PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
Altobridge’s 3G lite-site (DATE) solution offers bandwidth hungry 3G services to remote communities. The current 2.5G altoPod provides 2TRX capacity which is capable of voice and GPRS/EDGE. The 3G lite-site is a natural evolution of the solution into 3G technology.
Along with provision of the 3G services to remote communities the solution also concentrates on providing best in class backhaul optimisation and on-site power consumption.
For the 2.5G solution, there is a concentration on optimisation of voice. The improvements in HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA and HSPA+ has allowed for large data volumes be supported on the radio interface.
For data hungry services the bandwidth figures increase by an order of magnitude compared to the voice payload of 2.5G services. Rather than working in the region of tens of Kbps, for 3G services you are in the region of hundreds of Kbps and even Mbps.
For 3G service the optimisation focus needs to change from voice to data. To this end the high level objectives of the 3G lite-site (DATE) solution are as follows
- Provide 3G Voice and data services,
- Reduce the backhaul bandwidth capacity by optimising the data between the 3G lite-site and the Core Network,
- For the remote solution a range of 2km is required,
- Low power solution.
Challenges
3rd Party Relationship for Femto Based Radio solution requires close planning and inter-action between Altobridge and 3PP.
Data optimization technologies are cutting edge and will require extensive testing and optimization in order to achieve the required backhaul savings.
Billing/LI requirements from Telecoms Operators are quite stringent and result in extensive development and testing requirements on the overall solution.
Customer Access for IOT/Trial is required. This requires close and ongoing discussions with existing customers to facilitate access to Trial sites.
Plan
This project is quite complex and will span 3 distinct phases:
Phase I
This Phase will include basic 3G services and Central/Remote Data Manager integration in order to provide trial solution for evaluation and measurement of the bandwidth usage, backhaul savings and end user experience. Phase 1 development includes basic platform work, cellular protocol support, data optimization features and Operations & Maintenance (O&M). Associated with these development tasks are related specification, documentation and testing activities.
Phase II
This Phase will improve on the Phase I features and also implement Platform features to provide scale and dimensioning for the 3G lite-site™ and providing the external enclosure hardware that will be used in production. Phase II development includes SPP update, Cloud Architecture development, Voice Optimization, 3G-2G Data Hand-over.
Phase III
The final phase will include improvements based on the previous trials in order to maximize the performance and backhaul savings. Phase III development will include 2G-3G CS Handover, Improved PM/FM handling, New Data Optimization Features.
During the course of the project execution and based on customer feedback, there were some controlled changes to the content of the DATE project. These changes have now been formally agreed within Altobridge and with ESA and the project has been successfully rebaselined as a result.
Current Status
Completed. The project deliverables have been completed. An extensive IOT has taken place with a Tier 1 Mobile Network Operator. Following on from this success a trial across a number of live sites has also been successfully concluded.