LTE: Optimizing Deployment

In the past few years, India has witnessed unprecedented growth in the telecom sector. It seems likely that India will once again jump the curve and leapfrog to the next-generation 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. Some of the biggest operators in the country have acquired the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum and many of them have already carried out trials with the leading OEMs, and are currently planning their deployment strategies.

LTE is based on the Evolved Packet System (EPS) which consists of a flat all-IP based architecture that supports an all-packet core known as the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). LTE has also incorporated significant advancements in the Radio Access Network (RAN), employing Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) through Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) antenna technology.

Technologies for the Indian Scenario

The OFDMA is an extremely robust modulation technology which provides high spectral efficiency and low interference and also has high affinity for smart antenna technologies such as MIMO, which uses spatial multiplexing to create several spatial paths on the air interface to boost capacity and throughput. Thus this kind of technology is especially suited to the Indian scenario.

The recent spectrum allocation for broadband wireless access at 2.3 GHz and the upcoming 4G auctions at 700 MHz have put India at a cusp of telecom revolution. India has had a remarkable penetration of telecom services across its entire geography and we foresee a huge demand for ubiquitous broadband access as well, especially when more and more people will have access to 4G devices.

For Indian operators, TD-LTE has emerged as a technology of choice and is especially suited for the Indian market. The government has allocated 20 MHz spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band in 22 circles. TD-LTE, which is especially suited for bursty data and is thus aligned with the usage patterns in India, is more efficient since it does not require a paired spectrum for downlink and uplink traffic, and is cheaper than FDD-LTE as it does away with the need for a diplexer.

It also provides the option of dynamically changing the downlink and uplink capacity ratio to meet specific demands, which is a great asset to have in the Indian scenario. However deployment of LTE is a complex and expensive undertaking, which entails implementing heterogenous networks that incorporate base stations of varying form factors such as macrocells microcells, picocells, and femtocells. The complexity and cost increases further in the Indian scenario with varying demographics and multiple segments within any given market.

Key Factors for Successful Deployment of LTE

Operators need to consider both business and market dynamics before deploying this technology. Let's consider some of the key factors that can impact the successful deployment of LTE:

• In a high-frequency band, especially in 2.3 GHz, in-building coverage and interference can sometimes be an issue. However LTE provides a very elegant solution to this problem. The in-building coverage can be improved by using femtocells in a residential set-up and employing enterprise-level solutions for locations such as offices and malls. Deploying a small cell solution not only boosts coverage inside a building but also helps in reducing the load on the core network by offloading the traffic to local IP network, thus ensuring better quality of service.
• LTE lends itself as a technology of choice for niche markets such as public safety and rural environments because of its superior radio technology. However deploying a macro-level core solution in such markets that have limited number of subscribers does not provide an optimal return on investment for the operator, especially when the spectrum cost is so high. LTE provides the option of deploying a low footprint core network that can be tailor-made to satisfy the needs of such markets.
• The cost of switching for both subscribers and operators entirely to a 4G network will be quite high. A GSM network will continue to serve a large number of customers. So, LTE will have to co-exist with other legacy technologies such as 2G, 2.5G, and 3G to deliver a seamless connectivity and experience to subscribers. Operators need to plan their deployment such that the various radio technologies can be complementary to each other. They can also use innovations such as multi-mode base stations such as say a dual-mode femtocell that can support both LTE and HSPA.
• Operators' ARPU is eroding heavily because of the flat pricing structure, LTE provides an option of intelligent traffic-control management via PCRF and QoS that enables the operators to charge their subscribers based on their usage patterns, plans, roaming status, network congestion, and content and applications being accessed. Operators need to make sure that they leverage this technology to the hilt to maximize their revenues and increase customer satisfaction.
• The complexity and cost of deployment and maintenance can also be drastically reduced by using Self-Organizing Networks (SON), which provides self-configuring and self-healing features such as neighbor optimization, hand-off optimization, QoS optimization, interference reduction, automatic inventory, cell outage detection and compensation, and multi-vendor trace, etc, which help reduce the capex and opex considerably.

Thus as is evident there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration before deploying LTE. LTE is capable of providing extremely high bandwidth but along with that other factors of LTE mentioned above will play a very crucial role in monetizing the technology in India, especially in rural and semi-urban scenarios, which will form a huge chunk of the market.

Operators need to choose LTE solutions that can help them leverage maximum benefits from the prevailing market scenario and network equipment manufacturers need to provide them with enough options for a best fit solution. Many cutting-edge technologies such as SON, advanced RRM, and intelligent traffic control are open to interpretations and optimization based on the expertise of both software and hardware vendors.

The operators also need to accelerate time to market as there will be a huge first mover advantage in this space. Thus the ability of choosing the right solution, while optimizing the deployment and cost of services being offered after a thorough analysis of the market and deploying it quickly and cost-effectively can spell the difference between success and failure for the operators.

Rakesh Vij
The author is vice president,
business development, Aricent Group
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in