T-Mobile has successfully trialed a LTE based network in Germany in a live environment. In the trial, data was transmitted to and from a vehicle driving in Bonn between Deutsche Telekom's headquarters on the left side of the river Rhine and the T-Mobile headquarters on the river’s right bank. On the four-kilometer test track data transmission went smoothly without interruptions and without loss of quality even across different cells – one of the most important prerequisites for qualification as a mobile communications network of the future.

The network used in this test was established by Nortel and consisted of a multi – cell end-to-end Nortel network. LG Electronics terminals were used in the vehicle.

In a second step, applications with high demands on bandwidth and latency like HDTV, HD-Video or Online Gaming will then be tested for their usability under real-world conditions.

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the name given to a project within the Third Generation Partnership Project to improve the UMTS mobile phone standard to cope with future technology evolutions. Although an evolution of UMTS, the LTE air interface is a completely new systems based on OFDMA in the downlink and SC-FDMA (DFTS-FDMA) in the uplink that efficiently supports multi-antenna technologies (MIMO).

“As a pioneer in the development of NGMN, T-Mobile marked the next step in testing future technology with this field trial. In line with the NGMN Alliance's recommendation we are the first network operator worldwide to take LTE as one of the possible new future technologies from the laboratory to the field,” said Joachim Horn, chief technology officer of T-Mobile International, on the successful start to LTE testing.

Source:cellular-news