Ericsson to demonstrate up to 28Mbit/s HSPA

[Nikos Kartalis]

Ericsson is performing the world's first (High Speed Packet Access) HSPA demonstration with Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology during the CTIA Wireless 2006 event April 5-7 in Las Vegas (Stand #2624, Las Vegas Convention Center). The demo is based on Ericsson's commercial Radio Base Station. HSPA with MIMO can double the speed in the downlink up to 28 Mbps.

Part of the WCDMA evolution, HSPA is a combination of HSDPA in the downlink and Enhanced Uplink in the uplink, both of which are specified in 3GPP Release 5/6. HSPA provides data rates up to 14 Mbps in the downlink and 5.8 Mbps in the uplink. The faster data speeds made possible with HSPA evolution will enhance the user experience for services like Mobile Broadband and Mobile TV while reducing the production cost per gigabyte.

MIMO uses multiple transmit and receive channels and antennas to improve performance and throughput for radio signals. The data transmission is divided in multiple streams and recombined at the receiver end to increase overall performance.

"The HSPA evolution is the next step in enhancing the service offering, performance and data speed," said Angel Ruiz, head of Ericsson North America. "It provides operators the possibility to capitalize further on their existing infrastructure. Once again, Ericsson leads the way in helping operators serve their customers as their expectations and requirements for mobile broadband increases."

HSPA evolution is being specified in 3GPP Release 7 where MIMO is one of the cornerstones. Ericsson expects MIMO to be deployed in commercial networks in the 2008 timeframe.