Qualcomm Technologies is showcasing its recently-announced Snapdragon X16 LTE modem at this week’s Mobile World Congress — representing a 10X leap over first gen LTE and 500X over early 3G devices. In a demo featuring Ericsson’s Software 16B release, the modem is achieving download speeds up to 1 Gbps using a combination of 3x carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO on two aggregated carriers, and higher-order modulation using 256-QAM.
Other Qualcomm demos include:
- 4×4 LTE MIMO in a smartphone prototype test-developed by Sony Mobile Communications, based on the Snapdragon 820 processor with X12 LTE. This represents the first implementation of 4-layer MIMO in a smartphone form factor. The X12 LTE modem’s 4×4 MIMO capability doubles LTE throughput on the same amount of spectrum — up to ~400 Mbps in only 20MHz of spectrum.
- Ultra HD Voice — using the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) codec, showcasing its superior call quality compared to traditional HD Voice with the AMR-WB codec. Both the 4×4 MIMO as well as the Ultra HD Voice demos will be in collaboration with Ericsson. This demo uses thes sam 4x4LTE MIMO smartphone prototype
- LTE Wi-Fi Link Aggregation (LWA) using the over-the-air system with commercial-ready converged LTE/Wi-Fi smart gateway integrating Qualcomm FSM99xx small cells and IPQ40xx solutions. A converged gateway aggregates the LTE and Wi-Fi airlinks and enables smart and dynamic load balancing between LTE and Wi-Fi, as well as provides a unified network to better utilize both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. LWA is designed to allow operators to utilize new and existing Wi-Fi networks to offer superior performance and a seamless user experience.
- Low-power LTE – two demos showcase 4G connectivity for IoT applications. The first demo showcases how LTE-connected IoT devices can achieve 10 years of battery life on two AA batteries, using the Power Saving Mode (PSM) of the MDM9207-1 modem. The second demo, in collaboration with Ericsson, offers a preview of the Extended Idle DRX feature that is part of 3GPP Release 13 spec. LTE Extended Idle DRX allows the mobile network and the IoT device to synchronize the timing at which the device awakes to receive data from the network with very long intervals, thereby extending its battery life.
- enhanced LAA (eLAA), which introduces LTE licensed and unlicensed spectrum aggregation in the uplink along with downlink
- MulteFire, the first-ever tradeshow demonstration of LTE-based technology operating solely in unlicensed spectrum.
- 5G millimeter wave 28 GHz demo, showcasing adaptive beamforming and beam tracking techniques which enable robust and sustained broadband communications operation under line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) RF channel conditions and device mobility.
“We’re excited to bring several of our newest innovations to Mobile World Congress for the first time. From enabling the first Gigabit Class LTE with our Snapdragon X16 LTE modem to providing a glimpse into how Qualcomm Technologies is approaching 5G connectivity, these demonstrations show several of our latest technologies we’re bringing to the industry,” said Tim McDonough, senior vice president of marketing, Qualcomm Technologies.