The 1000x Data Challenge
Mobile data traffic is exploding. Globally, the traffic has been doubling each year during the last few years. However, now the industry is preparing for an astounding 1000x increase. Qualcomm is leading the charge through its compelling technologies and path breaking innovations in preparing the industry to meet this “1000x challenge.”
The solution to this formidable challenge is obviously a combination of increasing the efficiency of existing assets, employing more resources such as spectrum and small cells, as well as adopting radically different ways of acquiring, deploying, operating and managing these resources.
More spectrum – Licensed, Unlicensed and ASA
More spectrum – Licensed, Unlicensed and ASA
Availability of more spectrum is a key to support mobile broadband growth. Wireless industry is hard at work to identify and allocate more spectrum and newer bands, in both licensed (for 3G and 4G) and unlicensed (dedicated to Wi-Fi) regimes. For 3G/4G, in addition to lower spectrum bands the focus is also on higher bands, such as 2.3 GHz and 3.6 GHz. Higher bands are suited for small cell deployments because of their smaller coverage, allowing extreme densification.
Additionally, Qualcomm, along with its partners is proposing an innovative and complementary way to avail underutilized licensed spectrum, called Authorized Shared Access (ASA). ASA provides a regulatory frame work for operators to collaborate with incumbent spectrum rights of use holders, such as defense and government, to get exclusive access to latter’s spectrum on a shared basis. The sharing can be in terms of geography, frequency, or time.
ASA targets globally harmonized spectrum, in higher bands, supported by devices available in the market today or expected in the near future. ASA is well suited for small cells as they can be deployed very close to the incumbents without interfering.
More small cells – taking Hetnets to a new level
More small cells – taking Hetnets to a new level
Hetnets are already a commercial reality. Improvements such as “range expansion” are possible today with HSPA+ as well as a major advantage of future LTE Advanced networks. But, to meet the 1000x challenge, Hetnets have to be evolved in all directions—extreme densification of small-cells deployed both by operators and users, adding new kinds of cells such as relays that use part of their capacity for backhaul, leveraging higher spectrum bands such as 3.6 GHz that are more suitable for small cells, and many more. Thanks to interference management techniques, the overall capacity improvement scales with the increasing penetration of small cells.
Qualcomm has already demonstrated the benefits HSPA+ and LTE Advanced “range expansion” at major global events, and plans to show further Hetnets enhancements in the future.
More Indoor – Evolve from Outside to Inside
More Indoor – Evolve from Outside to Inside
The challenge of the magnitude of 1000x needs new level of thinking and a new approach—provide much more capacity from indoor small cells, in addition to macros and outdoor hotspots. The huge increase in indoor data usage combined with the relatively small size and cost of small cells is fueling the move towards complementing traditional macro network with low-cost indoor small cells.
The new Neighborhood Small cells (NSC) deployment model take this to the extreme, making it possible to provide substantial indoor capacity as well as outdoor coverage with a small penetration of user deployed open femtocells. Our studies show 1000x increase in capacity with 10x more spectrum and ~20% household penetration. An attractive way to achieve this is to employ spectrum in higher bands such as 3.6 GHz.
Qualcomm has already demonstrated the proof of concept of NSC at MWC2012, utilizing our state-of-art over-the-air test network in San Diego, and plans to show further enhancements in the future.
More efficient networks, applications, services and devices
More efficient networks, applications, services and devices
Today’s mobile networks and devices being innately complex, it is ever important to make sure they are not only operating at their peak performance point, but also work intelligently with the other constituent to offer the best possible overall network performance and an outstanding user experience.Evolving 3G/4G/Wi-Fi networks, enabling intelligent Hetnets, making devices select the bestmode of access among myriad of options possible—3G/4G, Wi-Fi, small/macrocells etc., are some of such enhancements that dramatically increase overall efficiency and user experience.
Enhancements such as LTE Broadcast, and direct device-to-device technologies such as LTE Direct can bring substantial gains for specific application and services.
All the building blocks mentioned here have their own merits. Operators, based on their existing assets, business models, competitive positioning and market dynamics can employ a mix of these to achieve the 1000x increase. Some of these enhancements are being deployed today while the others have a robust development and commercial roadmap.
Qualcomm, being a market leader, is at the forefront of developing and bringing solutions to the market and enable the Industry to meet and beat the 1000x challenge. Through our technologies and products we are enabling small cells everywhere, bringing in new deployment models, introducing innovations to make more spectrum available, and continuously increasing the efficiency of wireless networks, end-to-end.
Media and Resources
Getting “Opportunistic” with Small Cells
Love Thy “Neighborhood” Small Cells
Neighborhood Small Cells
An innovative deployment model to enable extremely low-cost, plug-and-play, open, unplanned small cells networks.
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Feb 21, 2013
2:50
The 1000x challenge; Small Cells everywhere!
The 1000x challenge; Small Cells everywhere!
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Oct 26, 2012
59:51
The 1000x Sequel - The Solutions
Qualcomm's compelling technologies and innovations for the formidable "1000x" mobile data challenge.
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Sep 26, 2012
2:08
The 1000x challenge; More Spectrum - How, how much and from where?
Qualcomm's compelling technologies and innovations for the formidable "1000x" mobile data challenge.
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Sep 24, 2012
1:00:36
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