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Huawei, Vodafone Test Out Hybrid System That Combines LTE and GSM
alphadogg (971356) writes "In the hunt for more spectrum to speed up mobile networks, Vodafone and Huawei Technologies have successfully tested a technology that lets LTE and GSM share the same frequencies. The speed of future mobile networks will depend on the amount of spectrum mobile operators can get their hands on. The more they get, the wider the roads they can build. One thing they can do to get more space is to reuse frequencies that are currently used for older technologies such as GSM and 3G. But that isn't as easy as sounds, as operators still have a lot of voice and messaging traffic in those older networks. However, using a technology called GL DSS (GSM-LTE Dynamic Spectrum Sharing) Vodafone and Huawei have shown a way to allow GSM and LTE to coexist."
does this make my eee pc faster?
As I understand it, cellular data is good for 1. transit passengers, and 2. customers in shops that have chosen not to offer free Wi-Fi to customers in order to discourage loitering. How do you recommend to deploy Wi-Fi in vehicles without using GSM, UMTS, LTE, or another cellular technology?
When they come up with a version of wifi that works over the dozens of miles that currently exist between me and my nearest tower, sure. But I suspect it would either look like a giant power plant attached to an enormous antenna, or just be a reinvention of the current cellular standards.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
>When they come up with a version of wifi that works over the dozens of miles
When people stop telling people to turn on the 'security' on their wifi and instead suggest they all share and benefit from the widespread availability of open wifi.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Good luck keeping a Cantenna aimed correctly while traveling down a road.
Good luck keeping up with handoff from one AP to another at 60 km/h.
Speaking of acronyms ...
I see what /. did there. (probably unintentionally)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
... will help me get a cheap unlimited cellular data plan how?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Awesome.
For when you want to do wifi for only one person, who is standing still.
I'm sure it'll catch on in mobile uses real soon now.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Then let me explain the ramifications of cell size in the language of a geometry textbook: You have region A using technology A and region B using technology B, and technology A's cells have a much larger area. Two vehicles travel at a steady velocity, one through each region. Which will encounter many more cells? The vehicle in B. Which will have to perform many more handoffs? The vehicle in B. Now let's substitute names into this formula: Technology A is licensed cellular, and B is Wi-Fi.
Let's just say that in practice, when I use my Dell laptop or ASUS tablet while riding the city bus, associations to known open networks take so long that by the time the IP address would normally be obtained, the bus has already moved me out of range. Nor do Wi-Fi APs serving different buildings tend to cooperate in any way, especially if they're on different ISPs (such as the local cable company, the local DSL company, or the local FTTP company). Finally, most open APs run by recognized businesses implement a captive portal, requiring me to first visit a non-HSTS web site to get hijacked and then click through a user agreement before doing anything useful. This requires manual intervention at each handoff. I don't know what if any steps the IEEE 802.11 committee plans to take in the future to make associations more rapid; we'll have to wait to see.
In case anybody reading this is five:
Eee PC is a brand of low-end compact laptop computer formerly manufactured by ASUS.
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is the little rectangular port in the side of your laptop, marked with a drawing of a stick figure carrying a bowling ball. (See #36 in this Photoplasty.) It's where you plug in a mouse, a phone, a memory card, or an adapter the size of a memory card that connects your computer to the cellular network.
UMTS is the language that 3G (third-generation) cellular devices, such as phones and tablets, speak to connect to the Internet, except on Verizon or Sprint.
A CPU (central processing unit) is the part of a computer that processes. Processing means doing the math and making choices, such as laying out where the words and pictures go on a web page. A task is CPU-bound if the CPU can't process it fast enough to keep up with all the information coming in.
GL DSS, defined in the summary, lets 3G and 4G (fourth-generation) cellular devices share one frequency. I'm not sure how this works, but it may be done using TDMA, a fancy term for "taking turns".
It seems like it's based on dynamically allocating spectrum between GSM and LTE
http://www.networkworld.com/ar...
However, using a technology called GL DSS (GSM-LTE Dynamic Spectrum Sharing) Vodafone and Huawei have shown a way to allow GSM and LTE to coexist.
In a traditional mobile network, operators allocate each technology an exclusive set of frequencies. For example, many operators, including Vodafone, currently hold 20MHz of spectrum at 1.8GHz, of which 10MHz is used for LTE and the rest for GSM traffic.
GL DSS lets Huawei's SRC (Single Radio Controller) give GSM a higher priority during periods of heavy traffic, ensuring that voice calls get though unharmed. But the SRC can also provide more room for LTE when users aren't making calls, allowing for better throughput, the vendor said on Tuesday.
There's a paper on it (or at least a similar idea) here
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.0320...
It's interesting because it seems like GSM will live on for low bandwidth machine to machine applications even though most of the spectrum has been converted to LTE. So if you've got an embedded system with a GSM modem, there's no need to worry that the carriers will cut off the signal in order to get more LTE bandwidth.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Will this finally include the ability to use compressed audio to make more efficient use of the GSM spectrum (over LTE of course)? We are wasting a lot of bandwith there with ancient uncompressed audio, while modern phones are easily capable of doing that properly.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
When they come up with a version of wifi that works over the dozens of miles that currently exist between me and my nearest tower, sure.
Range is one thing, and probably the easiest to fix (compare the failed WiMax attempt). However, there are other requirements that we make of the cellular system that WiFi also ignores, such as (off the top of my head): Hand over between cells in an orderly manner, service guarantees for voice calls, emergency service guarantees (even kicking out already ongoing call of lower priority), keeping track of where the mobile is in case of incoming calls, being able to do all this with mobiles that travel at high speed etc. etc.
When WiMax tried to solve the same problems, lo and behold, it didn't turn out any cheaper and simpler than the mobile systems and hence (as many of us predicted) it failed pretty miserably. Moving into the field dominated by telecoms it turned out that they already knew about how to do that well, and the WiMax people couldn't catch up (at least not cost effectively). The evolved 3G and 4G standards that were already in place, turned out to be much more successful.
Stefan Axelsson