June 2012

The 3GPP RAN Chairman held a workshop this week, to identify common requirements for future 3GPP radio access technologies.

As well as the call for higher data rates and more capacity to cope with traffic predictions - with usage set to double in each of the next five years – 3GPP companies agreed that priority must also be given to complimentary areas:

• Energy saving
• Cost efficiency
• Support for diverse application and traffic types
• Backhaul enhancements

After the discussions on those ‘Requirements’, presentations also brought forward proposals for potential technologies for 3GPP elaboration.

Takehiro Nakamura, RAN Chairman, observed that the majority of the Member companies – There were over 50 presentations from the leading operators and manufacturers during the two days - showed interest in enhanced small cells for LTE, with some re-occurring proposals in that area, such as:

• Interference coordination / management
• Dynamic TDD
• Enhanced discovery / mobility
• Frequency separation between macro and small cells - using higher frequency bands in small cells (e.g. 3.5 GHz)
• Inter site Carrier aggregation / macro cell assisted small cells
• Wireless backhaul for small cells

The workshop also considered LTE Multi-Antenna and site technologies such as 3D MIMO and beamforming, as well as further work needed on existing CoMP and MIMO specifications and future enhancements.

Other areas for Release 12, commonly identified in the presentations, included:

• Support for diverse traffic types (Control signaling reduction, etc.)
• Interworking with WiFi
• Continuous enhancements for Machine type communications, Self organizing networks (SON), MDT and advanced receiver
• Proximity Services and Device to Device communications
• Further enhancements for HSPA including interworking with LTE

RELEASE 12 schedule

Release 12 should take 18 to 24 months to complete, with its freeze date expected in 2014.

update: 19/6/2012

The RAN#56 meeting report gives further details of the schedule, following the Workshop. It says that new Work Item and Study Item proposals – that take the above findings in to account - can be provided to the next RAN Plenary in Chicago in September (RAN #57).

Also, an email discussion is to be initiated by the RAN chairman, on the RAN reflector list - prior to the Chicago plenary, to establish the requirements and deployment scenarios of small cell enhancements.

During RAN#26 in Ljubljana the RAN Chairman also emphasised that the start of new work (on Release 12) will depend on workload situation in last quarter of 2012, as 3GPP Release 11 completion is the current priority.

The Workshop Presentations

	RWS-120002	Release 12 and beyond for C^4 (Cost, Coverage, Coordination with small cells and Capacity)	NSN
	RWS-120003	Views on Rel-12	Ericsson & ST-Ericsson
	RWS-120004	LTE evolving towards Local Area in Release 12 and beyond	Nokia Corporation
	RWS-120005	Views on Release 12	Orange
	RWS-120006	Views on Rel-12 and onwards for LTE and UMTS	Huawei Technologies, HiSilicon
	RWS-120007	3GPP RAN Rel-12 & Beyond	Qualcomm
	RWS-120008	New Solutions for New Mobile Broadband Scenarios	Telefonica
	RWS-120009	Telecom Italia requirements on 3GPP evolution	Telecom Italia
	RWS-120010	Requirements, Candidate Solutions & Technology Roadmap for LTE Rel-12 Onward	NTT DOCOMO, INC.
	RWS-120011	Where to improve Rel-12 and beyond: Promising technologies	NEC
	RWS-120012	Deutsche Telekom Requirements and Candidate Technologies	Deutsche Telekom
	RWS-120013	Release 12 Prioritization Concepts	Dish Networks
	RWS-120014	Towards LTE RAN Evolution	Alcatel-Lucent
	RWS-120016	Requirements and Technical Considerations for RAN Rel.12 & Onwards	Fujitsu Limited
	RWS-120017	Operator requirements on future RAN functionality	TeliaSonera
	RWS-120018	AT&T View of Release 12 in the North America Marketplace	AT&T
	RWS-120019	Major drivers, requirements and technology proposals for LTE Rel-12 Onward	Panasonic
	RWS-120020	Efficient spectrum resource usage for next-generation N/W	SK Telecom
	RWS-120022	LTE Rel-12 and Beyond	Renesas Mobile Europe
	RWS-120023	LTE Rel-12 and Beyond: Requirements and Technology Components	Intel
	RWS-120024	Considerations on further enhancement and evolution of UMTS/LTE network in R12 and onwards	China Unicom
	RWS-120025	Views on LTE R12 and Beyond	CATT
	RWS-120026	A proposal for potential technologies for Release 12 and onwards	ETRI
	RWS-120028	India market Requirements for Rel. 12 and beyond	CEWiT
	RWS-120029	Views on LTE Rel-12 & Beyond	CMCC
	RWS-120030	LTE addressing the needs of the Public Safety Community	IPWireless
	RWS-120031	Vodafone view on 3GPP RAN Release 12 and beyond	Vodafone
	RWS-120032	An Operator’s View of Release 12 and Beyond	Sprint
	RWS-120033	Public Safety Requirements for Long Term Evolution REL-12	U.S. Department of Commerce
	RWS-120034	Views on 3GPP Rel-12 and Beyond	ZTE
	RWS-120035	Considerations for LTE Rel-12 and beyond	Motorola Mobility
	RWS-120037	Views on REL-12 and Onwards	China Telecom
	RWS-120039	Evolving RAN Towards Rel-12 and Beyond	SHARP
	RWS-120040	Views on enhancement of system capacity and energy efficiency toward Release12 and onward	Hitachi
	RWS-120041	Beyond LTE-A: MediaTek’s view on R12	MediaTek
	RWS-120042	Potential Technologies and Road Map for LTE Release 12 and Beyond	ITRI, HTC
	RWS-120046	Technologies for Rel-12 and onwards	Samsung Electronics
	RWS-120047	KDDI's Views on LTE Release 12 onwards	KDDI
	RWS-120048	A view on Rel-12 and onwards from an operator's viewpoint	Softbank Mobile
	RWS-120049	UE AAS (Active Antenna System)	Magnolia Broadband
	RWS-120050	LG's view on evolution of LTE in Release 12 and beyond	LG Electronics
	RWS-120051	New concept to maximize the benefit of interference rejection at the UE receiver: interference suppression subframes (ISS)	Broadcom

Contact for this story:
Kevin FLYNN