LTE-Advanced for Rapid Mobile Broadband Penetration in Developing Countries

摘要

Mobile broadband has a huge potential for achieving digital transformation towards a knowledge-based economy. Ubiquitous access to broadband will impact entertainment, agriculture, commerce, education, governance, civic engagement, healthcare, public safety, smart grid, and environment management. However, there is a wide digital divide between the developed part of the world and the developing countries in terms of broadband access, use, affordability, speed and quality of service. This is majorly attributed to insufficient bandwidth, lack of open access and infrastructure sharing, and unreliable power grid. In this paper, the authors identify and discuss the key technologies of Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-Advanced) that promote rapid broadband penetration in developing countries. Carrier aggregation offers the flexibility of supporting multiple frequency bands to provide wider bandwidths, reduce inter-cell interference, improve handover, save energy, and perform load balancing. Advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (Advanced MIMO) achieves very high data rates through spatial diversity, spatial multiplexing, beamforming, and spatial division multiple access. Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) improves system efficiency, cell-edge throughput, and network coverage. Mobile network operators may reduce capital and operating expenditures using relay nodes. Deployment of Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) increases system capacity. Self-Organizing Networks (SONs) introduces network function automation for faster execution of processes. Therefore, low- and middle-income countries can take advantage of the fourth generation (4G) cellular technology to leapfrog and attain higher broadband penetration level for sustainable development.