Two major factors affecting the development of TD-LTE terminals

Publisher:温暖梦想Latest update time:2013-05-22 Keywords:TD-LTE  Terminal Reading articles on mobile phones Scan QR code
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At this stage, the slow development of terminal chips comes from two aspects: first, there are uncertainties, including uncertainty in commercial progress and uncertainty in spectrum division; second, there are people's high requirements for terminal chips.

  From the development to commercial use of TD-SCDMA, terminals have always been regarded as a bottleneck for development. Therefore, at the beginning of the development of the TD industry, from government departments to operators, the research and development of the terminal industry, including chips and operating systems, has been given great attention and strong support. Thanks to China Mobile's efforts in recent years, on the basis of the increasingly improved industrial chain, TD terminals have improved terminal quality and driven terminal sales through multiple channels. Most TD terminals are superior to other standard products in terms of quality, price, and launch time. The development of TD mobile phones has entered a period of explosive growth. As of May 4, 2012, there are a total of 564 TD terminals that have been effectively connected to the network. Regarding how TD terminals can further consolidate their foundation and evolve towards the TD-LTE market, the reporter recently interviewed Shi Guang, Secretary-General of the TD Technology Forum.

  The considerable market scale drives the TD terminal industry chain

  Reporter: What is the main reason for the rapid progress of TD-SCDMA terminals in recent years?

  Shi Guang: The total number of China Mobile users is close to 700 million, and the potential market size of TD terminals is quite considerable. This is also an important reason why China Mobile can successfully drive the industrial chain and promote the rapid development of terminals.

  After TD-SCDMA was put into commercial use in 2009, under the strong promotion of China Mobile, after joint efforts of enterprises in all links of the industry chain, the construction and optimization of the TD-SCDMA network were basically completed, and the bottleneck problem of "terminal-chip" that restricted the development of TD-SCDMA was fundamentally solved. At present, all chip manufacturers have chips and solutions ranging from low-end feature phones to high-end smart phones. More and more domestic and foreign terminal manufacturers have entered the TD-SCDMA terminal field, and many "famous phones" with excellent market performance have emerged. The maturity of both the network and the terminal has greatly improved the user experience. Therefore, TD-SCDMA has entered a stage of explosive growth since the second half of last year.

  At present, 15 domestic and foreign chip and terminal companies have joined the TD Technology Forum. They are all developing TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE chips and terminals, including several international chip and terminal giants. Their participation will definitely promote the industrial development of TD terminals. At the same time, in the future market competition, this will also bring greater pressure to domestic local companies.

  The slow development of terminal chips is attributed to two reasons

  Reporter: The construction of a TD-LTE trial network with 20,000 base stations has begun, but TD-LTE terminals are still a bottleneck. What do you think is the main reason?

  Shi Guang: During the development of TD-SCDMA, the lag of terminal chips had seriously affected the development of the industry. With the development experience of TD-SCDMA, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecommunication Research Institute and China Mobile have repeatedly emphasized the urgency of accelerating the development of terminal chips at the beginning of TD-LTE development. At present, the reasons for the slow development of terminal chips come from two aspects: first, uncertain factors, including uncertainty in commercial progress and uncertainty in spectrum allocation; second, people's high requirements for terminal chips.

  In terms of uncertain factors, frequency allocation will directly affect chip design. Unlike system equipment, which has relatively minor changes, if the frequency is changed, the entire chip and even the terminal must be changed. The uncertainty of frequency makes the R&D investment and technical direction of terminal chips uncertain. Currently, chip manufacturers are very concerned about which frequency band TD-LTE will work in the future. From a technical point of view, there should be frequencies more suitable for mobile communication services assigned to TD-LTE.

  Another major challenge facing terminal chips is people's ever-increasing requirements. In the future, multiple standards will coexist in the network. Chips will face various frequency bands from 800MHz to 2.6GHz, various standards from GSM to TD-LTE, and various data rate services from voice to video interaction. Compared with base station equipment that can continuously expand capacity, terminal equipment such as mobile phones are limited in size and power consumption. Since they have to carry multiple communication technologies from GSM to TD-SCDMA to TD-LTE, and even compatible with LTE-FDD, as well as from hundreds of K-level voice communication services to hundreds of megabytes of data services, the chip must have significantly improved functions and lower power consumption at the same size. With the increase in complexity, people require terminal chips to have lower energy consumption and higher integration, while at the same time requiring lower prices. The price of smart terminals is often less than 1,000 yuan. In general, the task is heavy and the price is low, which is a great challenge for terminal chips.

  The most important thing is to let manufacturers see the return

  Reporter: How to promote the development of TD-LTE chips?

  Shi Guang: Although the development of TD-LTE terminal chips faces many challenges, it has made considerable progress compared to TD-SCDMA. In the first phase of TD-LTE large-scale experiments, 11 chip manufacturers and multiple terminal manufacturers have participated. For the development of TD-LTE terminal chips, perhaps the most important thing is to let manufacturers see returns. Can TD-LTE be used first in local areas and hot spots where high-speed data demand is relatively strong, if both technical conditions and industrial conditions allow? In this way, manufacturers can not only invest, but also see returns, which will promote the development of terminal chips.

  TD-LTE is a technology with independent intellectual property rights in my country, so it has unique advantages in many fields in China. For example, in fields related to national and social security, such as security, video surveillance, urban emergency warning, and public security, TD-LTE is naturally considered the first choice. Shi Guang, secretary general of the TD Technology Forum, said: Industry applications are also a good development opportunity for TD-LTE. Compared with public mobile communications, industry applications have several characteristics: first, the application scenarios are simple and user needs are clear, which brings great convenience to networking; second, most of the industry applications are data services, and the profits of data services are relatively lucrative; third, the requirements for network construction costs for industry applications are not so high, and the price pressure faced by operators and equipment manufacturers is relatively small. Therefore, from the perspective of economic benefits, industry applications are very beneficial to the development of TD-LTE.

  There is still a long way to go before TD-LTE is commercially available

  Reporter: How far do you think TD-LTE is from commercial use?

  Shi Guang: At present, my country's TD-LTE has made gratifying progress, but there is still a certain distance from commercial use. In general, the development of TD-LTE is healthy and the development speed is normal, which conforms to the development law of the industry. However, it can also be seen that compared with the commercial use of FDD, my country's TD-LTE is still in the stage of large-scale trials and there is still a long way to go before commercial use. We must move as fast as we can.

  Generally speaking, a network needs to go through large-scale networking tests and large-scale user tests before commercial use. At present, my country's TD-LTE has not undergone such a test.

  Before TD-LTE can be commercialized, it still needs to make breakthroughs in several aspects. First, in terms of terminal chips, it is necessary to develop intelligent terminal chips that support multi-mode, multi-service, and multi-frequency bands, and are cheap and low in power consumption. Second, in terms of testing, there is still a lack of solutions for service simulation test systems. There are not many manufacturers at home and abroad that can develop mature and reliable high-speed data service simulation test systems. However, the types of TD-LTE services and application scenarios are very complex, and the requirements for service simulation test systems are very urgent. Third, in terms of large-scale networking, China Mobile has proposed a "four-network coordination" strategy, which has brought new challenges to hybrid networking. At the same time, there is a big gap between large-scale network tests and real large-scale commercial networks. At present, the system equipment that seems to be basically mature still needs to be improved and adjusted when facing commercial use. Fourth, the resource problem, that is, the frequency problem. Although the radio management department has made great efforts, the frequency bands currently assigned to TD-LTE services are still not ideal. For mobile communications, frequency is the key, and the entire industry chain is looking forward to having frequency bands that are more suitable for the characteristics of mobile communication services to be assigned to TD-LTE.

Keywords:TD-LTE  Terminal Reference address:Two major factors affecting the development of TD-LTE terminals

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