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Some interesting April Fools' Day 2016 Technology Jokes

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When I posted April Fools' jokes on the blog last couple of years (see 2014 & 2015) , they seem to be very popular so I thought its worth posting them this year too. If I missed any interesting ones, please add in comments.


The one I really liked best is the Samsung Internet of Trousers (IoT) featuring:

Wi-Fly: Gone are the days of unnoticed, unzipped trouser zippers upon exiting the restroom. Should your fly remain open for more than three minutes, the ZipARTIK module will send a series of notifications to your smartphone to save you from further embarrassment.

Get Up! Alert: Using pressure sensors, Samsung’s intelligent trousers detect prolonged periods of inactivity and send notifications to ‘get up off of that thing’ at least once an hour. Should you remain seated for more than three hours, devices embedded in each of the rear pockets send mild electrical shocks to provide extra motivation.

Keep-Your-Pants-On Mode: Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with the moment. The Samsung Bio-Processor in your pants checks your bio-data including your heart rate and perspiration level. If these indicators get too high, Samsung’s trousers will send you subtle notifications as a reminder of the importance of keeping your cool.

Fridge Lock: If the tension around your waist gets too high, the embedded ARTIK chip module will send signals to your refrigerator to prevent you from overeating. The fridge door lock can then only be deactivated with consent from a designated person such as your mother or significant other.



Microsoft has an MS-DOS mobile in mind for this day. I wont be surprised if a real product like this does become popular with older generation. I personally wouldn't mind an MS-DOS app on my mobile. Here is a video:




It would have been strange if we didnt have a Robot for a joke. Domino's have introduced the Domimaker. Here's how it works:




T-Mobile USA is not shy pulling punches on its rivals with the Binge On data plan where it lets people view certain video channels without using up their data. Here is the video and more details on mashable.



Samsung ExoKinetic helps your phone self-charge

Google had quite a few pranks as always. I will ignore 'mic drop' which backfired and caused them headache.

Google Express has a new delivery mechanism, just for the April Fool's day. (There has to be one drone idea)





Google Cardboard Plastic is an interesting one too. Here is the video:


Finally, its the Google Fiber Teleportation.



Other interesting ones:




NTT Docomo's 5G Treasure Trove

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NTT Docomo's recent technical journal has quite a few interesting 5G articles. While it is well known that 5G will be present in Japan in some or the other shape by 2020, for the summer Olympics, NTT Docomo started studying technologies for 5G in 2010. Some of these have probably ended in 4.5G, a.k.a. LTE-Advanced Pro.

While there are some interesting applications and services envisioned for 5G, I still think some of these can be met with LTE-A and some of them may not work with the initial versions of 5G

As far as 5G timetable is concerned, I recently posted a blog post on this topic here. Initial versions of 5G will have either little or no millimetre wave (mmWave) bands. This is because most of these would be finalised in 2019 after WRC-19 has concluded. It may be a touch challenge to move all the existing incumbents out of these bands or agree of a proper sharing mechanism.

'5G+' or '5G phase 3' will make extensive use of these higher frequency bands extensively in addition to the low and mid frequency bands. For anyone not familiar with different 5G phases, please see this earlier post here.

Enhanced LTE (or eLTE) is probably the same as LTE-Advanced Pro. Docomo believes that the initial 5G deployment would include new RAT but existing 4G core network which would be enhanced later for 5G+. Some of this new RAT technologies are discussed as well.

Core Network evolution is another interesting area. We looked at a possible architecture evolution here. To quote from the magazine:

The vision for future networks is shown in Figure 3. A future network will incorporate multiple radio technologies including LTE/LTE-Advanced, 5G New Radio Access Technology (RAT), and Wi-Fi, and be able to use them according to the characteristics of each service.

Utilizing virtualization technologies, network slices optimized for service requirements such as high efficiency or low delay can be created. Common physical devices such as general-purpose servers and Software Defined Network (SDN) transport switches will be used, and these networks will be provided to service providers. Network slices can be used either on a one service per network basis to increase network independence for originality or security, or with multiple services on one slice to increase statistical multiplexing gain and provide services more economically.

The specific functional architecture and the network topology for each network slice are issues to be studied in the future, but in the case of a network slice accommodating low latency services, for example, GateWay (GW) functions would need to be relatively close to radio access, service processing would be close to terminals, and routing control capable of finding the shortest route between terminals would be necessary to reduce latency. On the other hand, a network slice providing low volume communications to large numbers of terminals, such as with smart meters, would need functionality able to transmit that sort of data efficiently, and such terminals are fixed, so the mobility function can be omitted. In this way, by providing network slices optimized according to the requirements of each service, requirements can be satisfied while still reducing operating costs.

The magazine is embedded below and available to download from here:





See Also:

5G & Accident Free Driving

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ETSI recently held a workshop titled "5G: From Myth to Reality". There were some interesting presentations and discussions, hopefully I will get a chance to write a bit more about it.

One interesting presentation was how 5G will make accident free driving a reality. While the current approach is to use the 802.11p standards that uses the license exempt 5.9GHz band, there is a possibility of enhancements based on 5G


As the final 2 slides say, What could be the use cases for 5G in vehicles? The answer suggested:

  • Map update for highly automatic driving - Instantly update the map of vehicle's surrounding. The challenge of this use case is that the vehicle is currently in the tile that needs to be updated, hence a very quick update is required. 
  • Precise Positioning high speed, no GPS, support for vehicles without high precision location tracking like cars 
  • Audio / Video Streaming (Entertainment) 
  • Online Gaming - side jobs 
  • Sensor- and State Map Sharing (Sensor Raw Data) - Transmit raw sensor data such that others can use their own classifiers to infer decisions
  • Camera and Radar sharing to improve visibility, including See-Through Share sensor information to augment ego vehicle's view. Allows for better visibility in presence of obstructing vehicles, heavy rain / fog, etc. 
  • Short-Term Sensor sharing for crash mitigation - Mitigate crash between multiple vehicle by last-minute traffic exchange 
  • Traffic forwarding using cars as relays Extend coverage or improve efficiency by using the car as a relay 
  • Teleoperated Driving "Let car be controlled by off-site driver / car operator e.g. car sharing, taxi operator, …“ 
  • Augemented Reality, e.g. Daytime-Visibility at night)

Here is the complete presentation, let me know what you think:



Does 5G need 'Next Generation' of Internet Protocols?

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I have often heard Martin Geddes mention that the Internet is broken, the protocols (TCP/IP) are wrong and if we want to continue the way our data usage is going, we need to define new protocols (see here for example). It was good to find out last week at 5G Huddle that ETSI is already working on this.


The TCP/IP protocol suite has undoubtedly enabled the evolution of connected computing and many other developments since its invention during the 1970’s. Thanks to the development and ubiquity of this protocol stack, we have managed to build an Internet on which we are dependent as a communications tool, an information storage and distribution tool, a marketing channel and a sales and distribution platform, for consumers and for businesses large and small.

However, the industry has reached a point where forward leaps in the technology of the local access networks will not deliver their full potential unless, in parallel, the underlying protocol stacks used in core and access networks evolve. The development of future 5G systems presents a unique opportunity to address this issue, as a sub-optimal protocol architecture can negate the huge performance and capacity improvements planned for the radio access network.

ETSI has created an Industry Specification Group to work on Next Generation Protocols (NGP ISG), looking at evolving communications and networking protocols to provide the scale, security, mobility and ease of deployment required for the connected society of the 21st century.

The NGP ISG will identify the requirements for next generation protocols and network architectures, from all interested user and industry groups. Topics include:

  • Addressing
  • Security, Identity, Location, Authorization, Accounting/Auditing and Authentication
  • Mobility
  • Requirements from Internet of Things
  • Requirements from video and content distribution
  • Requirements from ultra‐low latency use cases from different sectors (i.e. automotive)
  • Requirements from network operators (e.g. challenges with E2E encrypted content)
  • Requirements from eCommerce
  • Requirements for increased energy efficiency within the global ICT sector.


This ISG is seen as a transitional group i.e. a vehicle for the 5G community (and others of interest) to first gather their thoughts and prepare the case for the Internet community’s engagement in a complementary and synchronised modernisation effort.

The ISG provides a forum for interested parties to contribute by sharing research and results from trials and developments in such a way that a wider audience can be informed. Other standards bodies will be involved so that parallel and concerted standardization action can take place as a further step in the most appropriate standards groups.

Andy Sutton, chair of the NGP recently gave the following presentation in 5G Huddle:



Please feel free to add your opinions in the comments.

Further reading:



4G / LTE by stealth

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In the good old days when people used to have 2G phones, they were expensive but all people cared about is Voice & SMS.


The initial 3G phones were bulky/heavy with small battery life, not many apps and expensive. There was not much temptation to go and buy one of these, unless it was heavily subsidised by someone. Naturally it took a while before 3G adoption became common. In the meantime, people had to go out of their way to get a 3G phone.

With 4G, it was a different story. Once LTE was ready, the high end phones started adding 4G in their phones by default. What it meant was that if the operator enabled them to use 4G, these devices started using 4G rather than 3G. Other lower end devices soon followed suit. Nowadays, unless you are looking for a real cheap smartphone, your device will have basic LTE support, maybe not advanced featured like carrier aggregation.

The tweets below do not surprise me at all:

This is what I refer to as 4G or LTE by stealth.

Occasionally people show charts like these (just using this as a reference but not pin pointing anyone) to justify the 5G growth trajectory with 4G in mind. It will all depend on what 5G will mean, how the devices look like, what data models are on offer, what the device prices are like, etc.

I think its just too early to predict if there will be a 5G by stealth.

QCI Enhancements For Mission Critical Communications

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Its been quite a while since I posted about QCI and end-to-end bearer QoS in EPC. In LTE Release-12 some new QCI values were added to handle mission critical communications.


This picture is taken from a new blog called Public Safety LTE. I have discussed about the Default and Dedicated bearers in an earlier post here (see comments in that post too). You will notice in the picture above that new QCI values 65, 66, 69 & 70 have been added. For mission critical group communications new default bearer 69 would be used for signalling and dedicated bearer 65 will be used for data. Mission critical data would also benefit by using QCI 70.


LTE for Public Safety that was published last year provides a good insight on this topic as follows:

The EPS provides IP connectivity between a UE and a packet data network external to the PLMN. This is referred to as PDN connectivity service. An EPS bearer uniquely identifies traffic flows that receive a common QoS treatment. It is the level of granularity for bearer level QoS control in the EPC/E-UTRAN. All traffic mapped to the same EPS bearer receives the same bearer level packet forwarding treatment. Providing different bearer level packet forwarding treatment requires separate EPS bearers.

An EPS bearer is referred to as a GBR bearer, if dedicated network resources related to a Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR) are permanently allocated once the bearer is established or modified. Otherwise, an EPS bearer is referred to as a non-GBR bearer.

Each EPS bearer is associated with a QoS profile including the following data:
• QoS Class Identifier (QCI): A scalar pointing in the P-GW and eNodeB to node-specific parameters that control the bearer level packet forwarding treatment in this node.
• Allocation and Retention Priority (ARP): Contains information about the priority level, the pre-emption capability, and the pre-emption vulnerability. The primary purpose of the ARP is to decide whether a bearer establishment or modification request can be accepted or needs to be rejected due to resource limitations.
• GBR: The bit rate that can be expected to be provided by a GBR bearer.
• Maximum Bit Rate (MBR): Limits the bit rate that can be expected to be provided by a GBR bearer.

Following QoS parameters are applied to an aggregated set of EPS bearers and are part of user’s subscription data:
• APN Aggregate Maximum Bit Rate (APN-AMBR): Limits the aggregate bit rate that can be expected to be provided across all non-GBR bearers and across all PDN connections associated with the APN.
• UE Aggregate Maximum Bit Rate (UE-AMBR): Limits the aggregate bit rate that can be expected to be provided across all non-GBR bearers of a UE. The UE routes uplink packets to the different EPS bearers based on uplink packet filters assigned to the bearers while the P-GW routes downlink packets to the different EPS bearers based on downlink packet filters assigned to the bearers in the PDN connection.

Figure 1.5 above shows the nodes where QoS parameters are enforced in the EPS system.

Related links:



5G & 802.11ax

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Samsung is one of the 5G pioneers who has been active in this area for quite a while, working in different technology areas but also making results and details available for others to appreciate and get an idea on what 5G is all about. 

I published a post back in 2014 from their trials going on then. Since then they have been improving on these results. They recently also published the 5G vision paper which is available here and here.



In the recent 5G Huddle, Raj Gawera from Samsung gave an excellent presentation (below) on the topic of "The future connected world". 



What we really liked is how closely 5G and 802.11ax can be considered aligned, not only in terms of requirements but also the roadmap.

Anyway, here is the presentation embedded below. Let me know what you think in the comments below.


5G and Future Technologies from Johannesberg Summit

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Johannesberg Summit is an annual forum to discuss how Wireless ICT is transforming business and society.  Interesting talks from industry leaders and leading academics are mixed with panel discussions with a broad perspective on technologies, services, business and policy models that may have an impact in the long-range evolution of society and various industries. Topics have over the years included future user behavior and requirements, novel services and applications, new business models as well as policy and regulation. These more general topics have been matched with visions on how wireless technologies and architectures can handle these needs.

The 2016 summit had 4 key topic areas:

  • The transformation of the transport industry
  • The transformation of the manufacturing industry (“Industry 4.0”)
  • Future key technologies
  • Update on 5G year


The best things is that they make all the presentations available online. Initially in the video form and later on the PDF's as well. I am embedding playlist of all video talks below but have a look at the program here.




You can also look at the 2015 program here that includes videos and PDFs of the presentations from last year.

AT&T's 5G Trials

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There was a news recently that "AT&T 5G trials expand, break 10 Gbps throughput". The article said:

Austin, Texas, where RCR Wireless News and Industrial IoT 5G Insights is headquartered, is where AT&T worked with the Federal Communications Commission to get an experimental license to conduct 5G technology trials using spectrum in the 3.4-3.6 GHz, 3.7-4.2 GHz, 14.5-15.35 GHz and 27.5-28.5 GHz bands. The carrier said the testing would be used for “experimental equipment” in support of “potential (5G) multi-gigabyte per second applications for fixed and mobile wireless communication networks at higher transmission rates and lower latency than is currently available,” and supporting voice, video and data.
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“We’ve seen great results in our 5G lab trials, including reaching speeds above 10 gigabits per second in early tests with Ericsson,” said Tom Keathley, SVP of wireless network architecture and design at AT&T. “Nokia is joining to help us test millimeter wave, which we expect to play a key role in 5G development and deployment. The work coming out of AT&T Labs will pave the way toward future international 5G standards and allow us to deliver these fast 5G speeds and network performance across the U.S.”

Here is a presentation with some more details on what AT&T has been up to:



While I have seen speed records being set, this will not be of much help in the final standards. Some of you may remember my earlier post where Huawei achieved over 100Gbps in their labs. See here.

History: 30 years of the mobile phone in the UK

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In January 1985 the UK launched its first mobile networks. Now, thirty years on, many people and companies in the UK have been celebrating this enormous achievements and advances that have been made since then and which have seen the mobile evolve from a humble telephone into the multimedia pocket computer which has become such an essential part of modern life. It was simply not possible in 1985 to envisage a country that would be able to boast more active mobile phones than people or to have along the way clocked up several world firsts, and be now leading on the deployment of 4G and shaping the future 5G technologies.

Below is a series of talks in an event organised by University of Salford,



The following talks are part of playlist:

1. Launch of Vodafone – Nigel Linge, on behalf of Vodafone
2. Launch of Cellnet - Mike Short, O2
3. The emergence of GSM - Stephen Temple, 5GIC
4. The launch of Mercury one2one and Orange - Graham Fisher, Bathcube Telecoms
5. From voice to data - Stuart Newstead, Ellare
6. Telepoint - Professor Nigel Linge, University of Salford
7. 3G - Erol Hepsaydir, 3 UK
8. Handset evolution and usage patterns - Julian Divett, EE
9. 4G and onwards to 5G – Professor Andy Sutton, EE  and University of Salford.

For anyone interested in reading about the history of mobile phones in UK, read this book below with more facts and figures


If you have any facts to share, please feel free to add in the comments below.

Three Presentations on 5G Security

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Here are three presentations from the 5G Huddle in April, looking at 5G security aspects. As I have repeatedly mentioned, 5G is in process of being defined so these presentations are just presenting the view from what we know about 5G today.



EE's vision of Ultra-Reliable Emergency Network

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Many of my readers would be aware that UK is probably the first country to have decided to move its emergency services network from an existing TETRA network to a commercial LTE network operated by EE.

While some people have hailed this as a very bold move in the right direction, there is no shortage of critics. Around 300,000 emergency services users will share the same infrastructure used by over 30 million general users.

The following is from an article in Wireless Magazine:

Steve Whatson, deputy director Delivery, Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP) – the organisation within the UK Home Office procuring ESN – assured delegates that ESN will match the existing dedicated Airwave emergency services communication network in terms of coverage for roads, outdoor hand portable devices and marine coverage. Air to ground (A2G) will extend its reach from 6,000ft to 12,000ft.

Whatson also pointed out that coverage is not one single piece, but will comprise a number of different elements, which all need to mesh into one seamless network run by the ESN Lot 3 Mobile Services (main 4G network) provider – EE.

This includes: EE’s main commercial 4G network; Extended Area Services (hard-to-reach areas of the UK where new passive sites are to be built under a separate contract and then equipped with EE base stations); air-to-ground; London Underground; Crossrail; marine coverage (to 12 nautical miles); and special coverage solutions.

EE is currently rolling out new 4G sites – it will eventually have some 19,500 sites – and is upgrading others with 800MHz spectrum, which propagates over longer distances and is better at penetrating buildings than its other 4G spectrum holdings. Crucially for ESN, it is also switching on a Voice over LTE (VoLTE) capability, starting with the UK’s main cities.
...
Mission critical networks must be always available and have levels of resilience far in excess of commercial networks. Speaking exclusively to Wireless in early May, Tom Bennett, group director Technology Services, Architecture & Devices at EE, said: ‘We already achieve a very high availability level, but what the Home Office was asking for effectively was about a 0.3% increase against our existing commercial availability levels.

‘Now for every 0.1% increase in availability there is a significant investment because you are at the extreme top end of the curve where it is harder and harder to make a noticeable difference.’

There are very specific requirements for coverage and availability of the ESN network for the UK road system. Bennett says: ‘Mobile is based on a probability of service. No more than 1% of any constabulary’s roads are allowed to be below 75% availability, and on major roads it is 96% availability. A coverage gap in this context is no more than 1km.’

The current Airwave network has approximately 4,000 sites, many with back-up generators on site with fuel for seven days of autonomous running if the main power is cut, along with a range of resilient backhaul solutions.

Bennett says that out of EE’s 18,500 sites it has about the same number of unique coverage sites (ie. no overlapping coverage) – around 4,000. ‘As part of our investment programme, those unique coverage sites will need a significant investment in the causes of unavailability – ie. resilient backhaul and back-up batteries.’

He explains that EE has undertaken a lot of analysis of what causes outages on its network, and it has combined that data with the Home Office’s data on where the natural disasters in the UK have occurred over the past 10 years.

From this, EE is able to make a reasonable assessment of which sites are likely to be out of action due to flooding or other disasters for more than three or four days. ‘For those sites – and it is less than 4,000 – you need generators too, because you may not be able to physically access the sites for some days,’ says Bennett.

For obvious reasons, the unique coverage sites are mostly in rural areas. But as Bennett points out, the majority of cases where the emergency services are involved is where people are – suburban and urban areas.

‘In these areas EE has overlapping coverage from multiple sites to meet the capacity requirements, so if a site goes down, in the majority of cases we have compensation coverage. A device can often see up to five tower sites in London, for example,’ he says.

Having adequate backhaul capacity – and resilient backhaul at that – is vital in any network. Bennett says EE is installing extra backhaul, largely microwave and fibre, but other solutions will also be used including satellite and LTE relay from base station to base station – daisy chaining. On 9 May 2016, EE announced a deal with satellite provider Avanti to provide satellite backhaul in some areas of the UK.

Additional coverage and resilience will be offered by RRVs (rapid response vehicles), which EE already has in its commercial network today, for example, to provide extra capacity in Ascot during the racing season.

‘We would use similar, although not exactly the same technology for disaster recovery and site/service recovery, but with all the backhaul solutions,’ says Bennett. ‘Let’s say we planned some maintenance or upgrade work that involved taking the base station out for a while.

‘We’d talk to the chief inspector before the work commences. If he says, there’s no chance of doing that tonight, we can put the RRV there, and provided we maintain coverage, we can carry out the work. RRVs are a very good tool for doing a lot of things.’

At the British APCO event, Mansoor Hanif, director of Radio Access Networks at EE said it was looking at the possibility of using ‘airmasts’ to provide additional coverage. Meshed small cells, network in a box and repeater solutions are becoming available for these ‘airmasts’, which will provide coverage from balloons, or UAVs – tethered drones with power cables and optical fibre connected to them.

Mansoor Hanif, Director of RAN at EE gave a presentation on this at Critical Communications World 2016 and has also given an interview. Both are embedded below.






Feel free to let me know if you believe this will work or not and why.

Feasibility Study on New Services and Markets Technology Enablers for 5G

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3GPP SA1 (see tutorial about 3GPP if you dont know) recently released four new Technical Reports outlining the New Services and Markets Technology Enablers (SMARTER) for next generation mobile telecommunications.

3GPP TR 22.891 has already identified over 70 different which are into different groups as can be seen in the picture above. These groups are massive Internet of Things (MTC), Critical Communications, enhanced Mobile Broadband, Network Operation and Enhancement of Vehicle-to-Everything (eV2X).

The first 4 items have their own technical reports (see below) but work on the last item has only recently started and does not yet have a TR to show to the outside world. It is foreseen that when there are results from the eV2X study these will be taken on board in the Smarter work. (thanks to Toon Norp for this info)

The four Technical Reports (TR) are:
  • TR 22.861, FS_SMARTER – massive Internet of Things (MTC): Massive Internet of Things focuses on use cases with massive number of devices (e.g., sensors and wearables). This group of use cases is particularly relevant to the new vertical services, such as smart home and city, smart utilities, e-Health, and smart wearables.
  • TR 22.862, FS_SMARTER – Critical Communications: The main areas where improvements are needed for Critical Communications are latency, reliability, and availability to enable, for example, industrial control applications and tactile Internet. These requirements can be met with an improved radio interface, optimized architecture, and dedicated core and radio resources.
  • TR 22.863, FS_SMARTER – enhanced Mobile Broadband: Enhanced Mobile Broadband includes a number of different use case families related to higher data rates, higher density, deployment and coverage, higher user mobility, devices with highly variable user data rates, fixed mobile convergence, and small-cell deployments.
  • TR 22.864, FS_SMARTER – Network Operation: The use case group Network Operation addresses the functional system requirements, including aspects such as: flexible functions and capabilities, new value creation, migration and interworking, optimizations and enhancements, and security.
Embedded below is 3GPP TR 22.891 which has a lot of interesting use cases and makes a useful reading.




Two VoLTE Deployment Case Studies

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Back in 2011, I was right in predicting that we will not see VoLTE as early as everyone had predicted. Looking through my twitter archive, I would say I was about right.



The big issue with VoLTE has always been the complexity. In a post last year I provided a quote from China Mobile group vice-president Mr.Liu Aili, "VoLTE network deployment is the one of the most difficult project ever, the implementation complexity and workload is unparalleled in history".



From a recent information published by IHS, there will only be 310 million subscribers by end of 2016 and 2020 is when 1 billion subscribers can make use of VoLTE. I think the number will probably be much higher as we will have VoLTE by stealth.


Below are couple of case studies, one from SK Telecom, presented by Chloe(Go-Eun) Lee and other from Henry Wong, CTO Mobile Engineering, Hong Kong Telecom (HKT). Hope you find them informative and useful.






Next Generation SON for 5G

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There were quite a few interesting presentations in the recently concluded 5G World conference. One that caught my attention was this presentation by Huawei. SON is often something that is overlooked and is expected to be a part of deployment. The problem is that it is often vendor proprietary and does not work as expected when there is equipment from multiple vendors.

While the 4G SON in theory solves the issues that network face today, 5G SON will have to go much further and work with SDN/NFV and the sliced networks. Its going to be a big challenge and will take many years to get it right.

Here is the Huawei presentation from 5G World:



You may also be interested in:
Feel free to let me know your thoughts as comments.

Antenna evolution: From 4G to 5G

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I came across this simple Introduction to Antenna Design videos that many will find useful (including myself) for the basics of Antenna. Its embedded below:


In the recently concluded 5G World 2016, Maximilian Göttl, Senior Director, Research & Development, Mobile Communication Systems, Kathrein gave an interesting presentation on Antenna Evolution, from 4G to 5G. The presentation is embedded below.

Please share your thoughts in this area in the comments section below.



New whitepaper on Narrowband Internet of Things

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Rohde & Schwarz has just published a new whitepaper on Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT).

NB-IoT has been introduced as part of 3GPP Rel-13 where 3GPP has specified a new radio interface. NBIoT is optimized for machine type traffic and is kept as simple as possible in order to reduce device costs and to minimize battery consumption. In addition, it is also adapted to work in difficult radio conditions, which is a frequent operational area for certain machine type communication devices. Although NB-IoT is an independent radio interface, it is tightly connected with LTE, which also shows up in its integration in the current LTE specifications.
The paper contains the necessary technical details including the new channels, new frame and slot structure, new signalling messages including the system information messages, etc. It's a good read.

Its embedded below and can be downloaded from here:



Related posts:


3GPP Release-14 & Release-15 update

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3GPP is on track for 5G as per a news item on the 3GPP website. In 5G World in London in June, Erik Guttman, 3GPP TSG SA Chairman, and Consultant for Samsung Electronics spoke about progress on Release-14 and Release-15. Here is his presentation.



According to 3GPP:

The latest plenary meeting of the 3GPP Technical Specifications Groups (TSG#72) has agreed on a detailed workplan for Release-15, the first release of 5G specifications.
The plan includes a set of intermediate tasks and check-points (see graphic below) to guide the ongoing studies in the Working Groups. These will get 3GPP in a position to make the next major round of workplan decisions when transitioning from the ongoing studies to the normative phase of the work in December 2016:- the start of SA2 normative work on Next Generation (NexGen) architecture and in March 2017:- the beginning of the RAN Working Group’s specification of the 5G New Radio (NR).
3GPP TSG RAN further agreed that the target NR scope for Release 15 includes support of the following:
  • ■ Standalone and Non-Standalone NR operation (with work for both starting in conjunction and running together)
    • ■ Non-standalone NR in this context implies using LTE as control plane anchor. Standalone NR implies full control plane capability for NR.
    • ■ Some potential architecture configuration options are shown in RP-161266 for information and will be analyzed further during the study
  • ■ Target usecases: Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), as well as Low Latency and High Reliability to enable some Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLCC) usecases
  • ■ Frequency ranges below 6GHz and above 6GHz
During the discussion at TSG#72 the importance of forward compatibility - in both radio and protocol design - was stressed, as this will be key for phasing-in the necessary features, enabling all identified usecases, in subsequent releases of the 5G specification.


Telecom TV has posted a video interview with Erik Guttman which is embedded below:



Related posts:



Connected and Autonomous vehicles: Beyond Infotainment and Telematics

Dedicated Core Networks (DCN) for different traffic types

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Looking at a paper (embedded below) from NTT Docomo technical journal where they talk about Dedicated Core Network (DCN) for handling different traffic type (M2M/IoT for example). Note that this approach is different from NFV based network sliced architecture. For the latter, the network functions should have been virtualized.


There will be some signalling overhead in the core network to handle the new core and reroute the traffic according destined for the new dedicated core. I would still hope that this would be minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, let me know what you think about the paper below.



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