LTE Evolution to Build All Business

Foundation
Feb,2019
Executive Summary

LTE has completely changed the landscape of mobile broadband and everyone's daily life, brought huge
revenues to most mobile operators. However operators are now concerning about how to boost the network
capacity and enhance user experience, how to enable new business for new revenue growth, and how
to improve the investment efficiency. In recent years, LTE standards and industry are evolving not only to
overtake all 2G and 3G services, but also to enable all business as the foundation of the next decade. This
white paper presents an overview of how shall we redefine LTE towards the 2020s to address the challenges
regarding use experience and network capacity and bring sustainable revenues.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 2

Executive Summary

5GC 5G Core LPWA Low Power Wide Area

AAU Active Antenna Unit LTE Long-Term Evolution
AI Artificial Intelligence LTE-V LTE-Vehicle
BS Base Station (or Basestation) MBMS Multimedia Broadcast Multicast
BW Bandwidth Services
CA Carrier Aggregation MIMO Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
CAPEX Capital Expenditure MTC Machine Type Communications
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access MU-MIMO Multi-User MIMO
CP Control Plane NB-IoT Narrowband Internet of Things
CPE Customer-premises equipment NE-DC NR/E-UTRAN Dual Connectivity
CQI Channel Quality Indicator NG-RAN Next Generation Radio Access
CRS Cell-specific reference signal Network
CSFB Circuit Switch Fallback OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division
CSI Channel State Information Multiple Access
CSI-RS Channel State Information Reference OPEX Operating Expense
Signal PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel
DL Downlink PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel
DMRS Demodulation Reference Signal
RAT Radio Access Technology
E2E End-to-End
RS Reference Signal
eMTC Enhanced Machine Type
Communications RTT Round-Trip Time

EN-DC E-UTRAN/NR Dual Connectivity SIB System Information Block

E-UTRAN Evolved Universal Terrestrial Access SINR Signal to Interference plus Noise
Network Ratio
FBB Fixed Broadband SRVCC Single Radio Voice Call Continuity
FDD Frequency Division Duplex SRS Sounding Reference Signal
GSM Global System for Mobile TCO Total Cost of Ownership
Communications TDD Time Division Duplex
GSMA Global System for Mobile
TM Transmission Mode
Communications Association
TTI Transmission Time Interval
HetNet Heterogeneous Network
HSPA High Speed Packet Access TTM Time To Market

ICIC Inter-Cell Interference Coordination UE User Equipment

IMT International Mobile UL Uplink
Telecommunications UMTS Universal Mobile
IoT Internet of Things Telecommunications System
URLLC Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency
ITS Intelligent Transportation System Communication
ITU-T International Telecommunication V2X Vehicle to Anything
Union-Telecommunication VoLTE Voice over LTE
Standardization Sector
WBB Wireless Broadband
LAA Licensed Assisted Access

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 3

1. LTE: New Evolution, New Growth Opportunities
1.1. LTE Standards Are Evolving towards the 2020s

The introduction and increasing use of mobile devices (e.g., smart phones and tablets) and various
mobile applications have dramatically changed mobile communications systems and upgraded the cellular
technologies from one generation to another. As the dominant 4G technology, LTE, also known as Evolved
Universal Terrestrial Access Network (E-UTRAN), was developed by 3GPP starting in 2004 to meet the
requirements of diverse mobile applications. LTE is a release-based technology family. In every one to two
years, a new release of various key features is specified to meet the requirements of emerging use cases,
to support technologies from latest researches, and to address practical issues seen in real deployments.
In the past decade, the LTE family has grown to include LTE, LTE-Advanced, LTE-Advanced Pro and now
its further evolution towards satisfying IMT-2020 (a.k.a. 5G) requirements and use cases. On one hand,
LTE standards are evolving to ensure ubiquitous evolved mobile broadband (eMBB) experience in terms of
latency, coverage, and throughput. On the other hand, LTE standards continue to develop to enable business
expansion into vertical markets, e.g., IoT, V2X, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and industry automation
by means of ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC). In addition, LTE is evolving to support the
operation of other RATs by means of technologies such as E-UTRAN/NR Dual Connectivity (EN-DC).

LTE
Evolution
LTE-
Advanced
Pro
LTE- All Business Connected
Advanced Primary Infrastructure

LTE Connection short TTI

FeCoMP
Capacity & Massive CA Video enhancement
Coverage
3D beamforming Enhanced NB-IoT/eMTC
Framework Carrier aggregation
LAA Ultra reliable low latency
High-order MIMO
NB-IoT communication
High-order
eMTC V2X Phase2
Scalable BW modulation
LTE-V Aerial vehicles
Flat architecture Relay
eVoLTE Positioning enhancement
DL: OFDMA, UL: Small cell enhance-
Mobility enhance- E-UTRAN/NR Dual Connec-
SC-FDMA ment
ment tivity
MIMO Co-channel
Multi-RAT opera- LTE connectivity to new core
SON CoMP&eICIC
tion enhancement Architecture evolution of
MBMS SON enhancement
E-UTRAN
D2D …

2005 2010 2014 2017 2020

Year

Figure 1. Key features of LTE and its evolution

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 4

Thanks to its technology advancement and well established ecosystem, LTE is the fastest developing
mobile communications system ever. More than 700 LTE networks have been deployed for commercial use,
serving 3.2 billion users (78% of the global population) and contributing to 66% of the operators' revenues on
average. With its all business capabilities from voice to data and IoT, it is no surprise that LTE will gradually
replace 2G and 3G as the foundation for the next decade in the 5G era.

5G NR LTE+NR for Extreme 5G eMBB Experience for 2020s

LTE as Spectrum Hardware

Anchor Sharing Ready All Business
Connected
LTE Evolution as 5G Foundation
LTE LTE Voice -> VoLTE: 5G default voice solution
2G/3G Evolution MBB -> eMBB: 5G-like 50Mbps+ experience everywhere
2G/3G IoT -> NB-IoT/eMTC: 5G LPWA IoT solutions

Figure 2 LTE evolution towards the 2020s

1.2. New Growth Opportunities and Requirements

From ubiquitous coverage to traffic capacity, the past decades have witnessed tremendous business growth
driven by LTE. Nevertheless, operators are also looking for new growth opportunities, which raise new
requirements for LTE evolution.

■■ Demographic Dividend Requires Better 4G Coverage.

Mobile networks have been providing the demographic dividend across the world by voice and data
services. More than 10 years ago, 2G/3G voice surpassed the landline voice, and the voice duration in
service packages is almost unlimited in many markets. In recent years, 3G/4G data is a more and more
essential part of modern daily life boosted by all kinds of smart devices, especially the smartphones.
However, the 4G LTE coverage is still not as good as that of 2G and 3G, which causes users to fall back
to the 2G or 3G networks and significant user experience deterioration. According to Huawei analysis, an
average of 18% of the mobile data traffic falls back to 2G and 3G.

■■ Traffic Dividend Needs to Boost Network Capacity.

In some developed MBB countries, operators are getting more revenues by encouraging users to consume
more traffic. Unlimited data packages are becoming popular in many high-competition markets. According
to Analysis Mason, the global average smartphone data traffic per user per month (DOU) has reached 2.7
GB, and this figure will increase over the next few years at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
50%. In some markets, the CAGR even doubles or triples. With the increasing number of subscribers and
exponential traffic growth, how to boost network capacity with limited spectrum is a common concern in
most markets.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 5

■■ Better User Experience and New Services Will Provide New Growth Opportunities.
Beyond the traffic capacity, leading operators are also looking for new growth opportunities to differentiate
from their competitors. Monetizing better experience and new services is a popular approach to
reinstate growth. According to P3 test report, the user experienced data rate of developed MBB markets is
around 20 Mbps, which could be even lower at busy hour or in some developing MBB markets like India.
With the rollout of new services such as ultra-HD video, fixed wireless access (FWA), and mobile gaming,
users are expecting much better experience.

■■ Improve Investment Efficiency on the Doorstep of 5G.

To provide more capacity and better experience, operators need to install more radio boxes, construct
more sites, and buy more spectrums. Consequently, on the doorstep of 5G, how to increase investment
efficiency is another major concerns of mobile operators.

The investment can be categorized as Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operating Expense (OPEX):

• CAPEX is the cost for hardware infrastructure, spectrum, and site construction include mast, transmission,
power supply and so on.
• OPEX is typically 3–4 times of CAPEX and includes the cost for network operation, marketing & subsidiary,
customer care, interconnection & roaming, and administration.
From the network perspective, the investment in hardware, spectrum, and network operation shall be more
efficient and future proof.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 6

2. Redefining LTE towards the 2020s
How shall we redefine LTE and meet the business requirements in coverage, capacity, experience, and
investment efficiency?

2.1. Zero Fallback

Zero fallback refers to the expansion of the foundation LTE network coverage so that it is equivalent
to or better than 2G and 3G. All voice, data & IoT services will be served by LTE without any fallback
to 2G or 3G. The OPEX of an operator that has deployed 2G, 3G, and LTE networks generally accounts
for more than 60% of the total cost of ownership (TCO). It should be noted that the network operation cost
will also increase by about 10% for each new radio band and RAT. After 5G is put into commercial use, the
OPEX will be even higher. To improve operational efficiency, 2G and 3G networks shall be gradually phased
out.

■■ In the 5G era, VoLTE shall be the most ubiquitous and preferred voice solution without further fallback to
2G or 3G.
■■ Subscribers using legacy 2G and 3G technologies can migrate to LTE to enjoy better experience.
■■ NB-IoT and eMTC are future proof technologies. In March 2018, 3GPP clarified that "(5G) LPWA use
cases will continue to be addressed by evolving LTE-M(eMTC) and NB-IoT". The NB-IoT and eMTC
ecosystem is also growing very fast. Within just 2 years, the NB-IoT module price has reached about 3
USD, which is similar to that of a 2G M2M module.
Dozens of operators, such as AT&T in the US, Vodafone in Australia, and TELUS/Bell in Canada, have shut
down their 2G networks. Many other operators plan to shut down their 2G networks around 2020 to 2025.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 7

2.2. Zero Wait
LTE evolution, as the foundation in the next decade, shall provide much more superior experience
than the current LTE network to satisfy new business requirements. According to the study of Google,
content load time will significantly impact the bounce rate, which is the percentage of visitors who come to
your site and leave after only viewing one page. Zero wait will minimize service loss by providing popular
services, such as HD video, web browsing, and mobile gaming, at the lowest possible latency Zero wait may
also enable the network to provide new services such as cloud VR and smart manufacturing.

As page load time goes from:

1s to 3s the probability of bounce increases 32%

1s to 5s the probability of bounce increases 90%

1s to 6s the probability of bounce increases 106%

1s to 10s the probability of bounce increases 123%

Figure 3 Google study on page load time vs service bounce rate

Data rate and latency are two major dimensions to evaluate such zero wait experience.

■■ In some fierce-competition markets, unlimited packages are becoming more and more popular. User
experience will be a key differentiation for operator marketing and business. For example, in Finland and
Thailand, operators have launched speed-based packages.
Currently, the user experienced data rate of major operators around the world is around 20 Mbps. A
recommended benchmark for such "Zero wait" experience should be around 50 Mbps anytime anywhere,
which is fast enough for most popular services. Compared with the current 20 Mbps data rate, the
recommended benchmark has a narrower gap with the 5G user experience requirement (100 Mbps).

■■ There are more than 2 billion mobile gaming users worldwide, with an annual growth of 12%. This is a
huge potential market since low latency experience is a key benchmark in many real-time games and
many players are willing to pay for such experience. A new business model has emerged in China:
operators and OTTs cooperated to sell game acceleration packages.
According to Huawei and OTT game research, a 50-ms latency can provide decent mobile gaming
experience, requiring a 10–20 ms latency over the air interface. In the near future, more time-critical
business like LTE-V2X and smart manufacturing will demand even lower latency experience with a typical
air interface latency to be below 10 ms.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 8

2.3. Smooth Evolution
Firstly, LTE evolution is one crucial component of 5G target network. In the past, the evolution of mobile
communications technologies was a process of replacing old-generation technologies with new ones. After
3G emerged, 2G standards stopped evolving. But how shall we picture the target network and its evolution in
the 5G era? According to the standards and industry opinions, the target network will be LTE Evolution + 5G
NR, where LTE will evolve in parallel with 5G NR over a long period of time in terms of standards, industries,
and ecosystems. Gradually taking over 2G and 3G, being all-business foundation network in the 5G era, LTE
will serve as the NSA anchor and coverage complement to 5G NR.

Secondly, hardware should apply the most state-of-art technologies and be ready for 5G NR. Such
hardware should include base stations, antennas, site infrastructure. The new infrastructure should support
wide-band or multiple bands, which not only makes it easier to upgrade to NR, but also greatly simplifies the
site structure and reduces the OPEX.

Spectrum is another important asset of mobile operators. Its value shall be maximized between multiple
RATs. Operators shall be able to flexibly allocate the spectrum between different RATs according to
E2E business and terminal readiness.

Another 5G key innovation is AI-powered operation, which will greatly reduce the OPEX. It is firstly
introduced into LTE because big data can be acquired from the widely-deployed LTE commercial networks
and 5G technologies like massive MIMO are already used in LTE.

Redefine LTE for New Business Opportunities

VoLTE eMBB WTTx C-IoT

MOS4 50Mbps~3Gbps 50~100Mbps 1M connections/km2

everywhere 1ms~20ms 10 years battery life

Redefine LTE for as Foundation of 2020s

Zero Fallback Zero Wait Smooth Evolution

Capacity Boosting:
• Multi-antennas
• Multi-sectors
Coverage Align with 2G/3G： • Multi-bands Site evolution
• GL/UL refarming Spectrum evolution
• VoLTE coverage enhance 5G-like Experience: Architecture evolution
• 5G-like speed
• 5G-like low latency

Autonomous Boosted by AI

Figure 4 Technologies supporting LTE evolution towards the 2020s

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 9

3. Key Technologies for LTE Evolution
LTE standards and solutions need continuous evolution to help operators cope with the challenges of
coverage, capacity, user experience, new services, and the requirements of 5G-oriented evolution. 3GPP
specifications R15 frozen in June 2018 determined that LTE and NR should complement each other and
evolve together. This chapter describes key LTE evolution technologies in terms of coverage, capacity, user
experience, interworking with NR/NG Core, site evolution, and new services.

3.1. Coverage
Currently, around 18% of the total data traffic falls back to 2G or 3G globally, failing to achieve the zero
fallback target. The main reasons are as follows:

1. There is still a gap between LTE coverage and 2G or 3G coverage. According to the report from GSMA
intelligence, LTE covers 75% of the global population in 2018, lagging far behind the 2G or 3G coverage
for the global population, which exceeds 90%.

2. The VoLTE service provisioning rate or VoLTE coverage is insufficient. As a result, voice services of 4G
subscribers fall back to 2G or 3G through CS Fallback (CSFB) or single radio voice call continuity (SRVCC).
Consequently, data also falls back to 2G or 3G for a short period of time.

This section describes the main technologies used for improving LTE network coverage and VoLTE
coverage.

3.1.1. Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

Currently, refarming part of the 2G and 3G spectrums for LTE deployment is the most effective way to
expand LTE coverage and achieve zero fallback. However, most networks still have 2G and 3G subscribers.
Especially in 2G networks, lots of 2G IoT devices are deployed and are difficult to transfer to other RATs.
Therefore, 2G and 4G or 3G and 4G need to coexist on certain spectrums for a period of time.

Dynamic spectrum sharing can dynamically allocate spectrums based on traffic requirements. When there
is light traffic on the GSM (or UMTS) network, more spectrum resources are automatically allocated to the
LTE network. This improves spectrum utilization (up to 44% with GSM and LTE spectrum sharing and 52%
with UMTS and LTE spectrum sharing), while ensuring the service quality of GSM (or UMTS). This helps
operators fully utilize the limited GSM (UMTS) spectrums to quickly achieve full LTE coverage.

GSM LTE 5M GSM

GU UL
NB- IoT
…
UMTS LTE

GL GL GSM [email protected]
GL dynamic spectrum sharing GULN dynamic spectrum sharing

Figure 5 GSM-LTE and UMTS-LTE spectrum sharing

By the end of 2018, 100 operators have deployed the dynamic spectrum sharing solution. This number is
expected to reach 200 in 2019. Bharti Airtel in India uses the dynamic spectrum sharing technology to deploy
LTE, GSM, and UMTS on the 900 MHz band. This greatly improves the LTE network coverage and mobile
user experience, and enables high-speed Internet access and HD voice services indoors. LTE network traffic
also increases by 20%.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 10

3.1.2. VoLTE
The VoLTE industry has been quite mature. According to a GSMA report, 180 operators have launched
VoLTE services in their networks. A total of 1982 terminal models are VoLTE-capable, and some VoLTE
feature phones are sold at a price of lower than 20 USD. This accelerates the migration of 2G and 3G
subscribers to 4G networks. At the same time, the VoLTE technology is continuously evolving to provide a
better voice experience for subscribers.

TTI bundling: TTI bundling enables a data block to be transmitted in four consecutive TTIs. Different hybrid
automatic repeat request (HARQ) redundancy versions of the same data block are transmitted in different
TTIs. TTI bundling reduces the number of retransmissions and makes full use of HARQ combining gains to
enhance VoLTE coverage. For UEs under weak coverage, the uplink packet loss rate decreases by 5%–20%
and the coverage gain is about 1 dB.

In compliance with 3GPP R12, the following enhancements are introduced to TTI bundling to further
decrease the packet loss rate by up to 10%:

• The resource allocation size is no longer limited to three PRBs, enabling more flexible resource allocation
for TTI bundling.
• The number of HARQ processes is reduced from four to three, and the new HARQ feedback time sequence
is supported.

VoLTE voice rate control: Depending on the rates supported by a UE, the voice rate of the UE can be
adjusted between the high voice rate mode and the low voice rate mode. In this way, the UE can use a lower
voice coding rate (such as 12.65 kbps and 6.6 kbps) at the cell edge for transmission, improving the uplink
voice coverage by 0.5–1 dB.

Voice rate adjustment can be triggered based on the uplink quality, load, and SINR. This enables VoLTE
voice rate control to take effect in different scenarios, improving VoLTE coverage. VoLTE voice rate control
also includes EVS rate control. Enhanced voice services (EVS) using high voice rates such as 24.4 kbps or
13.2 kbps can be adjusted to use low voice rates such as 13.2 kbps or 9.6 kbps, respectively.

VoLTE CoMP: VoLTE CoMP converts inter-cell interference into useful information by coordinating multiple
cells based on the channel status and data information shared between the cells. VoLTE CoMP breaks
through the limitation of single-cell transmission on spectral efficiency and enhances VoLTE coverage by up
to 2 dB.

MOS Value for VoLTE

4.5
3.98 3.956 3.81 3.47 3.65
4
3.57
3.5 3.976 3.907
3.715 3.696 3.734 3.434
3
2.782
2.5
2
1.5
1.438
1
CoMP Off CoMP On 1 1 1
0.5
0
0.00 -1.00 -2.00 -3.00 -4.00 -5.00 -6.00 -7.00
UL SINR

Figure 6 VoLTE coverage enhancement by VoLTE CoMP

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 11

In addition, in Rel-14, eVoLTE coverage enhancement (CE) technologies are introduced which reuse the
existing CE technologies in eMTC CE mode A as much as possible. The main coverage enhancement
techniques defined in eVoLTE or eMTC are described as follows:

• RAN-assisted codec adaptation

• Relaxing the air interface delay budget
• Multi-subframe frequency hopping
• Asynchronous HARQ
• Flexible repetition

3.1.3. Coverage Enhancement Technologies

Low band deployment is a major approach to wide coverage guarantee, especially in rural areas. To further
improve coverage, it is recommended that low-band 4T4R or 2T4R modules be used, which provide
approximately 3 dB higher coverage gains than 2T2R modules.

For operators that cannot deploy LTE at low bands, 1800-MHz high-power RF modules and high-gain
antennas are an alternative means to provide wide coverage in rural areas. A 20-dBi high-gain antenna
offers a gain of 4 dB, as compared with a 16-dBi common antenna. A high-power RF module provides a 6 dB
downlink coverage gain. In the uplink, related algorithms can be optimized to improve the receiver sensitivity
and provide a 6 dB coverage gain. In this way, the coverage is almost the same as that of the GSM 900 MHz
band.

RF power
gain 6dB Antenna
Downlink gain 4dB

L1800

Antenna
gain 4dB
Uplink Enhanced receiver
algorithm gain 6dB

Figure 7 Enhancements of L1800M coverage

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 12

3.2. Capacity

User experience of operators' networks is declining gradually as the traffic increases year by year. To achieve
the zero wait experience goal, network capacity improvement is the first choice. The technologies for capacity
improvement during the LTE evolution include multiple antennas, multiple sectors, and multiple carriers.

3.2.1. Multi-Antenna Technology

4-antenna technology has been introduced since the initial stage of LTE development. 4x4 MIMO supports
simultaneous transmission of up to four data streams, almost doubling the peak rate of 2x2 MIMO. Base on
the field test result in following figure, we can see that, DL 4x4 MIMO can enjoy nearly 80% gain at all RSRP
scenarios.

Even if UEs have only two antennas, which means only a maximum of two data streams can be transferred
to this UE, 4x2 MIMO can still achieve a much higher average throughput than 2x2 MIMO. This is because a
4-antenna eNodeB obtains more accurate channel measurement results and feedback, and produces more
spatial diversity gains.

Impressed by the capacity gain and experience gain, there are already around 180 4T4R networks deployed
globally up to now.

Downlink Throughput(Mbps)
350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0
0
-70 75
-75 80
-80 50
-50 90
-90 95
-95 100
-100 105
-105 110
-110 115
-115 2
-200

4×4MIMO 2×2MIMO

Figure 8 Enhancements of spectral efficiency of FDD MIMO

In TDD, 8T8R gradually becomes the mainstream deployment mode for 4G and a basic configuration for 5G.
Since 2011, 8T8R has been used as a mandatory requirement of LTE TDD network construction in China.

As the unlimited data plan becomes more and more globally popular, higher order of MIMO solutions, e.g.,
Massive MIMO, are deployed to boost the cell average and edge performance.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 13

FDD massive MIMO uses the beamforming technology to split one massive MIMO cell into multiple 4T4R
cells. The AI technology is adopted to adaptively adjust the beams based on UE distribution. This balances
traffic between different beams and maximizes the air interface resource multiplexing gains. With traditional
TM4 UEs, FDD massive MIMO provides approximately three-fold capacity gains. As the penetration rate of
TM9 UEs increases, the eNodeB can adopt the sector split solution of FDD massive MIMO for TM4 UEs and
dynamic beamforming for TM9 UEs to further increase the capacity gains of FDD massive MIMO and the
experienced data rate of TM9 UEs.

TM4 User

TM9 User

Figure 9 TM4 and TM9 hybrid transmission

In 2018, FDD massive MIMO started to be commercial deployed and helped operators build an ultimate
capacity layer. In Thailand, 3.7-fold capacity gain is achieved in contrast to previous 4T4R cells in the heavy
traffic areas of Bangkok.

For TDD massive MIMO, the channel state information can be obtained thanks to the reciprocity of wireless
channels between downlink and uplink transmissions. Therefore, dynamic beamforming can directly be
applied to existing UEs to enable MU-MIMO in TDD massive MIMO, providing 3-5 times of capacity gains.
The AI technology is introduced to allow the dynamic selection of an optimal coverage parameter combination
from nearly 300 options in different UE distribution scenarios.

Meanwhile, Protocols related to TDD massive MIMO also continue to evolve，In LTE Rel-13~Rel-16, SRS
capacity and coverage enhancement, such as the introduction of more than one SRS OFDM symbols,
rather than the last symbol of a normal and special sub-frame, were specified, which could provide at
most 6 times capacity improvement for the typical TDD Configuration 2 compared to Rel-12. In addition,
the code multiplexing comb=4, SRS antenna switching for 1T4R and 2T4R were also introduced to further
enhance the SRS performance, and therefore improve the higher spectral efficiency for TDD massive MIMO
significantly.

TDD Massive MIMO has always been welcomed since 2016. About 40,000 massive MIMO modules have
been commercially deployed in over 50 LTE networks, including the heavy-traffic countries and areas like
China, Japan, Philippines, West Europe, and India. More than 5 times of gain have been observed in some
of the busiest cells, such as in stadiums.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 14

3.2.2. Multi-Sector Technology
With the multi-sector technology, traditional three sectors of an eNodeB are split into six sectors to increase
the available RB resource. This technology has been recognized as a key capacity expansion approach by
global operators. Normally the capacity of a single eNodeB can be increased by 50%-70% without additional
spectrum resources required.

There are two types of splitting: hard splitting and soft splitting.

Hard splitting uses multi-beam antennas. Within each antenna, the Butler matrix is used to map the RRU
channels to beams. Some channels are mapped to the left beam, and the other channels are mapped to the
right beam. In this way, the original cell is split into two independent cells.

Sector A Sector B

3-Sector 6-Sector

Figure 10 From 3-sector to multi-sector

Unlike using the Butler matrix in hard splitting, soft splitting uses flexible baseband weighting to implement
beam mapping. Spatial multiplexing can be achieved by beam mapping without adding any hardware. In
addition, joint scheduling between multiple beams and scenario-specific flexible beam combinations can
further improve the spatial multiplexing efficiency.

The multi-sector technology has become one of the major solutions for operators with insufficient spectrum
resources in densely populated areas. Currently, the sector splitting solution has been deployed for more
than 60 networks in the world. In Thailand, operator deployed FDD 4T4R + 6 sectors (4T6S) solution in
Bangkok dense urban area to achieve 90% capacity gain. In Jordan, operators deployed soft-split six-sector
8T8R TDD eNodeBs in the central urban areas, increasing the downlink traffic by 94%.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 15

3.2.3. Multi-Carrier
3GPP defines a broad spectrum range for LTE: from sub-1 GHz to 6 GHz. Operators can improve network
capacity by accelerating spectrum refarming and utilizing idle spectrums.

In TDD, there are still a large number of contiguous large-bandwidth spectrums available. For example, the
2.6 GHz TDD band of some operators in Europe has not yet been monetized. The licenses for the 2.3 and 2.6
GHz bands have not been granted in many countries in Asia Pacific and Africa. In addition, the 3.5 GHz band
(C-Band) that some operators have acquired can be used for TDD LTE deployment to meet the current traffic
growth demand before the 5G ecosystem is mature.

Coverage Capacity
1500MHz

1800MHz

2100MHz

2300MHz
2600MHz

3500MHz

3700MHz

5150MHz
450MHz
700MHz
800MHz
900MHz

5925MHz
Figure 11 E-UTRAN operation bands

The number of unlicensed spectrums that have been assigned or currently planned to be assigned is
comparable to or even more than the number of licensed spectrums. Licensed assisted access (LAA) is
introduced with tight coordination with licensed LTE systems. Carrier aggregation (CA) mechanisms can be
used, where the LAA carriers are operated as secondary cells (SCells) associated to and controlled by the
existing licensed LTE primary cell (PCell). In this way, joint operation and flexible offload between licensed
and unlicensed cells can be easily achieved, as shown in Figure 13.

Non-Standalone
Licensed LTE Unlicensed-LTE Licensed LTE Unlicensed-LTE

Primary Secondary Primary Secondary

Carrier Carrier Carrier Carrier

Carrier Aggregation into Licensed LTE

Coverage& Mobility QoS Unified

Capacity and sevice Guarantee OAM,RRM,
Guarantee continuity Billing

Controlled by Operator Network

Figure 12 Illustration of licensed assisted access

In terms of the possible operating modes for the LAA SCell, the unlicensed spectrum can be operated as a
DL-only cell or a DL+UL cell, regardless of the operating mode of PCell in the licensed spectrum.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 16

3.3. User Experience
There are two ways to deliver a zero wait user experience. One is to increase the UE throughput to allow
service data to be downloaded within a short time. The other is to reduce the round trip time (RTT) to shorten
the interaction and response time between the UEs and the application servers. In LTE evolution, the
technologies used for throughput improvement include CA and large-bandwidth technologies. The technology
used for RTT reduction is short TTI.

3.3.1. Carrier Aggregation

CA has become one of the widely used LTE features for boosting data rates as larger amount of bandwidth
can be utilized to increase the throughput of a UE. LTE has supported up to 32 aggregated carriers since
3GPP R13.

With the successful deployment of LTE networks, some challenges concerning the efficient use of E-UTRAN
CA have emerged in the networks. The current CA framework can be further optimized to reduce the delay
of SCell configuration and activation in order to improve the efficiency of radio resources. For instance, as
the network needs to make sure that the UE has completed the activation and starts to schedule the UE
only after receiving the valid CSI report, there is a non-negligible maximum delay about 34ms after eNodeB
send activation message to UE. In this case, it is possible that the data available for transmission is already
served by the PCell before a SCell is activated. To achieve fast SCell configuration and activation and reduce
terminal power consumption, the following solutions are under development in R15:

• Enable UEs in idle mode to perform measurements so that SCells can be configured directly in connected
mode. The eNodeB may instruct UEs in idle mode to perform measurements, the results of which can be
used for fast configuration and activation of SCells when the UEs enter connected mode. If all optimizations
have been introduced, the duration required for SCell configuration and activation can be reduced to a
minimum of 95 ms.
• Introduce a new dormant state of SCells to activate SCells rapidly. During this new SCell state, a UE only
performs CSI report without monitor the PDCCH of the SCell. Compare with legacy mechanism, SCell
activation delay can be reduced from 34ms to 8ms.

3.3.2. Large-Bandwidth Technology

Large bandwidth is one of the key technologies of 5G NR. The large-bandwidth technology reduces the
guard band and increases scheduling efficiency, improving user experience.

LTE can also use large-bandwidth technologies, including super horizontal band and super vertical band.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 17

The super horizontal band leverages the orthogonality of subcarriers and uses the interference compensation
and noise cancellation technologies to utilize the LTE guard band spectrum without increase any additional
interference. This enables operators to have more available spectrums and increases the network capacity
by 5%–8%.

Super Horizontal BAND

Current Spectrum Utilization + 5%~8%

Guard Band Utilize Guard Band

LTE 50MHz = 250RB LTE 50MHz = 267RB

Figure 13 Super horizontal band

With the super vertical band, the artificial intelligence (AI) virtual grid technology is used to construct an inter-
frequency information library. UE-level inter-frequency information and spectral efficiency can be predicted
to perform rapid and accurate carrier selection. Secondary component carriers (SCCs) can be intelligently
pre-scheduled based on the packet prediction model, and scheduling can be rapidly performed following
an optimal scheduling path on the entire frequency. In this way, the effect of small-bandwidth multi-carrier
scheduling is similar to that of large-bandwidth single-carrier scheduling. The CA activation rate increases,
and the user experienced data rate improves by 20%–30%.

Super Vertical BAND

·Fast Signal Prediction by AI ·Unified Scheduling

…
AI

2600

F1
F2 2300
Virtual Grid
F3
F4 2100/AWS

RSRP 1….n 1800/PCS

Predicition
Model
Spectrum Efficiency 700~900

Figure 14 Super vertical band

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 18

3.3.3. Short TTI

Latency reduction improves user experience by significantly cutting down the response time. When
responsiveness is ensured, real-time services become possible for commercial applications. Reduction in
latency further facilitates automation and intelligence. For example, the precise control of a drone requires
no more than a 20 ms end-to-end latency. Low latency opens the door for to large-scale commercialization of
real-time mobile applications.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

1ms TTI 2OS (0.143ms) TTI

Figure 15 Illustration of a short TTI compared with a normal TTI

One important way to reduce air interface latency is to reduce the TTI length. This feature is named "short
TTI". For example, 1 ms TTI (14 OFDM Symbols) of LTE can be divided into 0.143 ms (2 OFDM symbols).
With 2-OS short TTI, the User Plane (UP) latency is reduced from 4.8 ms to about 0.8 ms. The RTT
decreases from 8 ms to 2 ms.

User plane latency reduction from 2OS TTI Normal TTI

4.8ms to ~0.8ms, UP latency 0.8 4.8

Uplink E2E latency reduction E2E latency (uplink) 7.1 17.5

from 17.5ms to 7.1ms 0 5 10 15 20 (ms)

2OS TTI 246%

>140% gain for user 7OS TTI 191%
perceived throughput Normal TTI 100%

0% 50% 100% 150% 200% 250% 300%

2OS TTI Normal TTI

40% user capacity improvement with 98.5% 79 99
99.0% 63 83
>99% video service availability 99.5% 42 62
0 20 40 60 80 100 120

~10% spectrum efficiency improvement for medium mobility, e.g., 60km/h.

Short TTI

Figure 16 Performance gain analysis of short TTI

Short TTI not only reduces the latency, but also significantly increases the user perceived throughput for
TCP-based traffic. The end-to-end TCP throughput is latency sensitive during the TCP slow start period. Low
latency means quick data transmission and quick TCP-ACK feedback, which accelerates the increase of
TCP window and improves the end-to-end TCP throughput.

In addition to gain in latency and TCP throughput, short TTI provides a lower outage ratio for some real-
time services like video streaming. In this case, 2-OS short TTI supports 40% more UEs than 1-ms TTI with
the same packet outage. Furthermore, short TTI enables fast CSI measurement and feedback to better
track channel fading and interference fluctuation, which further increases the spectral efficiency. Short TTI
also provides other benefits. For example, VoLTE capacity can be increased due to the finer transmission
granularity.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 19

3.4. Interworking with NR/NG Core
As shown in Figure 18, several network architecture options of the migration path were proposed during 5G
study item in order to enable a smooth evolution towards 5G.

Option 2: Standalone NR, Option 5: Standalone

5GC connected NG-LTE, 5GC connected
5GC 5GC control plane
user plane

NR NG-LTE

Option 3/3a: LTE-NR DC, LTE as anchor, Option 4/4a: LTE-NR DC, NR as anchor, Option 7/7a: LTE-NR DC, NG-LTE as
EPC connected 5GC connected anchor, 5GC connected

EPC 5GC EPC 5GC EPC 5GC

5GC

“1 A like” “1 A like” “1 A like”

LTE NR NG-LTE NR NG-LTE NR

Figure 17 Illustration of 5G network architecture options

These options can be categorized as follows:

• Standalone NR connected to 5G new core (Option 2, no LTE involved)

• Standalone LTE connectivity to 5G new core (Option 5)
• LTE-NR DC (Options 3/4/7)
• Option 3 series: LTE as an anchor (EN-DC)
• Option 4 series: NR as an anchor (NE-DC)
• Option 7 series: NG-LTE as an anchor (NG EN-DC)

In R15, Option 3 was standardized at the end of 2017, Option 2/5 was standardized by June 2018, and
Options 7/4 are planned to be finished before March 2019.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 20

3.4.1. LTE-NR DC
Considering operators' huge investment in LTE deployments, tight interworking between LTE and NR (i.e.
E-UTRAN/NR DC) attracts lots of attention from operators and vendors. In 3GPP standard work Option3
series (i.e., EN-DC), LTE tight interworking with non-standalone NR under EPC, has been given a high
priority in R15. Based on EN-DC, the existing EPC can be used to provide wide coverage, and the NR can
be used to provide high throughput wherever it is available at the initial stage. In EN-DC, the LTE eNodeB
connecting to the EPC acts as the master node and the NR gNodeB (i.e., en- gNB) acts as a secondary
node (SN). The overall EN-DC architecture is illustrated in Figure 18.

MME/S-GW MME/S-GW

EPC

S1- U
U S1-
S1-U

S1-U
S1

S1
S1

S1

E-UTRAN
X2-U
en-gNB en-gNB
X2
X2

X2
eNB eNB

Figure 18 Overall architecture of EN-DC

With EN-DC operation, the en-gNB is able to establish a user plane connection with the LTE eNodeB and/or
S-GW to provide NR AI (Air Interface) service to EN-DC-capable UEs under the control of the LTE eNodeB.
Taking maximum benefit from the wide coverage of LTE and high throughput of NR, EN-DC is regarded as
an efficient solution to improving user experience on both high data rate and high reliability.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 21

3.4.2. LTE Connectivity to 5G New Core
During the evolution towards 5G, from operators' perspective, it is desirable to leverage the existing LTE
coverage to provide continuous coverage nationwide, since the deployment of NR will gradually increase. By
enabling Option 5, i.e. connecting LTE to 5GC, LTE coverage could be utilized to provide LTE UEs with new
5GC functions such as network slicing, QoS-flow based QoS framework, and 5GC security framework. On
top of that, LTE connectivity to 5GC also enables tight interworking between NR and LTE under 5GC, as in
Option 7 and Option 4, in order to leverage NR radio resources to boost the UE data rate.

The E-UTRA connected to the 5GC is supported as part of NG-RAN as shown in Figure 19, where the term
"ng- eNB" refers to an LTE eNodeB connected to the 5GC, and the term "gNB" refers to an NR base station.
The difference between the architecture of NG-RAN shown in Figure 19 and that of EN-DC shown in Figure
18 is that NG-RAN nodes (e.g gNB and ng-eNB) have complete NG interfaces including control plane and
user plane connected to the 5GC, while EN-DC nodes (e.g. eNB and en-gNB) are connected to the EPC,
and en-gNB functioning as an SN may only have the user plane of S1 interface.

AMF/UPF AMF/UPF

5GC

NG
NG
NG

NG

NG
NG
NG
NG

Xn NG-RAN
gNB gNB
Xn

Xn

Xn
ng-eNB ng-eNB

Figure 19 Overall architecture of NG-RAN

3.5. Site Evolution

5G commercial deployment is a foreseeable future. To save investment and shorten the time to market
(TTM) of 5G, sites need to be ready in terms of antenna evolution capability, RF module simplification, and
spectrum evolution capability.

3.5.1. 1+1 Antenna

The introduction of the 5G massive MIMO makes the space on the tower even scarcer, especially the space
on poles. It is recommended that antennas of multiple RATs and bands be integrated to make room for future
5G deployment.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 22

Generally, one sector is recommended to be configured with two antennas. One is a 5G massive MIMO
antenna. The other is a Frequency Band below 3GHz (Sub3G) full-band passive antenna, supporting all
frequency bands below 3 GHz, including LTE FDD 4T4R and TDD 8T8R. For six-sector sites operating on
high bands, integrated antennas serving three sectors on low bands (700-900 MHz) and six sectors on high
bands (1.8-2.6 GHz) can be used to incorporate all Sub3G passive ports.

For sites where LTE massive MIMO has been deployed that occupy one pole, the massive MIMO A+P
module can be used to deploy C-Band NR massive MIMO and Sub3G passive antennas on another pole.

3.5.2. Wideband RF Module

Likewise, the increasing number of RF modules causes site space shortage and high lease costs. RF module
reduction can make room for 5G deployment and reduce the operational expenditure (OPEX) of multi-
network operation in the future.

Generally, a low-frequency wideband RF module can be used to simultaneously serve 2T4R cells on the
bands of 700, 800, and 900 MHz. This reduces the number of RF modules, feeders, and couplers on the
sites. The RF module used for L800 deployment and LTE deployment on the refarmed GSM 900 MHz band
can also be used for NR700M deployment in the future.

Figure 20 Overall architecture of NG-RAN

Similarly, a wideband RF module can be used to simultaneously serve 4T4R cells on the FDD bands of 1800
and 2100 MHz, or TDD bands of 2300 and 2600 MHz. This saves the number of boxes on the sites and
improves the investment efficiency of the IF 4T4R.

All in One Passive Antenna

2T4R / 4T4R / 8T8R
“1+1”
Antenna
Massive MIMO AAU
LTE / NR

Multi-band High band module

RRU
Low band module

BBU BBU
2G/3G/4G/5G Concurrency

Figure 21 Overall architecture of NG-RAN

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 23

3.5.3. Hardware Ready for NR
The C-Band and TDD 2.6 GHz will be among the first batch of frequency bands for 5G NR deployment.
However, in the early stage, some operators would consider deploying LTE on these bands to alleviate the
capacity pressure of LTE networks. When 5G NR traffic increases in the future, these spectrums can be
gradually refarmed to NR to offload NR traffic. In the long run, the FDD Sub3G band will also be gradually
adjusted to serve NR, providing better coverage and capacity for 5G. Therefore, the LTE hardware modules,
especially RF modules, should be capable of evolution to NR. This not only protects operators' investment,
but also mitigates the engineering difficulty in NR deployment caused by on-tower hardware replacement.

Moreover, dynamic spectrum sharing between LTE and NR on the same module is also important. The
spectrum resources allocated to LTE and NR can be dynamically adjusted based on their respective load.
This increases the spectrum efficiency and achieves the smooth evolution to NR.

Sharing Based on Resource Block

Time Sharing Ratio：90%

Frequency

NR & LTE Sharing NR RB LTE RB

Figure 22 Sharing based on resource blocks

3.6. Business
At present, digital transformation is accelerating in traditional industries. All industries use communications
technologies to carry out informatization and intelligent reform. To make the most of their networks and
obtain new growth opportunities from the industry market, global leading operators are seizing this historical
opportunity to transform from serving people-to-people communications to serving industry communications.
LTE evolution enables the network to carry all ranges of services, meeting the connection requirements in
Internet of Things (IoT), home broadband, vehicles, and other fields.

3.6.1. C-IoT

Since R13, vibrant, complementary Cellular IoT technologies of NB-IoT and LTE-M have been introduced to
LTE to enable low-complexity and low-cost IoT devices (known as Cat-NB and Cat-M). They are competent
for diverse IoT use cases and services, including the rapidly growing Low Power Wide Access (LPWA), which
requires extended coverage, massive connectivity, and low UE power consumption. NB-IoT is targeting for
a low data rate (about 100 kbps) while LTE-M has the capability for a medium data rate (Mbps level). Both

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 24

technologies have their own application scenarios. The minimum bandwidth for deployment is 180 kHz for
NB-IoT and 1.4 MHz for LTE-M.

Since its birth, C-IoT has received extensive attention from the industry. Currently, 67 NB-IoT networks have
been put into commercial use, 25 LTE-M networks have been deployed, and more than 1 million sites have
activated with NB-IoT or LTE-M.

Commection volume
Data rate Technologies
by 2020 (billion)

0.2B >10Mbps 3G/4G

2G/3G/Cat-1
0.8B ~1Mbps
eMTC

low data rate (~100kbps)

2B extended coverage(+20dB)
LPWA:Low Power Wide Area massive connections(1M) NB-IoT
low power consumption(10 years)
low cost(<$5 module)

Figure 23 IoT markets and technologies

As IoT devices usually have a long lifecycle (many years after installation), the evolution of NB-IoT/LTE-M
mainly focuses on two aspects without affecting the hardware:

• Enhancement of performance and functionality: e.g. positioning, multi-cast, further UE power saving,
further latency reduction, TDD etc.
• Support for coexistence with 5G new radio and connectivity to 5G new core
Both NB-IoT and LTE-M support positioning and efficient OTA firmware update via multi-cast in R14. In
R15, wake-up signal for paging is introduced to notify a UE whether there are paging messages in the
subsequent paging occasions. It saves power for UEs that camp on the cell but are rarely paged. Also, early
data transmission on the RACH enables UEs to complete data transmission in idle mode without setting up
RRC connections for small data packets. This helps reduce the signaling overhead, latency, and UE power
consumption.

Except for NB-IoT and LTE-M there is no new technology defined for 5G LPWA use cases. Moreover, NB-IoT
and LTE-M can well coexist with 5G new radio. They also support connectivity to the 5G new core in R16. As
part of 5G, they fulfill the mMTC requirements posed by low data rate services for low power consumption,
wide area coverage, and massive connectivity. The ecosystem of NB-IoT/LTE-M is ready. It is expected that
LTE cellular IoT will continue taking 5G IoT forward to the next stage.

3.6.2. WTTx
WTTx is an advanced wireless broadband access solution, which utilizes wireless technologies to tackle
the last-mile problem. Such scenarios can benefit from a large-capacity wireless connection from a network
node (e.g. LTE eNodeB) to a stationary intermediate device (which further communicates with end users
via other links). The distinctive characteristics of such large-capacity wireless stationary links include much

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 25

better channel conditions (e.g., more LoS and/or higher SNR), and no/low mobility. Note that the UEs in such
scenarios are typically new types of devices (e.g. Customer-premises equipment) with less limitation on the
cost, power, size, and processing capabilities. So it is feasible to introduce more advanced features to serve
such large-capacity stationary wireless links and to enable more emerging applications.

WTTx has been considered as an essential way to improve national ICT index. Many countries such as
France, Indonesia, and Sir Lanka have identified WTTx as an important technology for national broadband
development. WTTx has been deployed by operators in some developed countries, such as Germany
Vodafone, Japanese SoftBank, as well as by operators in many developing countries, such as South Africa
Telkom, Sir Lanka Dialog, Philippine Globe, Peru Entel and so on. By the end of 2018, around 75 million
households in total have been connected by WTTx.

To further improve the spectral efficiency, 1024QAM can be configured on the PDSCH for DL-1024QAM-
capable UEs. New TBS and new MCS table corresponding to 1024QAM have been specified. The peak data
rate can increase by about 20%. The DMRS overhead for TM9/10 can be reduced by using OCC4 for DL
SU-MIMO rank 3 or 4. The DMRS overhead is reduced by 50% and the spectral efficiency is improved. In
addition, new technologies such as 8x8 MIMO and uplink 256QAM are being deployed in networks.

WTTH WTTC
Wireless To The Home Wireless To The Camera

WTTX

WTTE
Wireless To The Enterprise

Figure 24 Scenarios of WTTx

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 26

3.6.3. LTE-V2X
The widely deployed LTE infrastructure network brings significant benefits to the deployment of Intelligent
Transportation System (ITS) with various vehicles (e.g. automobiles, trains, drones, etc), which generally
require ubiquitous coverage due to their movement nature. It is predicted that a rapid and vast growth in the
ITS industry will bring new promising business opportunities for mobile network operators. In order to better
support the ITS, specific enhancements on connected cars were developed by 3GPP.

The initial version of LTE-V2X standards was completed as part of R14, with the goal to support basic
safety services (e.g. collision avoidance, traffic lights to vehicles, speed guidance, etc). LTE-V2X technology
consists of the PC5 interface (direct link between vehicles, to support V2V/P/I) and Uu interface (via
network, to support V2N/I). For V2X communications over the PC5 interface, additional DMRS symbols
were added to handle high Doppler associated with speeds of up to 500 km/h and at high frequency (i.e. 5.9
GHz ITS spectrum). LTE-V2X enhanced the radio resource allocation mechanism to improve the system-
level performance with a high vehicle density while meeting the stringent latency requirements of V2X. V2X
communications over Uu interface can benefit from the highly reliable and low-latency Uu interface supported
by LTE. If one V2X message needs to be delivered to multiple vehicles, the network can broadcast the V2X
message by means of single-cell point-to-multipoint (SC-PTM) or eMBMS.

In R15, LTE-V2X continued the evolution with the goal to support more advanced V2X services (such as
platooning, advanced driving, etc). R15 LTE-eV2X enhanced the performance of the PC5 interface with
higher reliability (by means of transmit diversity), lower latency (by means of resource selection window
reduction) and higher data rate (by means of carrier aggregation and 64QAM), while maintaining the
backward compatibility with R14 LTE-V2X. It should be noted that NR-V2X to be specified in future releases
will complement LTE-V2X for advanced V2X services and support the coexistence and interworking with
LTE-V2X.

The LTE-V2X industry becomes mature. 5.9 GHz becomes the direct link spectrum of China, Europe, the
United States, and other countries. Japan also begins to consider 5.9 GHz. In 2018, Huawei released an
LTE-V2X E2E solution, including Road Side Unit (RSU), T-Box, cloud platform, and network. In Wuxi China,
the world's largest LTE-V2X trial project has been deployed, spanning 240 intersections, covering most of the
areas of the city (around 170 km²), and serving over 10,000 vehicles with C-V2X devices.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 27

4. LTE Evolution Ecosystem
The industry ecosystem related to LTE evolution is booming. This indicates that even if the 5G era has come,
the industry is still optimistic about the performance improvement and profit growth brought by LTE evolution.
In the dimensions of zero fallback and zero wait, terminals are gradually becoming mature. In the evolution
dimension, as related protocols have been frozen and 5G terminals are coming to the market, chip and
terminal vendors are expected to release the roadmap for supporting the evolution features soon.

4.1.1. Low Cost Terminals

The smooth phase out of 2G and 3G depends on low cost LTE terminals, especially cheap VoLTE-capable
phones. There are a large number of low-value subscribers on the 2G and 3G networks, especially in the
emerging markets. These subscribers require only voice services or a small amount of data. The launch of
low cost LTE terminals will help accelerate the migration of these subscribers to the 4G network.

Global 4G Feature Phone Shipments & ASP( US$)

SRC:Counterpoint
$60

100.0 $40

$20

0.0 $0
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Figure 25 Global 4G feature phone shipments

According to the Counterpoint report, the average price of 4G feature phones in 2017 has been reduced
to 50 USD, and is expected to decrease to 25 USD by 2021. In fact, the Indian market has already seen a
VoLTE mobile phone worth of only 18.7 USD (1330 Rs).

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 28

 Figure 26 Affordable 4G feature phone in India market

IoT terminals have a long life cycle. As 2G networks will be shut down in the future, it is recommended
that new IoT connections be provided on 4G NB-IoT networks. Now is the time for large-scale NB-IoT
deployment. There are 14 chip vendors and more than 100 module vendors. Thanks to the large-scale
procurement in the China market, the price of NB-IoT modules has dropped to 3.3 USD, the same price as
that of GSM modules.

4.1.2. 4Rx Phone

Since 2016, the world has witnessed the accelerated deployment of 4T4R networks. Mainstream operators
use 4T4R as the basic LTE configuration. In a 4T4R network, mobile phones supporting four antennas can
greatly improve the experienced data rate. 4Rx has become one of the main considerations when consumers
purchase mobile phones. Mainstream terminal chip vendors worldwide have released chips that support
4x4 MIMO. Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Sony, and LG have launched high-end smartphones supporting 4Rx.
In recent years, Qualcomm's mid-range smartphone chips also started to support 4Rx. Different Chinese
brands of mid-range 4Rx smart phones less than 3000 RMB have hit the market. 4Rx smartphones are
quickly becoming affordable to the public. GSA statistics showed that more than 30 mobile phone models are
capable of 4x4 MIMO 4Rx.

4.1.3. TM9
From standard point of view, TM9 is already defined as a mandatory feature that Cat-11 and above UEs need
to support from Rel-15.

After several years of development, the TM9 industry has matured. Mainstream chip vendors, such as
Qualcomm, HiSilicon, and MediaTek, have released TM9-capable smartphone chips. Currently, there are
more than 20 models of smartphones equipped with TM9-capable chips. Subscribers can activate TM9 for

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 29

their TM9-capable terminals by simply updating to the latest software released by terminal vendors. Since
2018, mainstream terminal vendors have activated TM9 by default. Currently, 15 new models from five
mainstream terminal vendors have activated TM9 by default.

On the network side, operators have proactively carried out pilot TM9 commercial use, promoting the maturity
of the TM9 terminal industry. Currently, 36 TM9 commercial networks have been deployed in 20 countries
and regions, such as mainland China, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, Turkey, Kuwait, France,
Russia, Canada, and South Africa. In North America, a number of operators are fully prepared and have
specified the TM9 capability as a mandatory requirement for the procurement of terminals. This has helped
to lay a foundation for massive MIMO deployment and LTE long-term evolution in the future ecosystem.

4.1.4. 8CC CA
8CC CA was introduced in 3GPP specifications R13. In R15, 8CC supports a peak throughput of over 3
Gbps. Currently, mainstream chip vendors have developed their 8CC CA chip roadmaps. The Exynos 9820
chip released by Samsung in November 2018 supports 8CC CA, providing a peak throughput of 2 Gbps. This
chip will be used in Samsung Galaxy S10.

4.1.5. EVS
Enhanced voice services (EVS) is a new full-HD VoLTE codec. It was released by 3GPP in 2014. The EVS
codec rate is 128 kbps (the common AMR-WB VoLTE codec rate is only 23.85 kbps). The voice definition
is the same as that of a full-HD film. EVS has higher anti-jitter and anti-packet-loss capabilities. It ensures
good voice quality in the case of cell edge and high-speed movement. In addition, under the same quality
condition, the capacity of a network using EVS is twice or is even higher than that using a common voice
codec.

According to GSA statistics, around 20 operators have enabled the EVS function on their LTE networks.
Around 153 terminals have supported EVS, including mainstream terminal vendors such as Apple, Huawei,
and Samsung.

4.1.6. sTTI
The short TTI technology was introduced in 3GPP R15, which was frozen in 2018 Q2. In November 2018,
Huawei tested short TTI based on their commercial version at the global MBBF. The RTT over the air
interface was as low as 2 ms. According to the roadmaps of mainstream chip vendors in the industry, terminal
chips that support short TTI will be launched in 2020 Q3.

4.1.7. DC-Capable 5G Terminals

In option 3, 4, or 7 networks, UEs supporting dual connectivity (DC) can transmit data on both LTE and NR
networks in the areas where the coverage overlaps. This enables a higher transmission rate and a shorter
LTE-to-NR handover latency.

4.1.8. LTE UE to Access NG Core

After LTE terminals access the NG core, 5G slicing and flow-based QoS functions can be used on the LTE
network to achieve service experience similar to that on 5G networks. If an LTE UE needs to access the NG
core, it must support dual NAS protocol stacks of NG core and EPC.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 30

4.1.9. 5G Terminal to Support LTE Evolution Features
The 5G terminal hardware has the capability of supporting LTE evolution features such as 4Rx, TM9, short
TTI, and access to the NG core. If these features are activated in LTE mode, the LTE network capabilities
can be maximized when 5G terminals leave the NR coverage area and fall back to the LTE network. In this
way, the user experience gap between 5G and LTE can be reduced. The 5G AR, VR, CloudX, and other
applications are easier to be used on the LTE network.

The popularization of a new technology requires the close collaboration among the terminals, networks, and
chips. Only in this way, the value of the new technology can be maximized and a better user experience can
be ensured. We call for open collaboration between industry terminal, chip, and network vendors to promote
the E2E planning and activation of LTE evolution technologies and lay a foundation for the prosperity of the
LTE evolution industry ecosystem.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 31

5. Summary

In the upcoming decade, LTE networks will still be the major cash cow for operators. Traffic growth and full-
service innovation will further push the enhancement of LTE network capabilities. LTE will become the main
bearer of operators' mobile services.

With the advent of 5G, LTE enters a stage of connecting the old and new. The LTE in this new stage features
zero fallback, zero wait, and evolution. The network capabilities will be reinforced to enable zero fallback and
zero wait. LTE will gradually incorporate 2G and 3G, and become an all-business fundamental network. On
the other hand, LTE will continue to evolve and develop to complement and co-exist with NR for a long period
of time.

The standards, solutions, and ecosystems related to LTE evolution are ready. The LTE industry will embrace
a golden decade.

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 32

References

[1] “Evolution from LTE to 5G: Global Market Status”, GSA, January 2019

[2] "GSMA Intelligence Database" at: https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/

[3] "The State of Broadband 2017", ITU&UNESCO Broadband Commision, September 2017

[4] "Find out how you stack up to new industry benchmarks for mobile page speed", Google, February 2018

[5] "Surprise! Feature Phones to Drive the Next Wave of LTE Growth", Counterpoint, March 2017

LTE Evolution to Build All Business Foundation 33

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