On Tuesday the Okura hotel, Amsterdam, played host to the inaugural LTE Awards, as part of the LTE World Summit.

As the great and good of the LTE ecosystem battled for prominence, the judges were left with the tough decision of highlighting the most deserving entries.

Best testing product for LTE

This award recognises network and/or device testing products that are exceptional in their area. Entrants were required to describe their testing products and state why their product is different to others in the market.

Winner: JDSU

The JDSU LTE Network Trial Solution consists of:

• The tools required in the trial

• Protocol Analyzer for Network Diagnostics

• Passive Voice, Video and Data performance verification

• Drive test scanner for coverage and RF quality measurements

• LTE Trace UE log interface

• Active application performance tests

• Voice, Video, Data

• KPI definitions required for all KPI’s measured

• LTE trial test plans

• LTE trial methodology

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The Winners

The product follows all relevant standards for LTE, SAE, IMS, GERAN, UTRAN, 3GPP2 and provides support for all relevant vendor proprietary protocol variants. The JDSU LTE Network trial solution provides unique insight into the characteristics, the performance and the overall behavior of network performance.

The tools also provide capabilities above and beyond what open-source or non-commercial tools do in means of speed to result, efficient and effective use models and support for the most complex call models.

Consistent feedback from the recent MSF LTE IOT Plugfest, and other similar events and environments, was that without Agilent tools the event would not have been successful at all as participants would have lacked the visibility into the network interactions required to quickly evaluate the result.

Note: Agilent Technologies was named as the original winner, but Agilent’s Network Solutions test business was acquired by JDSU  earlier this year. The new name came into effect this week.

Best Contribution to LTE Standards

This award recognises the contribution made to LTE standardisation. Entrants were required to state the contribution made to the development of standards and specifications and their contribution to helping the industry to standardise LTE technology.

Winner: Ericsson Research

Ericsson has played a leading role in developing LTE from initial research cooperations until the finalized releases of the standard. Many persons and teams have been dedicated to this task but to highlight key contributors to these major achievements the following candidates were nominated: David Astély, Joakim Bergström, Erik Dahlman and Stefan Parkvall have all had key roles in producing and bringing results from research into high quality LTE specifications, enabling early commercial launch of LTE mobile broadband and a global industry trust and commitment for the LTE technology.

Joakim Bergström, the leader of Ericsson’s TSG-RAN delegation, embodies Ericsson’s leading role in driving the LTE specifications throughout all RAN groups. A simple measure of Ericsson’s impact on the LTE standards is the outstanding number of submitted and agreed contributions in all RAN groups.

David Astély, Erik Dahlman, and Stefan Parkvall have made major contributions to the radio access physical layer of LTE, from the fundamentals of channel structures and transmission formats based on early research on fourth generation access technology, and all the way to the very last details in the complete specifications.

One of the very important reasons for the success of LTE is the well harmonized FDD and TDD operation of LTE. David Astély and Stefan Parkvall have been main contributors for making this happen. Stefan Parkvall has also for many years been the editor of the core-specification 36.211 of 3GPP RAN1 and by that ensuring a timely delivery of complete and consistent specification. Erik Dahlman has been involved from the early beginning of LTE with industry alignment as setting scenarios and requirements and then later also ensuring that LTE fulfills those.

Significant progress for a commercial launch of LTE

This award recognises the progress by operators in preparing the deployment of LTE. Entrants needed to state the progress being made in launching LTE, in which markets will LTE be deployed, and how they have developed the ecosystem to get it in place.

Winner: TeliaSonera

TeliaSonera was the world’s first operator to commercially launch LTE in Oslo and Stockholm on 14th December 2009. The target to be first in the world was set early in 2009 and the vendors were invited to participate in a strategic co-operation to make it happen. Ericsson and Huawei were selected as strategic network partners for the launch in 2009 and Samsung was selected as strategic partner for terminals.

Before the launch TeliaSonera has continuously has communicated the progress towards the launch by announcing the “first live commercial base station” and “the first live communication” in media, social media, YouTube etc. TeliaSonera has thereby boosted the LTE technology and created an interest globally.

The LTE service is branded as 4G and can be bought as part of the Mobile Broadband packages sold on the Swedish and Norwegian markets. There will be a premium cost for the 4G service but as an introduction package the Mobile Broadband package including 4G is sold at 4 SEK/month (approx 4 Euro cents) in Sweden. Customers have been helped to install and get the 4G service on air through the TeliaSonera stores. However installation has been very easy and firmware upgrades of terminals etc has been working very well.

The rollout in Sweden and Norway now continues with the target to cover 25 new sites in Sweden and the 4 major cities in Norway by end 2010. Also the terminals will be replaced by multimode dongles for 2G/3G/4G. Since the launch in 2009, TeliaSonera has demonstrated LTE in Finland and Estonia with base stations connected to the Oslo and Stockholm networks.

Significant progress for a Commercial launch of LTE by a vendor

This award recognises the activities by vendors in making the case for a commercial rollout of LTE, including the launching of trials, commitment and investment into LTE development over other technologies and customer contracts awarded as a result.

Huawei Technologies

In 2004, Huawei commenced LTE technology and product R&D. The most Significant Progress for Commercial Launch of LTE is Huawei’s eNodeB/EPC, the world’s first commercial LTE product as announced in July 2009. Huawei’s LTE eNodeB is able to fully support a downlink rate of up to 150 Mbps in commercial LTE networks. Huawei helps operators enhance performance while reducing operational expenses.

At Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Feb 2010, Huawei unveiled the world’s first triple-mode LTE modem, the E398 modem, compatible with all three major network standards: LTE, UMTS, and GSM. The E398 modem will be initially used in the world’s first LTE/GSM shared network in Sweden operated by Net4Mobility. As of March 2010, Huawei had deployed 60 LTE networks worldwide including 9 commercial network contracts. Huawei’s has now extended cooperation for LTE trial, test or pre-commercial deployment with China Mobile, Telecom Italia, Vodafone Spain, Germany D2, T-Mobile Austria, O2 UK, France SFR, USA USCC/Leap/AT&T, Telstra Australia, Saudi Arabia STC/Zain/Mobily, UAE Etisalat, and more.

On Jan. 15th 2009, TeliaSonera and Huawei signed the world’s first commercial LTE contract in Norway, commissioning Huawei to provide end-to-end LTE. On Dec 14, 2009, the world’s first commercial LTE network and service was simultaneously initiated in Norway and Sweden at with the Huawei-deployed network covering Norway’s capital city of Oslo. Looking to the future, on March 23 at CTIA Wireless 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Huawei demonstrated the world’s fastest LTE-Advanced downlink speed of up to 1.2 Gb/s (more than 40 times faster than existing commercial 3G networks).

Best enabling product /technology for LTE

This award recognises the achievements in producing enabling technologies for LTE. Entrants were required to describe the enabling technology and how it contributes to making LTE more attractive to an operator to deploy, and to explain how it contributes to improving the network QoS and/or QoE for the user.

picoChip Designs

The PC9608 is the first full hardware and software development platform for LTE femtocells. It delivers quick and simple development and prototyping to customers and brings together full evaluation and prototyping capabilities. This enables extremely low-cost, easy to deploy LTE Femto & picocells. Based on picoChip’s established PC203 picoArray silicon, the system supports both TDD and FDD versions of LTE, and a variety of 3GPP-defined frequencies and bandwidth specifications within the standard.

The hardware is integrated into a single compact, robust chassis based on the industry-standard MicroTCA (μTCA) architecture. The PC9608/9 accelerates time to market of small form factor LTE products (“Home eNode B”) optimized for metropolitan, enterprise and residential applications. This dramatically changes the economics of LTE deployments: reducing capex, opex & accelerating time to market.

By combining the company’s field-proven OFDMA technology and market leadership in femtocells, picoChip is helping OEMs bring to market the next generation of highly cost-effective LTE basestations. There are no other “carrier class” reference designs for LTE Femto / picocells on the market today. picoChip promoted the concept of the LTE femtocell two years ago with first demonstrations at MWC: the PC9608/9 is the commercial realization of that vision.

Best contribution to research & development for LTE

This award recognises the contribution towards the research and development of LTE. Entrants were required to describe the investment made into R&D for LTE, number of patents that have been filed and describe how the R&D activities have had a positive impact on making LTE commercially successful.

Winner: Huawei Technologies

Huawei’s LTE product benefit from the largest percentage of the company’s mobile business R&D expertise and resources. Currently, over 2500 engineers are dedicated to LTE system R&D. Huawei started LTE technology research and development over six years ago and has since expanded to embrace end to end R&D including eNodeB, EPC (Evolved Packet Core), Terminal Device (USB/CPE, etc), Chipset, and Standard & Performance.

• Huawei has established six key R&D centers dedicated to LTE

• Huawei emphasizes open cooperation by sharing R&D and other experience to support and encourage a global industrial chain

• As a major contributor to various industry standard bodies, including ITU, 3GPP, 3GPP2, OMA, ETSI, IETF and NGMN etc. By end of 2009, Huawei had submitted around 4700 LTE/SAE standard proposal contributions to 3GPP, and holds 12% of LTE essential patent from ETSI (ranking Huawei in the top three patent holders globally) and in first place among vendors (36%) with 181 patents filed to date.

Through Huawei’s exceptional and extensive commitment to LTE R&D, and based on direct cooperation with and in-depth knowledge of customers in major markets (with trial network deployments in Europe and innovation labs in North America and Japan), Huawei has contributed to development of a global ecosystem with an industry leading solution and proven high quality technologies, all with full standardization compliance. R&D success has been highlighted by Huawei’s selection for the world’s first commercial LTE product launch in July 2009. and a total of 60 LTE networks worldwide including 9 commercial network contracts as of March 2010.

Best green LTE product or initiative

This award recognises the achievement to make LTE more environmentally friendly.

Winner: Winafrique Technologies

The RAPS initiative was conceptualized in 2002 to address the challenges of reliably and economically powering remote off grid telecom sites. The complete power unit, Wind- Solar Hybrid system, comprises of a wind turbine, solar panels and battery hybrid.

Installed in 2006, under trail the Wind-Solar hybrid is designed to reduce the generator run time by >75% (thus off-grid site OPEX reduced by >75%). On successful trial today over 50 systems are powering remote GSM sites in Kenya.

The impact of the product on the environment been lower pollution of the site and reduced carbon footprint which helps in meeting Green CSR requirements;

• RAPS Wind-Solar Hybrid has led to reduced generator runtime from 24hr to approx 4hrs, saving 20hrs of diesel fuel emissions.

• RAPS Battery Hybrid has led to reduced generator runtime from 24hr to approx 12hrs saving 12hrs of diesel fuel emissions.

One of the key lessons learnt is that telecommunication sector operating costs can be reduced significantly by reducing diesel generator run time. Wind-Solar Hybrid from 24hrs to approximately 4hrs per day;

• This increases the per site EBIT (OPEX saving) by approximately $30,000+ per year (@$70/bbl oil price). Battery Hybrid from 24hrs to approximately 12hrs per day;

• This increases the per site EBIT (OPEX saving) by approximately $12,000+ per year (@$70/bbl oil price).

The product is sustainable as it can be designed to deliver 100% of a sites power from renewable energy. With savings of over US$30,000, the RAPS Wind Solar has a 3.6yrs payback and design life of 10, and saving of over US$12,000. The RAPS Battery Hybrid also has a 2.1yrs payback and design life of 5ys.

Award for individual contribution to LTE development

This award is for an individual who has made a significant contribution to the development of LTE. Entrants were required to explain the work that has been done and the impact that this has had on the development of LTE and making it a commercial reality.

Winner: Antti Toskala, Nokia Siemens Networks

Antti has been involved in 3GPP standardization development for LTE from the start, including active contribution for the LTE multiple access selection in 2005 and leading the Nokia Siemens Networks standardization team contribution to the LTE development.

He has been spreading the LTE knowledge not only widely within their own organization but also broader in the industry. He co-authored/edited the book “LTE for UMTS” with Wiley in spring 2009 and prior that has addressed LTE in other publications and presentations as well as with a specific chapter of LTE in the best selling book “WCDMA for UMTS” (4th edition).

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Antti Toskala, Nokia Siemens Networks

The “LTE for UMTS” Covers all the key aspects of LTE in a systematic manner and presents full description of 3GPP Release 8 LTE. Also what differentiates the book from the competition is the ability to provide in-depth examination on the expected performance of LTE, thus giving market realistic expection to back-up the investment plans of the operators. Antti Toskala has been lecturing about LTE in different conferences (in form of tutorials) and also in the other form of technology training events, such as in open courses in co-operation with the University of Oxford.

Antti has been involved in such an activity since as an organization, Nokia Siemens Networks has always believed in and encouraged knowledge-sharing to foster a global eco-system that benefits our customers, our organization and the society at large.

His recent book “LTE for UTMS” is a reflection of this spirit. Coming from the research activities Nokia Siemens Network has been the most active contributors in many areas of 3GPP radio standardization and this end-to-end radio competence is captured in his book and lectures. These activities aims to share the best practices for the whole industry to learn and reduce the pain in making LTE a commercial reality with efficient inter-working with the deployed technologies such as WCDMA.

Antti Toskala is currently the Head of 3GPP Radio Standardization, at the CTO office in Nokia Siemens Networks. he has working in the industry over 15 years with active research in wireless communications as reflected in his publications over the period.