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Huawei and NTT DOCOMO release joint test results on Licensed-Assisted Access deployment with LTE on unlicensed spectrum
[August 25, 2014]

Huawei and NTT DOCOMO release joint test results on Licensed-Assisted Access deployment with LTE on unlicensed spectrum


(ENP Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ENP Newswire - 25 August 2014 Release date- 22082014 - Shenzhen, China - Huawei together with Japan's largest mobile service provider, NTT DOCOMO, INC., today announced that they have successfully released the world's first joint trial results on Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) deployment, i.e. LTE on unlicensed spectrum (U-LTE), with multiple-cell pre-commercial networks.



LAA technology enables operator networks to offload data to unlicensed spectrum when traffic is overloaded in hotspot areas. Huawei and NTT DOCOMO have cooperated in LAA research since February 2014 and will continue to work together through these joint research efforts to tackle traffic explosion in dense cities.

In urban areas, traffic volumes continue to increase and licensed spectrum resources remain limited in their ability to meet Mobile Broadband traffic requirements during busy hours. As a result, interest has grown among operators to pursue the deployment of complementary access that utilizes unlicensed spectrum, where LAA, as an integrated part of LTE networks, can provide the benefits of guaranteed security, coverage, mobility, and unified quality of service.


Huawei and NTT DOCOMO have jointly explored the potential effectiveness of LAA. Based on preliminary trial results, both parties observed that LTE can potentially work in 5GHz unlicensed spectrum, while LAA can achieve better performance in both coverage and capacity compared with current widely deployed WiFi equipment, such as the IEEE 802.11n standard. The trial conditions were set with identical bandwidth made available to LTE and WiFi. The trial results indicated several times throughput improvement of LAA over WiFi for both cell-medium and cell-edge users in most of the scenarios. In addition, the cell capacity gain was approximately 1.6 times that of a single-cell scenario, with better coverage extension by LAA over WiFi also observed during the test. As a result, LAA will enable better coverage and lower deployment costs for operators and an enhanced experience for end users. Enhanced coexistence performance in unlicensed spectrum in dense deployment is expected when interference management mechanisms are introduced.

'We are very pleased to have confirmed that LAA is a viable technology for LTE and future LTE-Advanced,' said Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at NTT DOCOMO. 'We aim to contribute to the standardization of this technology, which inherits the highly advanced features of LTE, to further enhance the global user experience with wireless broadband.' 'We are pleased to see successful joint results on deploying LAA in partnership with NTT DOCOMO,'said Ryan Ding, Executive Director of Board and President of Products & Solutions, Huawei. 'Huawei is committed to helping operators to provide end-users with abundant mobile broadband experience by utilizing core LTE technologies such as LAA in spite of limited spectrum resources. We will continue to work with NTT DOCOMO and contribute to global standardization efforts through these joint research efforts.' In the future, Huawei NTT DOCOMO will further investigate LAA coexistence techniques with WiFi via experiments.

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