Nokia on Tuesday said it achieved the world’s first connection of a roaming device over a commercial network using NB-IoT technology in a trial conducted on Finnish operator Sonera’s 4G network.
During the trial, Nokia said it implemented NB-IoT technology to communicate information on temperature, humidity, and air pressure over Sonera’s commercial 4G network in the Finnish capital, Helsinki. The companies also connected a roaming device over the commercial network using NB-IoT technology.
The network used Nokia base station technology operating in the 800 Mhz frequency band to maximize coverage and connect to devices in harder to reach locations, Nokia reported. The trial saw speeds of up to 200 kbps.
Nokia said NB-IoT technology is designed provide deep indoor coverage and low power consumption for a device battery life of to up to 10 years.
Federated Wireless, a developer of cloud-based wireless infrastructure solutions to extend the access of carrier networks, announced it has developed a testbed in Norfolk, Va., for future demonstration and verification of its Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC).
The company said its ESC solution is “key to unlocking the value of shared spectrum in major metropolitan areas, which will improve the performance and capacity of wireless networks, drive innovation, support new business models and spur economic growth.”
The ESC is a system that is designed to increase available spectrum in coastal areas while providing prioritized, interference-free use by incumbent federal users, Federated Wireless said. When the ESC sensor detects a federal transmission, it activates a protection zone and informs the Spectrum Access Systems (SAS) to dynamically reallocate users in the area to other parts of the band, the company added.
Federated Wireless said its ESC and SAS solutions, which are part of its CINQ XP platform, are currently in the certification process with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for commercial availability. The combined ESC and SAS in CINQ XP will facilitate the coexistence of users that will access shared spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, according to the company.
Small Cell Forum (SCF) has published Release 8, a guide detailing technical and commercial best practices for operators planning to deploy network function virtualization (NFV). SCF said small cell virtualization will be a key enabler of 5G HetNets, enterprise services, and the Internet of Things (IoT), offering significant benefits including scalability, agility, cost reduction, and network slicing.
To date, SCF reported industry approaches to RAN virtualization have mainly been vendor proprietary, which creates risks of fragmentation and progress delays. SCF said its new release offers a unified set of guidelines, interfaces and specifications allowing operators to approach virtualization in an efficient, interoperable and future-proofed way.
Central to SCF’s Release 8 is an open interface specification that splits the small cell into physical and virtual components. Called nFAPI (network functional application platform interface), it defines a fronthaul link between physical and virtual, which can be transported over the packet ethernet connections widely available in enterprise, urban, and campus deployments.
Release 8 also contains documents to accelerate commercial adoption of virtualized small cells, including details of network architectures, management, transport performance requirements, impact on deployment and operations, and many more.
Release 8 documents are available for free here.
