Connectivity Technology Blog

GSMA together with some mobile network operators recently published a white paper to promote the use of High Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS) technology to meet the need for broadband connectivity worldwide. We have covered HAPS multiple times in our blog posts. They are unmanned aircrafts that fly typically at altitudes of around 20km.  The description of the paper says: Operating in the stratosphere, unmanned high-altitude platforms (HAPS) could bring connectivity to areas that are either not covered, or are only partially covered, by terrestrial cellular networks. This whitepaper highlights the potential of HAPS to meet the need for more broadband connectivity worldwide. HAPS are very versatile: they can be adjusted to prioritise coverage or capacity depending on the use case. Moreover, an aircraft can be deployed to cover a location at short notice. As HAPS can employ LTE and 5G, there are no special requirements on the user equipment: a normal smartphone can be used. As a result,

One of the challenges with 5G that many people must have noticed are the poor uplink speeds, especially on the cell edge. While using mid/high-band TDD, these poor uplink characteristics result is a smaller cell size as compared to that of low bands or even 3G/4G.  This is where Huawei's innovation comes in play. Huawei White Paper on Innovation and Intellectual Property details this as follows: With the growing adoption of 5G in B2B domains, networks need to offer faster uplink speeds and lower latency without compromising downlink speeds. Huawei has come up with a series of solutions to increase uplink coverage and bandwidth. Our two vital technologies – Uplink & Downlink Decoupling, and Super Uplink – have been accepted by 3GPP as part of the Release 15 and Release 16 specifications for global 5G networks, respectively. Uplink & Downlink Decoupling: Adds low frequency bands for uplink transmission in areas that lack uplink coverage in 3.5 GHz bands. Uses high frequency

The last time we looked at 3GPP's plan for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was over a year and half back. Since then the standards have made loads of progress, with features for 5G-Advanced, a.k.a. Release-18, just being discussed . In a recent blog post , Xingqin Lin, Master Researcher, radio at Ericsson presented a retrospective of their “Sky is Not the Limit” journey (see IEEE article here ) and an outlook of the next few years about connected drones. Quoting from the blog post: A journey began with 3GPP Rel-15 standardization In early 2016, we identified that one key area to study in the 3GPP Release 15 was to enable mobile network connected drones, based on our research work (some of which was later made public in the "Sky is Not the Limit" seminal paper). In December 2016, we submitted a new study item proposal on Enhanced LTE Support for Aerial Vehicles to the 3GPP RAN plenary meeting #74. The proposal attracted much interest, leading to the approval of the study