are adopted in IEEE P1901, but these two modulation patterns are incompatible, and that makes IEEE P1901 equipments incompatible with one another as well. The same thing happens to ITU-T G.hn and the PHY and MAC of IEEE P1901, as the former adopts single PHY/MAC, and the latter twin PHY/MAC. Also, the encoding of G.hn is in conflict with the technology supported by the HomePlug Powerline Alliance.

HomeGrid Forum once expected itself with three major goals: to improve the technical contents of the ITU-T G.hn standard, to embody the commercialization of the ITU-T G.hn standard, and to allow more complete product interoperability that supports the ITU-T G.hn standard. It looks like HomeGrid Forum has accomplished its first goal. However, with the expectation that ITU-T G.hn becomes the common specifications for the integration of power lines, coaxial cables and telephone wire networks, there is still a long way to go for ITU-T G.hn to thrive with IEEE P1901 and HomePlug and the three to become one.