LTE-A and small cells: further reading

Our story yesterday about NTTDoCoMo's intention to start developing a new small cell architecture within its future LTE-A network, was followed today by a timely blog post by Unwired Insight's Alastair Brydon.

If you don’t know or follow Unwired Insight’s blog, then you should probably get across it. The posts are always well-written and worth a look.

Brydon’s latest post, titled “Enhanced small cells are the key to traffic boom”, takes on the topic of “soft cells” – or phantom cells that exist either in a different or the same band as the macro carrier.

The post gives a good outline to the way operators may be able to use different carriers connected simultaneously to the same device to deliver signalling control and traffic, and also what needs to be done to get there.

Here’s our DoCoMo story, with added comment overnight from DoCoMo.