LTE Inter-Technology Mobility - Enabling Mobility between LTE and Other Access Technologies
The Internet revolution and the wide availability of broadband access are creating a tremendous new appetite for mobile data services. Existing wireless access technologies such as HSPA and EVDO go part of the way in meeting this demand, but spectral efficiency, cell-edge performance and high latency prevent them from providing the needed bandwidth, capacity and QoS to enable a true, reasonably priced and profitable broadband service. In response to these dynamics, the mobile operators are anticipated to shift toward LTE in order to accommodate mass market adoption of true mobile broadband services.
A fundamental user requirement for LTE deployments is that users expect the new network to provide not only exciting new services but also to support all the services from the legacy network. From an operator point of view, they want to leverage their existing coverage and existing investments in applications and service coverage to support their subscribers and allow for incremental rollout of an LTE network.
The solution is inter-technology mobility, which provides the ability to tie together disparate radio access network assets, based on different access technologies, into a single integrated bandwidth delivery vehicle. Inter-technology mobility can serve as a powerful tool for maximizing the value of existing access resources and assist in quickly realizing revenue from the deployment of new wireless broadband access technologies (Figure 1).
FIGURE 1: LTE Mobility combines with other technologies to create an explosion of potential access scenarios
By enabling data session continuity across multiple technologies, inter-technology mobility lets users maintain their application sessions as they move between different access technologies. No user actions are required to support the change in access technology and applications are unaware that an access network change has occurred. This seamless access to applications can help operators who own multiple access network technologies rationalize their existing applications portfolio and also help them shorten the time needed to bring new applications to profitability. As new devices and standards become available, an operator with virtually any combination of broadband access assets will be able to extend existing applications across all of those assets, quickly creating new revenue streams with virtually no additional investment in their applications.
LTE standards for HSPA, UMTS, GSM and EVDO mobility are all based on RAN level interconnection that maintains session continuity at the IP level. For LTE-WiFi mobility, standards supporting single- or dual-transmit devices are also in development. These functions also maintain session continuity at the IP level. All these standards are due to be completed by the end of 2008.
Motorola's expertise in mobile broadband innovation, its broad wireless portfolio and its extensive experience with wired and wireless video and other broadband applications uniquely position us to help guide operators through the complex maze of choices and enable them to realize the promise of inter-technology mobility.
The paper available below looks at potential approaches to inter-technology mobility that are becoming available and then discusses how these approaches can be used to solve operator problems in service deployment, access technology integration and smooth migration to LTE by maximizing the use of legacy mobile networks coverage and other IP based access technologies.