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Unlicensed Lte PDF
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Unlicensed LTE
WHITE paper
Table of Contents
Abstract 3
Executive Summary 3
Introduction 5
LTE Unlicensed 8
Co-Channel Co-existence 11
Abbreviations 16
References 17
Abstract
As the data demand continues to explode, problems of frequent call drops, poor indoor coverage, and low
throughput spoils the user experience for the ubiquitous connectivity service. ‘Spectrum Crunch’ - This
situation is due to lack of sufficient radio frequencies to cater to the growing number of mobile user base
and proliferation of smart phones in the mass. Hence, telecom service providers are looking for better
radio/modem technology, better spectral efficiency, and more radio spectrum. In this context, the relevance
and value that unlicensed spectrum is going to add to the telecom network cannot be underestimated.
Using LTE (long-term evolution) – a spectrally efficient cellular technology over the unlicensed spectrum is a
potential solution to this grave problem!
LTE unlicensed is an emerging topic in research, standardization, and deployment of 3GPP (3rd Generation
Partnership Project) networks. It propagates the benefits of LTE and LTE-A to unlicensed spectrum, and
enables mobile operators to offload mobile data to unlicensed frequencies more effectively and efficiently.
Mobile consumers experience better cellular coverage and higher download speeds. With spectrum being
a scarce resource, LTE-U has emerged as a profitable option for operators to increase capacity without any
additional spectrum licensing cost. ‘Big-Data’ will need bigger and fatter pipes to flow, and LTE-Unlicensed
would play an important role in achieving that. It is also important to discuss the challenges for co-existence
and available solutions, to achieve the harmony and ensure fair access to the spectrum users. LTE-U forum
and Wi-Fi forum have to come together and join hands to make this possible.
After briefing on ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) bands, this paper describes two flavors of LTE
unlicensed access, LTE-U and LAA (Licensed Assisted Access). Depending on the regulation restrictions in
different geographies, either LTE-U or LAA will be deployed. Comparing LTE and Wi-Fi over a few major
aspects, it outlines the problems of co-existence, and discusses various medium access mechanisms to
ensure harmony. An alternate solution called LWA (LTE Wi-Fi Aggregation) has also been briefly introduced.
Later, the paper provides insight on market trends, market offerings, and the challenges existing for market
players in the battlefield of unlicensed LTE.
Executive Summary
With the advancements in telecommunication industry, the provision of ‘ubiquitous’ connectivity to the
users is no more a daydream. The massive shift from wireline traffic to wireless traffic in the past decade
shows that mobile traffic is gaining increasing attention. However, this gain has the associated problem of
‘Radio Spectrum Crunch’ to cater to the exponential growth of user data demands. LTE Unlicensed is a
potential technology, which makes use of LTE protocol over the unlicensed spectrum. The ISM (Industrial,
Scientific and Medical) band, mainly considered for this solution is 5GHz unlicensed band, as the 2.4GHz
ISM band is already congested. Cordless Phones, Bluetooth, ZigBee, NFC Devices take advantage of
unlicensed spectrum for short-range communication. The WLAN protocol – Wi-Fi also operates in
unlicensed bands to provide superior indoor-coverage. With LTE Unlicensed, the ISM band will have LTE as
an additional contender sharing the same resource-pie. As LTE protocol is designed for licensed band, the
channel access mechanism here is synchronous, whereas Wi-Fi is asynchronous in nature. The major
difference in channel access mechanism of both the technologies leads to serious problems like ‘Interfer-
ence’ and ‘Starvation’ when they co-exist. Wi-Fi, being the major user of unlicensed band, the supporters
of this upcoming technology - LTE Unlicensed are facing strong oppositions from the Wi-Fi Alliance mem-
bers like Apple, Google, Comcast, and Microsoft.
This paper describes primarily two flavors of Unlicensed LTE technology – 1. LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed) and
2. LAA (Licensed Assisted Access). Implementation for both of these requires an ‘anchor’ in licensed spec-
trum. LTE-U, is based on 3GPP Release 10 (LTE-Advanced) feature named Carrier Aggregation, whose
standards are already in place. Regions like USA, China, and Korea will see early deployments of LTE-U.
However, a much global solution, the LAA based on Release 13 specifications, mandates the implementa-
tion of LBT (Listen Before Talk) technique, will be commercialized later due to ongoing standardization.
When LBT is enabled, each device or access point would scan the channel to detect any activity on this
channel and transmit only when it finds the medium unused. Thus it ensures fair co-existence of other
technologies and devices operating in the same spectrum. LBT being a global approach, this would be
compliant with regulatory requirements of most countries like Europe and Japan. The reason behind adopt-
ing Unlicensed LTE is not to overpower the reign of Wi-Fi, but to enhance spectral efficiency and capacity
of 5GHz band by co-existing harmoniously and ensuring fair medium access.
There is no doubt that these LTE and Wi-Fi technologies with their rich and complementing features will
continue to converge with the goals of giving users ‘Anytime’ & ‘Anywhere’ connectivity and required band-
width. Users do not care which underlying technology is being used to cater to their services, as long as it
is fast, affordable, and reliable. As these two (licensed and unlicensed) worlds cater to some conflicts of
interest, understanding the differences between discussed approaches is important. This helps in realizing
that there is no right or wrong, just difference of choices.
Currently, the future looks bright for carrier grade Wi-Fi technology and LTE Small Cells. LTE-U, LAA, LWA
are different approaches for converging the best of both worlds together and probably other options will
emerge as well. Like everything, the market is the only Ultimatum! It will decide what works best and when.
Introduction
Motivation
The massive shift from wireline traffic to wireless traffic in the past decade shows that the mobile traffic is
gaining increasing attention. The use of wireless data services gives consumers the freedom of mobility.
Today wireless traffic accounts for more than half of the IP traffic and most of them is not cellular, but Wi-Fi,
according to Cisco’s VNI data.
Global IP traffic
Wireless traffic Wireless traffic
59% 75%
24%
41%
61%
55%
4% 15%
2013 2018
Cellular Wi-Fi Fixed IP
Traditional Cellular providers find it challenging to provide good indoor-coverage. Hence, Wi-Fi dominates
in most of the residential and enterprise setups for indoor data services. People spend 80-90% of their time
indoors. Network analytics shows that the majority of mobile data usage, close to 80%, is indoor and not
truly mobile. Hence, there is a growing pressure on mobile operators to provide those users fast and seam-
less connectivity with the existing problem of Spectrum Crunch. At the same time, it can be seen as a great
business opportunity for the MNOs to increase their indoor customer count with enhanced indoor cover-
age. Fixed line operators can get a better level of management layer from the cellular operators and can
provide a good amount of bandwidth even to users who are away from the amplifiers.
The 3GPP LTE technology is a 4G cellular wireless technology, and offers high-speed wireless cellular
network connectivity through mobile devices. Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that enables several types of
computing devices, including personal computers and mobile phones, to connect to a wireless network
through a router. Blending the goodness of both the technologies gave birth to the next generation network
technology – Unlicensed-LTE. The reason behind adopting Unlicensed LTE is not to overpower the reign
of Wi-Fi, but to enhance the spectral efficiency and capacity of 5GHz band by co-existing harmoniously and
ensuring fair medium access.
ISM bands
The unlicensed spectrum bands in the scope of LTE-U technology are the ISM bands in 2.4 GHz and 5
GHz. Of particular interest is the 5GHz band, where large bandwidths are freely available in many regions of
the world. In recent times, the fastest growing use of these bands has been for short-range low power
communication systems. Cordless Phones, Bluetooth, ZigBee, NFC Devices, and Wi-Fi take advantage of
unlicensed spectrum for short-range communication.
FM
Broadcast
AM
Audio IV 5 GHz
Broadcast
IEEE 802.11a
The rules to access these ISM bands vary from country to country. In the US, FCC defines these rules,
whereas, in Europe ETSI is the governing body. In 1985, the US FCC opened the ISM band for radio com-
munication and wireless LANs [1].
USA
5150 5350 5470 5850
Europe
& Japan
5150 5350 5470 5725
China
5150 5350 5725 5850
5GHz has one major benefit over 2.4GHz with wider spectrum of > 300MHz in most
of the markets.
• In USA, the 5GHz band has approximately 580MHz
• In Europe around 455 MHz
• In China around 325MHz
Low CAPEX cost for operator as Unlicensed LTE is fully transparent to the LTE
no license fee charged for its use, core network, avoiding the need to upgrade any
of the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) elements.
LTE Unlicensed - Various approaches & related terminology
There are different proposals on how to use LTE in unlicensed band and these variants has given rise to lot
of confusion in the terminology used around this topic. We use “Unlicensed LTE” as an umbrella term which
covers all approaches of LTE in the 5GHz unlicensed band. Two such approaches are being developed and
investigated in parallel – LTE-U and LAA. Their acceptance and deployment would depend on how 3GPP
specification would mature around them.
Regions supported USA, China, Korea , India Europe, Japan. Being a global
approach, this would be compliant
with regulatory requirements of most
countries.
The regulatory norms of different countries to access unlicensed spectrum has given rise to two separate
markets. They vary in the channel access techniques applied.
1. LBT Market - Europe, Japan: shall follow LAA protocols. The 3GPP is working to standardize LTE-U,
under the name LAA (Licensed Assisted Access) in Release 13, which supports LBT in addition to CA.
LAA is set to become a global standard, as it targets to meet the regulatory requirements persisting
worldwide.
2. Non-LBT Market – US, China, South Korea, and India: Here LBT is not mandated, hence operators can
roll out LTE-U deployments earlier using 3GPP Release 10/11/12 based specifications.
These markets would follow Carrier Aggregation feature of 3GPP Release 10/11/12, which needs
changes in LTE Physical layer and does not mandate the support of LBT.
LTE-U, The ready to deploy solution for operators
In 2013, Qualcomm and Ericsson proposed this version of unlicensed LTE. LTE-U implementation has its
basic roots in 3GPP Rel. 10 feature - Carrier Aggregation (CA) with small-cell enhancements in Release 11
and 12. Thus, LTE-U relies on 3GPP Release 10/11/12 functionality with specification designed and defined
by LTE-U Forum, an organization established by Verizon in collaboration with ALU, Ericsson, Qualcomm,
and Samsung. As it requires fewer modifications from the licensed LTE, LTE-U would be first and the earliest
version of unlicensed LTE available to operators.
Channel Access
In LTE – Synchronous Access
In terms of channel access, LTE is synchronous and centralized in nature. As it is designed for licensed
spectrum, where exclusive use of the spectrum is guaranteed, it is much more efficient than Wi-Fi. Its radio
frame duration is 10ms (See Fig. 4). Each radio frame is divided into 10 sub-frames of 1ms duration. Again,
each sub-frame is divided into 2 slots of 0.5ms each, which consists of a set of time symbols called OFDM
symbols.
All LTE transmissions within a cell, both Uplink and Downlink, are assigned to these slots by the LTE
base-station scheduler. As scheduling is carried out in a centralized fashion, the UEs belonging to the same
cell must be tightly synchronized, both in time and frequency domain. LTE uses the orthogonal frequency
division multiple access (OFDMA) the channel access mechanism, which allows simultaneous transmission
for multiple users. LTE does not perform carrier sensing like Wi-Fi.
1 Frame (10 msec)
0 1 2 3 10 11 19
Data
Device A
Collision
Fig. 5: Wi-Fi channel Access, CSMA/CA
With respect to these two major problems, it becomes necessary to take extra measure to ensure that LTE
co-exists reasonably fairly with Wi-Fi while using unlicensed band. Since Wi-Fi devices are already wide-
spread in the 5GHz unlicensed band, there is a need that LTE-U deployments use low power transmission
in order to cause low interference to their Wi-Fi neighbors. Hence, early LTE-U deployments shall focus on
Small Cell (SC) solutions for harmonious co-existence.
To achieve this harmony, two main approaches are under consideration and are discussed in the following
chapter.
Fig. 6: : Co-existence mechanism for non-LBT markets (Recommended by: LTE-U forum)
2. In case when no clean channel is available, secondary Cell (S-Cell) /secondary carrier DTX is applied for
adaptive or static TDM for LTE-U Small Cell transmissions based on 10-200ms of carrier sensing of
co-channel Wi-Fi activities. This ensures that even in dense deployments, the LTE-U nodes can share
channel fairly with the Wi-Fi neighbors.
3. In addition, opportunistic S-Cell switch off can reduce interference to Wi-Fi caused due to cell reference
signal (CRS) of S-Cells, when their bandwidth is not needed. This decision can be made based on traffic
in-activity of users associated with unlicensed band compared to what P-Cell can provide. It is possible
since the primary carrier is always operating in the licensed band.
time
CCA CCA
failed Success
An alternative to using LTE over unlicensed spectrum that could be much more acceptable to Wi-Fi stake-
holders and the broader industry is “LWA”. This solution targets to enhance LTE performance, thus
overcoming the existing disputes between 3GPP and Wi-Fi Alliance over LTE-U/LAA deployments. Qual-
comm is strongly promoting this solution. This approach reaches very similar results / goals as set by LTE-U
and LAA, by using a different concept. In this, the LTE payload is split and some traffic is tunneled over Wi-Fi
and rest is sent over the native LTE connection.
LWA uses Wi-Fi APs to augment LTE RAN by tunneling LTE data in 802.11 MAC frame, so that it looks like
Wi-Fi frame to another network, though it is actually carrying LTE data. By this method, both technologies
operate in their respective spectrum i.e. Wi-Fi runs on an unlicensed band, LTE continues to run on a
licensed band, and they are combined in such a way that there are no changes in their respective access
mechanisms. This is the significant difference compared to LTE-unlicensed.
Link Aggregation
LTE via licensed spectrum
2.4 GHz & 5 GHz Additional link by LTE via WiFi via ISM spectrum
tunnelling LTE msg
via WiFi
ISM 2.4 & 5GHz Spectrum
LW
A
LTE Spectrum
Licensed
spectrum as
anchor
LTE-U
USA, Korea, India
LTE Spectrum
400MHz - 3.8GHz
Component Carrier
ISM 5GHz Spectrum A
(LTE using ISM LA pa
n
spectrum) , Ja
pe
Euro
Carrier Aggregation
LTE used in both spectrums
Advantages
Wi-Fi traffic can benefit from the services provided by carrier operators’ EPC. Authentication, Billing, Deep
packet Inspection(DPI), Lawful interception, Policy and Rule enforcement, etc. LWA, thus, becomes a
solution that exploits existing Wi-Fi AP and improves indoor cellular performance.
A new coalition named ‘EVOLVE’ was launched in Washington D.C. in September 2015. AT&T, Verizon,
T-Mobile, Alcatel Lucent, Competitive Carrier Association (CCA), and Qualcomm are the backers of this
group. They have formed this coalition to promote the benefits of new technologies like LTE-U and LAA
operating on unlicensed spectrum.
On the other hand, controversy debates are taking place at regulatory level at FCC over LTE-U Access
between Wi-Fi Alliance and LTE-U supporters. Apple, Google, Comcast, and Microsoft who are members
of the Wi-Fi Alliance including the cable industry R&D body CableLabs, went to the extent of proposing
FCC with certification process for LTE-U operators from Wi-Fi Alliance for deploying LTE-U. Their claims are
LTE-U was developed in private, in contrast to LAA and in contrast to standard development methods.
Thus, more challenges are lining up for LTE-U than LAA deployments.
In spite of all these concerns, market growth is predicted in LTE-U Small Cells deployment.
LTE-U Small Cell solution will see early entry in the LTE-U market; a new report indicates that spending on
LTE-U Small Cells is expected to reach nearly $2 Billion by the end of 2020 [8]
As wireless vendors aggregate more unlicensed spectrum bands, the demand for LTE-U small cells is
expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 80% between 2016 and 2020, according to
the SNS telecom research report. Several large companies operating within the LTE standard, including
Verizon Wireless, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Qualcomm, will support this growth.
OEM’s take towards LTE unlicensed
Equipment manufacturers take different approaches in their way towards making unlicensed spectrum
available to mobile operators to augment their available spectrum.
Broadcom
• Broadcom has been active in both comments to the FCC and in work in standardization bodies, but is
not a part of the LTE-U Forum. Broadcom does not believe that LTE-U as envisioned by the LTE-U Forum
meets the normal criteria of a standard [7.3].
• Participation in this group is restricted; detailed specifications are not provided, and sharing algorithms
are proprietary. Broadcom believes that LAA is likely to be standardized in 2016 and priority focus for
3GPP is supplemental downlink, and that supplemental uplink will be considered in the future.
Abbreviations
[1] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2007-title47-vol1/pdf/CFR-2007-title47-vol1.pdf
[2]https://www.qualcomm.com/#/invention/research/
projects/lte-unlicensed/r13-laa-licensed-assisted-access
[2.1] Qualcomm (2013): Extending LTE-Advanced to unlicensed spectrum.
[2.2] Qualcomm (2013): Introducing LTE in unlicensed spectrum.
[2.3] Qualcomm research (2014) LTE in unlicensed spectrum: Harmonious coexistence with Wi-Fi
[3]http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/wireless
/wi-fi/80211-channels-number-frequencies-bandwidth.php
[4] http://lteuforum.org/
[4.1] LTE-U forum (2015) LTE-U SDL Coexistence Specification
[4.2] LTE-U forum (2015) LTE-U Technical Report, Coexistence SDL Coexistence Specification
[5] 3GPP TR 36.889 V13.0.0; Study on Licensed-Assisted Access to Unlicensed Spectrum; (Release 13)
[6] http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2015/09/01/wifi-3gpp-relations-thaw-lte-laa-lte-u.htm
[7] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/ & http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view. -
[7.1] FCC (2015) Office of Engineering, Technology, and Wireless Telecommunications Bureau
seek Information on Current Trends in LTE-U and LAA Technology. ET Docket No. 15-105.
[7.2] WBA’s responses to FCC on seek of information on current trends in LTE-U and LAA.
[7.3] Broadcom’s responses to FCC on seek of information on current trends in LTE-U and LAA
[7.4] Cisco’s responses to FCC on seek of information on current trends in LTE-U and LAA
[7.5] Google’s responses to FCC on seek of information on current trends in LTE-U and LAA
[7.6] ALU’s responses to FCC on seek of information on current trends in LTE-U and LAA
[7.7] Qualcomm’s responses to FCC on seek of information on current trends in LTE-U and LAA
[8] http://www.snstelecom.com/wireless-network-infrastructure
[8.1]http://www.marketresearch.com/Signals-and-Systems-
Telecom-v3882/HetNet-Ecosystem-Small-Cells-Carrier-9043353/
[9]http://www.rcrwireless.com/20150701/test-and-
measurement/lte-u-testing-5-studies-and-their-results-tag6
[10] https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=172096&x
Author Info
Sonika Bengani
Sonika joined HCL over 4 years ago in the Engineering and R&D (ERS) Telecom
and networks division. She has 10+ years of experience in Radio protocol
design & development of 3G and 4G technology. Her research areas are
focussed on future 5G networks, IoT connectivity infrastructure, and their
use-cases.
Mirko Naumann
Mirko joined HCLs Engineering and R&D (ERS) Telecom and networks division
end of 2013. Since then, he is heading HCL’s LTE Center of Excellence. Mirko
has 18+ years experience in telecommunication with a strong focus on
wireless. He works in research and development for mobile devices and mobile
networks in 3G, 4G, and 5G technology for more than 15 years.
Hello, I’m from HCL’s Engineering and R&D Services. We enable technology led organizations to go to market with innovative
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