DC-HSDPA Drive Test Results - Part Two

Double The Bandwidth, Double The Pleasure (Part 2)

01/12/2011 | 34 pages
Price: $1,395.00

Drive test results of DC-HSDPA versus HSPA+

A large number of HSPA operators have plans to deploy DC-HSDPA or they are evaluating DC-HSDPA for potential use in their networks at some point in the future. Some operators are trying to balance the merits of a quick migration to LTE versus the potential advantages of fully leveraging their existing network resources while remaining competitive in an ever competitive market. Still other operators without the desire or the ability to deploy DC-HSDPA (e.g., CDMA2000 operators) must, nevertheless, continue to compete with operators who are moving down the DC-HSDPA path. This issue of Signals Ahead is for these operators and for the rest of the wireless industry that has any association whatsoever with them.

For this research project we collaborated with Accuver, a leading supplier of drive test tools and post-processing software that supports all commercially-deployed technologies (LTE, HSPA+, Mobile WiMAX, EV-DO, etc). By using its XCAL-W drive test tool and XCAP-W post-processing software we were able to reach fairly definitive conclusions about how DC-HSDPA performs under a wide-range of conditions, including during simultaneous testing with HSPA+ under very similar network conditions. The conclusions that we reach in the report are based on 4.25 days of testing or 29 hours and 12 minutes of logged data during which time we covered more than 350 kilometers, driving or walking, and transferred (downloaded or uploaded) 52.1GB of application layer data.