Wireless high-speed solutions didn’t garner much thought just a year ago. Qualcomm Inc. seemed to be the only company in the industry touting a high-speed megabit solution for the cdmaOne operator community called High Data Rate. But today, the high-speed market is becoming crowded as carriers are bending their ears to possible solutions that better enable them to retain their current investments and spectrum limitations.
Silicon Valley-based LinkAir Communications is another company vying for attention in third-generation standards bodies among HDR technology and Motorola Inc.’s 1xtreme proposal, both proposed megabit data enhancements to the 1XRTT standard. 1X technology is a cdmaOne-based 3G technology that doubles voice capacity and adds data speeds of up to 144 kilobits per second.
LinkAir has introduced a technology called LAS-CDMA, or Large Area Synchronized Code Division Multiple Access, designed to allow today’s cdmaOne systems and others, including Global System for Mobile communications and Time Division Multiple Access technologies, to move to data speeds of up to 5.53 megabits per second.
The solution, which doesn’t require a separate data channel, also enhances full 3G systems, said Ting Zheng, chief executive officer of LinkAir. The technology requires operators to put new chips into the handsets and base stations as well as network software upgrades.
LinkAir is first pushing the solution within Third Generation Partnership Project 2, a standards body established by the Telecommunications Industry Association to work on 3G technology, primarily cdmaOne-based technology.
It’s unclear, however, what role the technology will play within the CDMA Development Group, which still is drafting a proposal that specifies how 1X technology should evolve. Most cdmaOne operators plan to deploy 1X technology some time next year. Many are realizing the value of megabit-speed enhancements and have grown concerned about the increase in fragmented proposals for this prospect.
LinkAir, which plans to trial the technology this summer, has strong endorsements from the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, China Mobile and China Unicom, which believe such a technology may help operators cost-effectively move toward high-capacity, high-speed systems within their existing spectrum resources.
“We are one of three proposals in the 3GPP2, along with HDR and 1xtreme,” said Zheng. “We have voiced our strong opinion about including ours in [the CDG’s] document, but we don’t know if they will or not … Several Chinese operators have written to the CDG along with the Chinese MII. Ultimately, it’s up to carriers to make the decision … We are definitely going to be a Chinese vendor.”
The CDG still is grappling with some political infighting among vendors over a proposal it plans to submit to 3GPP2. The proposal specifies how 1X technology should evolve toward megabit data speeds without specifying any technology names and requires manufacturers to meet those demands.
Motorola and Nokia Corp. challenged Qualcomm’s 2.4-megabit data-only HDR technology earlier this year, prompted by the fact that not all operators have been convinced that HDR technology in today’s form is acceptable. 1xtreme promises integrated voice and data with transmission speeds of 5.2 megabits, but hasn’t been tested. Qualcomm’s demonstrations of HDR technology have produced transmission speeds of up to 1.8 megabits. CdmaOne heavyweight Lucent Technologies Inc. supports HDR technology. Nortel Networks said it is working with the cdmaOne community to reach a consensus.
“When I look at the new requirements, HDR with changes could be made to fit those requirements,” said Mark Whitton, director of CDMA product management with Nortel. “We’ve made some proposals on what those changes should be to allow voice and data and other things. We’re not backing HDR as a stance, our goal is to try to come up with a single technology that suits the industry.”
“The fact is, HDR is going to be available quickly because Qualcomm has done the leg work,” said Ed Chao, Lucent’s product manager of HDR. “Other proposals are not complete, are vaperware and are on paper, pieces of academia stapled together and called a system … HDR has three years of testing and Qualcomm has the ASICs.”
For its part, LinkAir says it could have a commercial system ready by 2001, the same time frame HDR and 1xtreme proponents say their products will be ready. LinkAir is just beginning to present its solution to the GSM Association and the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium. If accepted and proven by carriers using a variety of standards, such technologies could change the whole face of the third-generation market. Carriers will have the ability to implement 3G-type services within a smaller bandwidth and test the market acceptance for megabit data solutions without huge investments.
