14 DAY TRIAL // Alcatel-Lucent announced that its intelligent antenna (IA) solution is now available to help third-generation CDMA2000 operators upgrade their CDMA2000 1X networks to support greater volumes of voice traffic without the need for additional spectrum. The Alcatel-Lucent IA solution can deliver up to a two-fold increase in voice capacity and similarly increase data throughput delivered directly to consumer.
Alcatel-Lucent's CDMA Modular Cell 4.0 base station architecture supports an incremental upgrade path to IA to realize these improvements in capacity and performance. The gains can be realized whether a mobile operator's customer base consists of 3G CDMA2000 or legacy 2G CDMA users, or a mix of both, without the need for modifications to existing cell phones or devices.
"Our customers can be assured that we will continue to support their existing investments in CDMA2000 1X technology for years to come," said Mike Iandolo, president of Alcatel-Lucent's CDMA/EV-DO business. "Our philosophy has always been to build products and solutions that provide a future migration path and significant investment protection."
The Alcatel-Lucent integrated IA solution provides true per-user intelligent antenna processing. Without per-user intelligent antenna processing, a base station's antennas produce a wide-angle radio signal beam that transmits to all users in a given area. However, with per-user intelligent antenna processing, or beamforming, the base station sends a separate, dedicated, narrower beam to each active user, which adaptively follows them as they move through the base station's coverage area. Transmitting simultaneous, dedicated beams to each active user makes more efficient use of spectrum and reduces interference, resulting in capacity gains.
The Alcatel-Lucent IA processing techniques also are applied to the "reverse link," or the signal a base station receives from a mobile device when a voice or data call is active. The combination of IA processing at the base station - in both the signal transmission and reception of signals from mobile devices - makes the overall system capacity gains possible.