Field experiments of 4G LTE-advanced system underway

NTT DOCOMO announced today that on January 27 it was pre-licensed by the Kanto Bureau of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for field experiments of LTE-Advanced, a true fourth-generation (4G) mobile communication technology that provides data rates much faster than currently possible with LTE.

Once the license is issued, DOCOMO will begin field experiments of LTE-Advanced in real radio environments in the cities of Yokosuka and Sagamihara in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

In the field experiments, the performance of key technologies for LTE-Advanced implemented in the experimental equipment will be evaluated in indoor and outdoor environments.

DOCOMO has already confirmed the performance of LTE-Advanced technologies using radio environment simulators in its R&D center, achieving transmission data rates of approximately 1 Gbps in the downlink and 200 Mbps in the uplink.

LTE-Advanced, as the name suggests, is an evolved version of LTE, which DOCOMO currently offers on a commercial basis under the Xi™ (“Crossy”) brand in Japan. LTE-Advanced is backward compatible with LTE, which will enable a smooth migration from DOCOMO’s existing LTE network.

Standardization of LTE-Advanced is currently being finalized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). In October 2010, LTE-Advanced was accepted by the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) as a technology compliant with the requirements of IMT-Advanced.