China Mobile & SK Telecom Joint TD-LTE Trial Drives Commercialization of TD-LTE Forward

HONG KONG, Jan. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ — China Mobile (CMCC) and SK Telecom (SKT) had successfully completed the joint TD-LTE (LTE TDD) field trial in August, 2010. TD-LTE is expected to initiate the mobile broadband era and deliver competitive services to customers. The objective of the trial is to verify the functionality and performance of TD-LTE with pre-commercial equipments in real over-the-air network. The test results have demonstrated that TD-LTE performance meets the industry target, just like its gemel technology — LTE FDD.

The first and second phases of CMCC-SKT joint trial were focused on lab and small scale field test and had been completed successfully in January and May 2009 respectively. The third phase, i.e., the field trial, started from July 2010 in Seongnam, a small city near Seoul, South Korea. Over 50 test cases were defined to verify what performance can be achieved and what user experience TD-LTE will bring to customers in real scenarios.

The testing results showed that the expected TD-LTE performance is satisfying and the industry requirements can be met. Detailed results are summarized as follows:

  • Average cell throughput (10MHz system bandwidth): Downlink average cell throughput is 14.6Mbps (spectral efficiency: 2.69bps/Hz), while uplink average cell throughput is 6.2Mbps (spectral efficiency: 1.55bps/Hz), both meeting NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) requirements.
  • Latency: Measured end-to-end latency with both pre-scheduled and non-scheduled cases can meet 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and NGMN targets. Low latency is important to the real time services such as online gaming.
  • Handover: Inter-eNB and intra-eNB handovers are demonstrated in the field, the success rate is 100% and data interruption time is around 30ms, meeting 3GPP and NGMN requirements.
  • State transition: Average Idle-to-Active transition time is around 76ms and paging latency is 74ms. The low C-plane latency brings “always online” experience.
  • Basic QoS: TD-LTE supporting GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) and Non-GBR services is verified and dynamically change of service priority is proved.

China Mobile and SKT are the largest wireless operators in China and South Korea respectively. The two companies have been working closely to contribute to technology development toward maturity of LTE and speed up commercialization of LTE networks since 2008.