We support operators with the most efficient use of spectrum for LTE: Hardeep Saini, Qualcomm India

By Nandita Singh

Hardeep Saini, Director of Engineering at Qualcomm India plays a key role in shaping technology strategy and driving adoption of Qualcomm’s advance technologies in the region. He leads the network engineering engagements with Indian telecom operators with a goal to commercialize LTE, LTE Adv. VoLTE and other upcoming technologies. In an interview with Voice&Data, Saini shares the latest advances Qualcomm is focusing on and how the company is furthering LTE ecosystem in India market.

Voice&Data: How do you think 4G deployments are coming up in India?

Hardeep Saini: We believe the ecosystem of LTE is very strong, owing to affordable smartphones, newer mobile applications, content and expanding network coverage. 4G is growing at a fast pace in India... Operators already own two 20 MHz pan –India slots for LTE TDD in 2300 MHz and one or two slots 5 MHz slots in 1800 MHz for LTE. 850 MHz spectrum is also being redeployed for LTE.

With the recently concluded spectrum auction the number of spectrum slots available for LTE deployment obviously increases. Operators will typically deploy low and mid-band for coverage and high band for capacity.

Voice&Data: What kind of carrier aggregation is there in the India market and how it helps?

Hardeep Saini: If you consider the current spectrum holdings, factoring in the recently concluded spectrum auctions, India has one of the most diverse spectrum holdings in terms of spectrum band. It is critical for operators to aggregate the spectrum across various bands to provide much higher throughput, enhance spectrum utilization and increase overall system capacity.

There are two versions of the technology release we have. LTE release 10 enables aggregation between FDD/FDD spectrum and LTE release12 enables FDD/TDD aggregation. With the new spectrum, we expect operators to work with device OEMs to support new bands and address carrier aggregation opportunities with new bands. Qualcomm also supports Higher Order Modulation (HOM) 256 QAM to provide higher peak throughput. In the uplink, carrier aggregation and 64 QAM could be deployed to improve the upload performance.

LTE  technology is almost band-agnostic. We have technology leadership in 4G. Going forward, the 5G in most cases will use 4G as an anchor technology and evolve. We have a lot of ongoing research in that respect and will maintain leadership in 5G as well.

Global pre-deployments of 5G will be seen by 2018/19. There are a number of dependencies there, mainly available spectrum bands, willingness of operators and the ecosystem in general…We are working with all stakeholders in the ecosystem.

Voice&Data: Can you elaborate in more detail on the latest developments related to telecom technologies at Qualcomm?

Hardeep Saini: Qualcomm Technologies is responsible for the continued momentum around telecom technologies. The company has propagated a number of developments related to the technologies:

Carrier Aggregation: Qualcomm Technologies has helped make carrier aggregation mainstream with global proliferation, which benefits the entire mobile ecosystem, operators, app developers, and OEMs. It helps in delivering higher data rates, improved capacity, and the ability to use spectrum fragments, as well as helps aggregate wider bandwidths (up to 640 MHz) for Gbps+ data rates by evolving carrier aggregation across more carriers, diverse spectrum types and different cells.

Aggregate licensed and unlicensed: Qualcomm is committed to both LTE-based and Wi-Fi based solutions and is in a unique position to support all options to utilize unlicensed and shared spectrum for enhanced local broadband services with gigabit class speeds: LTE-U/LAA, LWA, Wi-Fi, and MulteFire — pioneering shared and unlicensed spectrum technologies today for a unified more capable 5G platform. Utilizing unlicensed and shared spectrum efficiently is essential to meet the ever-increasing demand for wireless data. For mobile operators, the best solution is to aggregate unlicensed spectrum with LTE in licensed spectrum, either by expanding the benefits of LTE to unlicensed spectrum (LTE-U/LAA) or by aggregating LTE and Wi-Fi (LWA). Extensive testing has verified that LTE in unlicensed spectrum fairly co-exists with Wi-Fi.

Small Cells: Qualcomm Technologies is working with small cell partners to meet the burgeoning data demand with a suite of Femto Cells (FSM) small cells solutions and by equipping our customers with cutting edge technologies such as LTE-U/LAA and UltraSON. Qualcomm Technologies’ suite of FSM small cell solutions is enabling deployment of small cells both indoors and outdoors, in neighborhoods, small and large businesses and metro environments.

IoT & NB IoT: IoT - We are continuing to expand the capabilities of LTE to accelerate progress in IoT, including driving the new narrowband technologies (eMTC, NB-IoT already standardized in 3GPP) towards commercialization. The key objective of LTE IoT will deliver lower complexity, longer battery life, and deeper coverage for wide-area IoT applications.

Gigabit Class Modem: In 2016, Qualcomm Technologies announced the Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem. To make a Gigabit class LTE modem a reality, Qualcomm Technologies added a suite of enhancements built on a foundation of commercially-proven Carrier Aggregation technology. The Snapdragon X16 LTE modem employs sophisticated digital signal processing to pack more bits per transmission with 256-QAM, as well as receives data on four antennas through 4x4 MIMO, and supports for up to 4x Carrier Aggregation. All of this comes together to achieve unprecedented download speeds.

5G: Qualcomm is leading the technology innovations to make 5G a reality. We are pioneering 5G technologies today with our leadership in LTE. We have been working on new 5G designs for many years, building upon our long-standing expertise in delivering OFDM technology and chips.

Voice&Data: What does LTE stand for and what all it has to offer in terms of, Data (upstream, downstream, carrier aggregation), Voice (VoLTE, VoWiFi), Video (LTE Broadcast)?

Hardeep Saini: LTE (Long Term Evolution) is one of the fastest growing wireless technologies of all time; and its successor LTE Advanced, is now being widely deployed with Carrier Aggregation as the defining feature.

LTE brings the following developments:

• Data (upstream, downstream, carrier aggregation)
• Better spectral efficiency as compared to 2G/3G technologies
• Flexible bandwidth requirement from narrow band to wideband carriers (1.4 MHz, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20)
• Capable of deploying it in disparate spectrum bands
• Deploy in paired and unpaired spectrum (FDD and TDD respectively)
• Better User experience (throughput and latency)
• Carrier Aggregation: Achieves wider downlink bandwidth (up to 100 MHz) by combining up to 5x 20 MHz carriers.

Voice (VoLTE, VoWiFi)

• VoLTE is the evolution of voice towards the packet-based voice services. It provides HD quality voice and much shorter call setup time.
• For operators with mature 2G and 3G network, single radio voice call continuity (SRVCC) provides seamless voice service beyond VoLTE coverage.
• Voice evolution includes commercialization of next generation vocoder that can support Ultra HD voice with EVS codec.
• VoWiFi is typically deployed by operators to either extend the coverage of packetized voice in deep indoor scenarios (where VoLTE coverage may not be available) or as offloading mechanism to offload their macro network subscribers on to WiFi network. VoWi Fi enables operator to provide the consistent voice user experience to end user.

Video (LTE Broadcast)

• LTE Broadcast enables operators to deliver same content to multiple users simultaneously and more efficiently as compared to unicast. The system is designed as part on the LTE standards and can be enabled on the current LTE networks and devices
• Numbers of leading operators around the world are working with the ecosystem to increase the adoption of the technology.
• Broadcast is more efficient in serving 2 to 3 simultaneous users per cell (as compared to unicast) accessing the same content.

Voice&Data: Are there any issues with LTE-U framework? Please elaborate.

Hardeep Saini: LTE-U/LAA is a solution to utilize unlicensed spectrum efficiently to address ever-increasing demand of wireless data. The aggregation of licensed and unlicensed solution provides better throughput to end-user by creating a much broader pipe. QoS (Quality of Service) is provided by the anchor-licensed spectrum and additional throughput is provided by unlicensed carrier. It also enables better management of the single unified LTE network. Any operator with only 20 MHz of licensed spectrum commercializes gigabit class LTE with aggregating LTE in unlicensed band. There were some concerns raised initially on LTE coexisting with WiFi but LTE-U/LAA has been extensively tested to validate for coexistence. Technology has received strong support from large global operators such as Verizon, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile US. Apart from that, several small cells providers have announced products on Qualcomm FSM platform and LAA is also being supported on X16 LTE modem.

Voice&Data: What do you think a telecom service provider needs to do, to ensure it remains on course to transforming into a digital service provider? How can Qualcomm enable the telcos in this respect?

Hardeep Saini: We have a strong connect with operators and work closely with all the operators in the country. We track developments from the regulatory perspective and align with these developments. We partner with device manufacturers and the application ecosystem as well to get inputs on market requirements and build new use cases.

Qualcomm plays a key role in driving India’s wireless revolution by making mobile communications widely accessible and affordable. Deployment of LTE across bands will expand the footprint of broadband services. Other aspects of the ecosystem including the devices and apps will continue to expand at rapid pace owing to the support.

Voice&Data: Going ahead, what is the company focus for India market in the near term?

Hardeep Saini: We aim at achieving the following objectives in the coming year:

• Support operators in making the best and most efficient use of available spectrum by bringing advanced technologies such as CA, Giga Bit LTE, LAA/LWA, etc
• Improve user experience by working with operators and network infrastructure vendors in commercializing modem features.
• Support large scale deployment of small cells to add capacity and improve the performance.
• Commercialize VoLTE and VoLTE with SRVCC for voice continuityfor operators with existing 2G/3G networks.
• Trials and commercialization of IoT based solutions