Difference between revisions of "LTE"

Revision as of 01:41, 16 May 2011

This report presents a brief summary about LTE-MIMO.A detailed taxonomy which covers most of the aspects of LTE is presented. A sample of mapping patents to the standard by using graphical analysis and patent ranking is presented. LTE related ETSI and non-ETSI documents are also shown.

Dolcera Landscape Procedure

• Background study - Background study is done with web search depending on the area of client interest.
• Finding key player/inventors - Web search is carried out to find the products and technologies of key players.
• Patents Search -
  • Key patents search.
  • Prepared search queries using keywords and classification and finalized these in Micropat/Thompson.
• Patents Classification - Classify all patents by creating taxonomy.
• Specific analysis as required by client like SWOT, SOA, PEST, Claim, and White Space analysis.
• Reporting -
  • All necessary data are presented in format of wiki or in form of power point slides.
  • Dashboard - Graphical representation of Patents classification.

Rationale

• LTE is the most suited technology as it provides higher data rates required for the future and is an advancement over widely used GSM/EDGE/HSPA
• A number of corporate giants are looking towards LTE as the technology enabling future communication
• The following factors are expected to be obtained with the realization of LTE
  • Reduced cost per bit
  • Increased service provisioning - more services at lower cost with better user experience
  • Flexibility of use of existing and new frequency bands
  • Simplified architecture, Open interfaces
  • Allow for reasonable terminal power consumption

Background description

LTE (Long Term Evolution), is the latest standard in the mobile network technology that came into existence because of the growing needs of faster data rates. It is a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which realized this technology. LTE is an advancement to previously realized technologies such as GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSxPA etc.Although LTE is often marketed as 4G, first-release LTE is actually a 3.9G technology since it does not fully comply with the IMT Advanced 4G requirements.

Update - LTE-Advanced has been granted 4G compliance given the significant improvement they provide over 3G technologies [1]

LTE Evolution

Voice traffic will be supported mainly as Voice over IP (VoIP) enabling better integration with other multimedia services.LTE is being designed to be a high data rate and low latency system. LTE is also aimed at minimizing cost and power consumption while ensuring backward-compatibility and a cost effective migration from UMTS systems. LTE tutorial

Technical details

Performance requirements

LTE is expected to support different types of services including web browsing, FTP, video streaming, VoIP, online gaming, real time video, push-to-talk and push-to-view. Therefore, it is being designed to be a high data rate and low latency system as indicated by the key performance criteria shown below.

Fig.1 LTE Release 8 Major Parameters
Fig.2 LTE-Release 8 User Equipment Categories

LTE architecture

LTE architecture

Protocol stack

Protocol stack of LTE

Data flow

The data flow through protocol stack can be shown as

Dataflow

LTE frame structure

In order to maintain synchronization and manage different types of information exchange that need to be carried between the base-station or eNodeB and the User Equipment (UE), LTE system has a defined LTE frame and sub frame structure for the E-UTRA or Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access

There are two types of LTE frame structure:

• Type 1:used for the LTE FDD mode systems
  • The basic type 1 LTE frame has an overall length of 10 ms. This is then divided into a total of 20 individual slots. LTE sub frames then consist of two slots - in other words there are ten LTE sub frames within a frame.

LTE frame structure

• Type 2:used for the LTE TDD systems
  • The frame structure for the type 2 frames used on LTE TDD is somewhat different. The 10 ms frame comprises two half frames, each 5 ms long. The LTE half-frames are further split into five sub frames, each 1ms long.

LTE frame structure

• The subframes may be divided into standard sub frames of special sub frames. The special sub frames consist of three fields
  • DwPTS - Downlink Pilot Time Slot
  • GP - Guard Period
  • UpPTS - Uplink Pilot Time Slot.

LTE enabling technologies

• OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access)
  • It is used in the downlink communication of LTE as it can support high data rates
• SC-FDMA (Single Carrier FDMA)
  • It is used in the uplink communication of LTE as it helps in reducing terminal power consumption
• MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output)
  • Helps in obtaining increased data rates with usage of many antennas.
• System Architecture Evolution(SAE)
  • New core network architecture to support the high-throughput / low latency LTE access system
  • Simplified network architecture
  • All IP network
  • All services are via PS domain only, No CS domain
  • Support mobility between multiple heterogeneous access system
• Fractional frequency reuse
  • Helps in reusing the frequency so that spectral efficiency can be improved

Taxonomy

Major players in the ETSI list for LTE

Ranking of ETSI patents

Click here to see full list of Ranking of ETSI patents

Disclaimer: Patent ranking has been done according to the following logic:

• Rank-1: Granted + LTE related (claims)
• Rank-2: Published + LTE related (claims)
• Rank-3: LTE related (Full spec )
• Rank-4: May be relevant and requires further analysis
• Rank-5: Abandoned or Expired

Note: Here a total of 44 patents from ETSI have been taken, out of which Qualcomm Incorporated has 6 patents, Alcatel-lucent has 8 patents, Ericsson AB, Nokia corporation, Nokia Siemens Networks have 10 each

Relevant Documents for LTE in the ETSI list

Disclaimer:

• Rating is given based on claims, no.of cited patents, expiry date and priority date
• Rating is done on a scale from 1 to 5

MIMO(Multiple Input Multiple Output)

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technologies introduced in LTE such as spatial multiplexing, transmit diversity, and beamforming are key components for providing higher peak rate at a better system efficiency, which are essential for supporting future broadband data service over wireless links.In Long Term Evolution (LTE), MIMO technologies have been widely used to improve downlink peak rate, cell coverage, as well as average cell throughput.

To achieve this diverse set of objectives, LTE adopted various MIMO technologies including transmit diversity, single user (SU)-MIMO, multiuser (MU)-MIMO, closed-loop rank-1 precoding, and dedicated beamforming. MIMO in LTE

MIMO working

Concept table for MIMO

Control patents

• Control patents are mostly used
  • to prepare concepts
  • to search classes, and
  • to verify the search strategy
• Control patents are found by running a query with narrow keywords, and in this process litigation's and file wrappers are also looked at.

S.No

Patent/Publication No.

Title

Abstract S.No Patent/Publication No. Title Abstract 1 US6873606 Rate adaptive transmission scheme for MIMO systems A rate adaptive transmission scheme for MIMO systems, which can transmit a variable number of data symbol streams, provide transmit diversity for each data symbol stream, and fully utilize the total transmit power of the system and the full power of each antenna. In one method, at least one data symbol stream is received for transmission from a plurality of antennas. Each data symbol stream is scaled with a respective weight corresponding to the amount of transmit power allocated to that stream. The scaled data symbol stream(s) are multiplied with a transmit basis matrix to provide a plurality of transmit symbol streams for the plurality of antennas. The transmit basis matrix (e.g., a Walsh-Hadamard matrix or a DFT matrix) is defined such that each data symbol stream is transmitted from all antennas and each transmit symbol stream is transmitted at (or near) the full power for the associated antenna. 2 US7233625 Preamble design for multiple input--multiple output (MIMO), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system One or more preambles are inserted into frames of Orthogonal Frequency Multiplexing (OFDM)-Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) signals. The preamble is received by the antennas of a receiver, decoded and compared to known values to provide synchronization, framing, channels estimation, offsets and other corrections to the transmitted signal. 3 US7248559 Scattered pilot pattern and channel estimation method for MIMO-OFDM systems A method and apparatus are provided for reducing the number of pilot symbols within a MIMO-OFDM communication system, and for improving channel estimation within such a system. For each transmitting antenna in an OFDM transmitter, pilot symbols are encoded so as to be unique to the transmitting antenna. The encoded pilot symbols are then inserted into an OFDM frame to form a diamond lattice, the diamond lattices for the different transmitting antennae using the same frequencies but being offset from each other by a single symbol in the time domain. At the OFDM receiver, a channel response is estimated for a symbol central to each diamond of the diamond lattice using a two-dimensional interpolation. The estimated channel responses are smoothed in the frequency domain. The channel responses of remaining symbols are then estimated by interpolation in the frequency domain. 4 US7548506 System access and synchronization methods for MIMO OFDM communications systems and physical layer packet and preamble design A method and apparatus are provided for performing acquisition, synchronization and cell selection within an MIMO-OFDM communication system. A coarse synchronization is performed to determine a searching window. A fine synchronization is then performed by measuring correlations between subsets of signal samples, whose first signal sample lies within the searching window, and known values. The correlations are performed in the frequency domain of the received signal. In a multiple-output OFDM system, each antenna of the OFDM transmitter has a unique known value. The known value is transmitted as pairs of consecutive pilot symbols, each pair of pilot symbols being transmitted at the same subset of sub-carrier frequencies within the OFDM frame. 5 US7120395 MIMO communications The present invention allows a wireless communication system, such as a base station, to select N antennas from an associated group of M antennas for transmitting multiple streams of data to a given user. Based on the channel conditions between the M antennas of the wireless communication system and the multiple antennas at the receiver, the N antennas to use for transmission are selected to enhance channel capacity, signal-to-noise ratios, or a combination thereof. The channel conditions are measured at the receiver, and may be sent back to the wireless communication system for processing or may be processed at the receiver, wherein instructions are transmitted back to the wireless communication system to control antenna selection. Click here to see full list of LTE control patents Search Strategy - MIMO Patent mapping by graphical analysis Sno. Patent/Publication No. Title Figure analyzed Analyzed result Standard mapped into 1 US20070217538A1 Systems and methods for improving performance of multiple spatial communication channels Figure 4 DL data rate: 220 M bps for 3x3 advanced MIMO-SVD LTE release 8, category 4 2 US20090232229A1 Device, system and method of resource allocation in a wireless network Figure 2A DL data rate: 210 M bps for a 2x2 MIMO at cell centre LTE release 8, category 5 Ranking of Non ETSI patents Sno. Patent/Publication No. US Class (primary) Title Publication Year Priority Year(s) Legal status Rank 1 US7548730B2 375267 Systems and methods for improving performance of multiple spatial communication channels 2007 2006 Patented Case 1 2 US20090232229A1 375260 Device, system and method of resource allocation in a wireless network 2009 2008 Docketed New Case - Ready for Examination 2 3 US20080187066A1 375267 Detection method and apparatus for a multi-stream MIMO 2008 2007 Non Final Action Mailed 2 4 US7796546B2 370315 Apparatus and method for supporting multiple links in a network using frequency bands 2007 2006 Patented Case 4 Disclaimer: Patent ranking has been done according to the following logic: Rank-1: Granted + LTE related (claims) Rank-2: Published + LTE related (claims) Rank-3: LTE related (Full spec ) Rank-4: May be relevant and requires further analysis Rank-5: Abandoned or Expired Major players in the non-ETSI list for MIMO Major companies for low cost IP for MIMO Disclaimer 1: Here primarily, companies with an average annual revenue less than 400 million USD are considered. In addition to these, some big companies whose primary interest is not LTE and those which provide IP licensing are also considered. Disclaimer 2 :The above graph is based on raw data available with us. Some of the patents may not be relevant Most cited documents in non-ETSI list for MIMO S.No Patent/Publication No. Title Priority Date Assignee/Applicant Count of Citing Patents 1 US5541955A Adaptive data rate modem 1992-11-06 | 1995-04-28 Pericle Communications Company 272 2 US5999561A Direct sequence spread spectrum method, computer-based product, apparatus and system tolerant to frequency 1997-05-20 | 1997-07-08 | 1997-09-15 Sanconix Inc 161 3 US5752164A Autonomous remote measurement unit for a personal communications service system 1992-04-27 | 1995-04-25 American PCS L 146 4 US4441180A Service integrated communication transmission and interchange system 1979-06-01 | 1980-05-30 Licentia Patent Verwaltungs GmbH 134 5 US6072994A Digitally programmable multifunction radio system architecture 1995-8-31 Northrop Grumman Corporation 133 6 US6314147B1 Two-stage CCI/ISI reduction with space-time processing in TDMA cellular networks 1997-11-04 | 1998-11-04 The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University 132 7 US5859878A Common receive module for a programmable digital radio 1995-8-31 Northrop Grumman Corporation 131 8 US5345471A Ultra-wideband receiver 1993-12-4 The Regents of the University of California 130 9 US5694134A Phased array antenna system including a coplanar waveguide feed arrangement 1992-12-01 | 1993-10-21 | 1994-01-14 Superconducting Core Technologies, Inc. 128 10 US5347286A Automatic antenna pointing system based on global positioning system (GPS) attitude information 1992-02-13 | 1993-03-19 Trimble Navigation Limited 115 Company wise distribution of IP Company wise distribution of IP Note: The subsidiaries of Nokia includes : Nokia Telecommunication Oy and Nokia Siemens. The subsidiaries of Ericsson/LM Ericsson includes : Ericsson GE Mobile Communications Inc, ST-Ericsson, Sony Ericcson. The Subsidiaries of Alcatel includes : Alcatel-Lucent, Alcatel Shangai bell company, Alcatel Transmission, Lucent Technologies, CIT Alcatel. The Subsidiaries of NTT includes : Nippondenso Co, NTT Docomo. The subsidiaries of NEC Corp includes : NEC Access technica Ltd.,NEC Laboratories. The subsidiaries of Phlilps includes : Philips Electronics, Philips Intellectual property & standards. The subsidiaries of Fujistu includes : Fujistu ten Limited, Fujitsu Microelectronics Limited. The subsidiaries of AT&T includes : AT&T Mobility, AT & T BLS Intellectual Property, AT&T Bell Laboratories, AT&T Wireless Services Inc., BellSouth Intellectual Property Corporation. Filing trends over the years Filing trends over the years Filing trends for top 10 companies Filing trends for top 10 companies Year by year trends of top 5 companies Year by year trends of top 5 companies Interactive Taxonomy Note:This interactive taxonomy consists of 131 sample documents. Dolcera Dashboard Dashboard Link The Dashboard is Dolcera's visualization platform to present the organized patent landscape Best viewed in Internet explorer 6 and higher versions To view dashboard you would require a flash player. Kindly install a flash player if its not installed in your system LTE - Dashboard Note1: Use the following credentials to view the dashboard 1.1 Username: demo@dolcera.com Password: demo123 Note2: A total of 131 patents were considered for the creation of the sample dashboard LTE Release 8 LTE Release 8 Meeting minutes Click here for the meeting minutes. Like this report? This is only a sample report with brief analysis Dolcera can provide a comprehensive report customized to your needs Buy the customized report from Dolcera Patent Analytics Services Market Research Services Purchase Patent Dashboard Patent Landscape Services Dolcera Processes Industry Focus Patent Search Services Patent Alerting Services Dolcera Tools References Stefania Sesia, Issam Toufik, and Matthew Baker, "LTE - The UMTS Long Term Evolution - From Theory to Practice", John Wiley & Sons, 2009, Martin Sauter, "From GSM to LTE - An Introduction to Mobile Networks and Mobile Broadband", John Wiley & Sons, 2010, Erik Dahlman, Stefan Parkvall, Johan Sköld, Per Beming, "3G Evolution - HSPA and LTE for Mobile Broadband", 2nd edition, Academic Press, 2008, Mustafa Ergen, "Mobile Broadband - Including WiMAX and LTE", Springer, NY, 2009 Borko Furht, Syed A. Ahson, "Long Term Evolution: 3GPP LTE Radio And Cellular Technology", CRC Press, 2009, Ezio Biglieri, Robert calderbank, Anthony Constantinides et.al ,"MIMO Wireless Communications" Cambridge University Press, 2007 Contact Dolcera Samir Raiyani Email: info@dolcera.com Phone: +1-650-269-7952