Almudena Diaz Zayas

Third-Generation Partnership Project Standards: For Delivery of Critical Communications for Railways

The Global System for Mobile Communications-Railways (GSM-R) is a radio telecommunication network and the bearer technology for the European Train Control System (ETCS). Both GSM-R and ETCS constitute the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS). GSM was adopted by the International Union of Railways (UIC) because it was the only system in commercial operation with a great potential to fulfill the requirements for the transport of railway services, although some features had to be added to the standard. However, as time has passed, GSM-R has proven to have capacity limitations, higher costs, and long development cycle times due to the special features built into standard GSM that have reduced the market for GSM-R equipment. These facts, together with the end of industry support by 2025, are motivating the switch to long-term evolution (LTE)/system architecture evolution technology as the new bearer network for railways. LTE provides higher data capacity than GSM and presents a flat architecture, which reduces deployment and maintenance costs as long as standard elements are used. This article provides an overview of third-generation partnership project (3GPP) systems, services, and their standardization status, which should be implemented to support the transport of railway services over a standard LTE network. Additionally, the quality of service (QoS) requirements for the transport of ETCS data control are compared with the QoS provided by LTE.

A testbed for energy profile characterization of IP services in smartphones over live networks

Mobile phones are becoming pervasively used to access Internet and multimedia contents due to their increasing processing power and its wide range of featured wireless communication technologies (Infrared, Bluetooth, NFC, GSM, UMTS, HSPA, WiMax, LTE). In this paper we also introduce mobile devices as a pervasive testbed platform to characterize the energy consumption profile of Internet services. The most innovative advantage provided by our solution is the testbed’s flexibility and simplicity, making it possible to carry out extensive testing campaigns using actual mobile devices in live networks with real services.

The 3GPP NB-IoT system architecture for the Internet of Things

The first version of the 3GPP NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) standards has been finalized in June 2016 as part of Release 13. NB-IoT is a promising new radio access technology which can coexist with existing GSM, UMTS and LTE deployments. In fact, NB-IoT specifications have been integrated into LTE standards. NB-IoT goes a step further than the MTC [3] (Machine Type Communication) specification, focusing on extremely low cost devices, massive deployments and reduced data rates with a carrier bandwidth of just 200 kHz (hence its name). In this paper we will take a close look at 3GPP specifications to discover which are the modifications required in traditional LTE deployments to provide connectivity to the upcoming Cat-NB1 User Equipments (UEs).

An end-to-end testing ecosystem for 5G

Connected mobile applications will be a dominant software component in the 5G domain. Ensuring a correct and efficient behavior of the applications and devices becomes a critical factor for the mobile communications market to meet the expectations of final users. The EU project TRIANGLE is building a framework to help app developers and device manufacturers in the evolving 5G sector to test and benchmark new mobile applications, devices, and services utilizing existing and extended FIRE testbeds. This framework will evaluate Quality of Experience and enable certification for new mobile applications and devices.

Characterizing Radio and Networking Power Consumption in LTE Networks

Power consumption is a key factor in how final users rate the quality of service in mobile networks; however, its characterization is a challenging issue due to the many parameters involved and the complexity of their dependencies. Traditional battery drain testing in the field does not provide a suitable environment to reach accurate conclusions. In this paper we address this problem providing a controlled environment, more compact and accurate than those currently found in the literature, designed to measure the effects that different factors have on the global energy consumption.

UMA Testing Facility

UMA (University of Malaga) is developing a testing facility to provide support for the complete development process of Internet services in mobile networks. The platform enables the execution of data services on instrumented mobiles and will offer a remote access to carry out unattended measurement campaigns in commercial and emulated cellular networks. The facility mainly targets data connectivity and performance over cellular networks (GSM, GPRS, UMTS, HSPA and LTE), mobility procedure analysis, IP traffic monitoring, energy consumption and location.

Testing of LTE Configurations and Applications

This paper introduces an experimental testbed developed at the University of Malaga to analyze the behavior of mobile applications and services over LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks. The novelty of the testbed is the ability to correlate the impact of radio propagation issues on LTE configurations and applications protocols and cross tuning LTE parameters and IP protocols from the point of view of the quality perceived by end users. In this work we focus on the evaluation of VoIP services over LTE networks.

Evaluation of Handover Implementations in Commercial GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA Networks

In this paper we present a study of the performance of handovers for live GPRS, UMTS and HSDPA networks from the point of view of data traffic. Specifically, our analysis focuses on an evaluation of the impact of handover at IP level during data connections (packet losses, jitter and outage duration). The results provided in this paper have been obtained from extensive field tests carried out on European commercial mobile networks.

3GPP Evolution on LTE Connectivity for IoT

Nowadays, the maturity of IoT applications, networking technologies and manufacturers of “things” have caused an explosion in the number of connected devices. There are several reports which calculate that the number of connected things will reach 50 billion in the near future. This chapter focuses on the provision of wide area and efficient connectivity to the Internet of Things (IoT), a key factor in such an explosion, through the usage of LTE. LTE MTC (Machine Type Communication), LTE M2M or just LTE-M are the coined terms that refer to this issue. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the standardization efforts carried out by the 3GPP to convert LTE into an IoT capable technology.

3GPP NB-IoT, tecnología y herramientas de medida

La primera version de los estandares 3GPPNarrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT) se finalizo en Junio de 2016como parte de la Release 13. NB-IoT es una nueva tecnologiade acceso radio que puede coexistir con los desplieguesactuales de GSM, UMTS y LTE. De hecho, la especificacionde NB-IoT se ha integrado en los estandares LTE. NBIoTva un paso mas alla que la especificacion de MTC(Machine Type Communication), enfocandose en dispositivosde extremadamente bajo coste, despliegues masivos y tasas detransmision reducidas con un ancho de banda de solamente200 kHz (de ahi su nombre). En este articulo realizaremosuna revision en detalle de las especificaciones 3GPP destacandolas modificaciones necesarias sobre los despliegues LTEtradicionales para proporcionar conectividad a dispositivosde usuario (UEs) Cat-NB1. Asimismo, introduciremos unaperspectiva novedosa sobre las ventajas de usar de nuevasherramientas y soluciones para el analisis y medida decomunicaciones NB-IoT, como el UXM E7515A de KeysightTechnologies, proporcionando tambien lecciones aprendidasen el incipiente uso de esta nueva tecnologia.