Xiaomi Continues As China's Number One Manufacturer Company

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the three months to July 2014, shows Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi has continued its reign over the Chinese market, holding on to the top spot with ease for the fourth consecutive month. It boasts an astounding 31.6% share of the urban Chinese market, followed by Samsung and Huawei.

Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, comments: "We have seen huge shifts in power in the Chinese smartphone market over the past year. Xiaomi has been the standout performer and Huawei has also seen excellent growth, while Coolpad has increased its share more modestly from 5.2% to 6.1% over the year. Considering the success of rapidly growing local brands in the Chinese market, it will be only a question of time before they seek further expansion internationally in a similar way to Huawei, and more recently Xiaomi". The same success however is not shared by all local brands such as ZTE, Lenovo and Oppo who have seen their shares come under real pressure recently.

Android has been instrumental to the success of Chinese brands, and also for smaller local European brands such as Wiko, which have helped grow Android's market leading share in Europe to 75.1%. Apple still retains second place with a 14.5% share of the market, while Windows takes third, accounting for 8.5%.

Telstra Testing LTE Using the 700Mhz Bands

Australia's Telstra saying that it has secured early access to the 700 MHz spectrum for commercial trials starting in mid September. Services will start in selected pockets of Sydney and Adelaide CBDs.

4G services on 700MHz spectrum will be rolled out in more cities and regional centres as spectrum becomes available in January 2015.

This extends the number of commercial trial cities to eight, with commercial services already being tested in Perth, Fremantle, Esperance, Mildura, Mt Isa and Griffith.

Group Managing Director Networks, Mike Wright, said the expansion of commercial trials on 700MHz is an important step in the development of this new 4G technology and will ensure telstra can provide full commercial services to its customers as soon as possible.

"In addition to faster download speeds, the use of low band spectrum like 700 MHz allows for the signal to travel further and reach deeper into buildings, improving the depth of coverage for our customers.

"Telstra also has double the holdings of 700 MHz spectrum than the other carriers, and, this combined with our existing 4G services, doubles the 4G capacity of our network in these areas, and means we can support more customers, using more devices, doing more things at the same time. This is particularly important given the continued explosion of mobile data."

The benefits of the new 4G service will be available immediately to customers using 700 MHz-ready devices A range of additional smartphones and other connected devices compatible with 700MHz 4G is expected in the coming month.

On-Demand PDCHs

General on-demand PDCH allocation as a new PSET (not for individual MS support), can be performed only in the BCCH frequency band if the parameter MBCRAC is set to 0 (default value). To allow general on demand allocation of PDCHs in other bands in a cell MBCRAC must be set to 1 or 2.

Extension of an already existing on-demand PSET is however generally allowed regardless of the MBCRAC setting.

The maximum number of on-demand PDCHs per channel group can be limited by the parameter ODPDCHLIMIT.

At allocation of on-demand PDCHs, the requested number of channels (or as many as available and allowed) are selected within the allowed frequency band(s) and subcell(s) according to the following algorithm:

1 In the case of adding PDCHs to a PSET, then select the TCHGRP where the other PDCHs in the PSET are located. Then proceed to step 10.

2 Among all TCHGRPs, select the TCHGRPs that have the best idle rank value for E-TCH.

3 Among these TCHGRPs, select the TCHGRPs that have the best idle rank value for G-TCH.

4 Among these TCHGRPs, select the TCHGRPs that have the best idle rank value for B-TCH.

5 Among these select the TCHGRP(s) that fulfils the operator chosen strategy regarding non hopping TCH on the BCCH frequency, according to parameter CSPSALLOC.

6 If the function Idle Channel Measurements is active, select among these TCHGRPs the TCHGRPs with the lowest interference level. (This refers to the channel with the highest interference level within the TCHGRP.)

7 If frequency hopping is used, select among these TCHGRPs the TCHGRPs hopping over as many frequencies as possible.

8 Among these TCHGRPs select ones in the non BCCH frequency band first, and the BCCH band as second choice if the prerequisites mentioned above will admit this.

9 If Packet Data in Overlaid subcell is used, select among these TCHGRPs the TCHGRPs in the preferred subcell according to the parameter SCALLOC.

10 Among these TCHGRPs, select the first found TCHGRP and allocate as many PDCHs as requested (or as many as possible and allowed according to the parameter ODPDCHLIMIT, if less).

Handover Power Boost

With Handover power boost (HOPB), the handover command is sent by the BSC/BTS to the MS on maximum configurative power. Handover command includes information about which uplink power the MS shall use in serving cell. The MS then acknowledges the handover command using maximum configurative power. In case of a HO failure, the HO failure message is also sent on maximum configurative power. When handover power boost is triggered, normal regulation is inhibited until the MS has received the handover command. The BTS ignores all BTS or MS power orders sent by the BSC in the serving cell until the MS has acknowledged the handover command.

The speech/channel coding and interleaving in GSM is very robust. A small number of bursts/frames can be lost without speech degradation (the number depends on the error distribution). Power Control should therefore also be used for connections close to the cell border. Since the signaling for the handover procedure (for example Handover Command) is more critical and error-sensitive, it should be sent on maximum power in order to maximise the handover performance.

HOPB is useful when the SS quickly drops, for example when the MS moves around a street corner. In this case, due to the system delay and the limited up-regulation speed, the signaling would be sent on a too low power without HOPB. Thus in order to maximise the probability of a successful handover, Handover Power Boost should be used.

Since the maximum configurative power is only used for a short time before the handover, activating HOPB has a minor impact on the overall interference level in the network.

Note that HOPB only improves the HO performance if power control is activated.

Handover power boost is activated by setting the state variable HPBSTATE.

Multi Band Cell in GSM

Multi Band Cell makes it possible to mix transceivers from different frequency bands in one cell.BCCH only have to be reserved in one of the frequency bands.For the radio network this will enable both increased capacity and savings in operation and maintenance cost.
Capacity increase

GSM900 4/4/4 Erlang @GoS2% 57.8GSM1800 2/2/2 Erlang @GoS2% 24.6Total Capacity: 6/6/6 Erlang @GoS2% 104.1


BenefitsIncreased radio network capacity (Trunking efficiency).Improved radio network quality, because fewer neighbors-cells means that terminals will find the best handover candidate more often.Reduced cost for radio network handling, as there will be significantly fewer cells.

Higher spectrum utilisation
   –Freeing BCCH frequencies   –By pushing traffic to OL subcell

Reduced number of physical cells   –Transparent frequency band   –Less network complexityFewer neighbor relations & Another TS for TCH

Dynamic Overlaid/Underlaid Subcell 

EnhancementDynamic Overlaid/Underlaid Subcell is enhanced so that subcell load distribution is possible to initiate also in the overlaid subcell.

Benefit>Less Radio Network congestion>Greater flexibility in handling Multi Band Cell and Half Rate in the network




Multi Band Cell

EnhancementMulti Band Cell is enhanced to improve the handover performance in multiband cells. Thelocating accuracy for connections using the non-BCCH frequency is enhanced. BenefitImproved Radio Network performance (handover)Easier parameter handling


Antenna Configuration

LTE DL Operation Highlights: Similarities to HSPA

• Shared Channel Operation

• CDS (Channel Dependent Scheduling)
–Requires Channel Quality Information (CQI) sent on the UL
–Requires Pre-coding and Rank information sent on the UL for MIMO
• AMC (Adaptive Modulation and Coding)
–Requires informing the UE about allocated Resources
–Requires informing the UE about Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCS)
• HARQ (Hybrid ARQ)
–Uses Asynchronous adaptive retransmissions
–Uses Synchronous ACK/NAKs
–Requires ACK/NAK sent on the UL
• DL Modulation: QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM

• Multiple Access Dimensions:
• DL Scheduler:
–Assigns Time/Frequency resources, rather than Time/Code resources
–May coordinate with neighbor Base Stations for interference management.
• DL Reference Signals (Pilots):
–Have fixed time duration and frequency sub-band allocations.
• ARQ runs at E-NodeB
–ARQ architecture is conceptually similar to HSPA. (It supports TM, UM, and
AM modes and retransmissions are based on status reports.)
–Optional HARQ assisted ARQ operation is possible in LTE.
• Multiple PDSCH Tx Modes
- Requires different Channel Quality Reporting, acknowledging and scheduling mechanisms

LTE ACK/NACK for PDSCH Transmissions

The UE shall, upon detection of a PDSCH transmission in subframe n-4 intended for the UE and for which an ACK/NACK shall be provided, transmit the ACK/NACK response in subframe n.

CQI/PMI/RI and ACK/NACKs multiplexing on PUCCH is possible:
• Format 2:
– CQI/PMI/RI not multiplexed with ACK/NAK
• Format 2a/2b
– CQI/PMI/RI multiplexed with ACK/NAK (normal CP)
• Format 2:
– CQI/PMI or RI multiplexed with ACK/NAK (extended CP)
ACK/NACK for PDSCH Transmissions
The UE shall, upon detection of a PDSCH transmission in subframe n-4
intended for the UE and for which an ACK/NACK shall be provided,
transmit the ACK/NACK response in subframe n.
ACK/NACKs alone can be delivered PUCCH format 1a and 1b