Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column where we let C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry to provide their unique insights into the marketplace.
In the 90s, companies like Nokia and RIM/BlackBerry built their businesses and reputations on their wireless and RF engineering prowess, with thousands of engineers dedicated to designing products that delivered high quality, reliable radio links. For 2G networks not only was wireless performance central to handset development, but it was also one of the key selling points to users (alongside handset size and battery life). As a result 2G, and later 3G phones, delivered excellent call quality and batteries lasted for a week or more.
But in recent years, fired by the rise of smartphones and mobile apps, wireless performance has taken a back seat in mobile handset development. Instead Apple, Samsung and the rest have focused on differentiating their products through OS design, app stores and more “superficial” design considerations. Of course this has proved to be wildly successful, and this year smartphone sales have overtaken featurephones for the first time. This is a major shift in the mobile market, and clearly we can expect smart, connected devices to dominate the handset market in the near future.
However, while the rise of the smartphone has significantly enhanced functionality for users, there have been some casualties along the way – primarily call quality, coverage and battery life – introduced by deficiencies in the RF front end. We’ve seen major embarrassments, like Apple’s “antenna-gate,” a general decline in signal coverage and quality of voice calls, and the use of larger, heavier batteries to overcome RF front-end limitations.
All of these wireless performance issues have been further exacerbated by LTE networks, as the “peakier” nature of these high-data rate signals introduce a range of problems for the RF front end in handsets. Additionally, with more than 20 different frequency bands already deployed worldwide, LTE has also brought an end to the ubiquitous global roaming achieved by 3G handsets.
Putting wireless performance back in the spotlight
To some extent these negatives have been offset by the ever-increasing functionality of smartphones. Users have been happy to see radical improvements in the user interface, core processing power and mobile computing capability of phones. But now that most consumers have moved from feature phones to smartphones, the novelty is starting to wear off – delight is turning to disappointment at short battery life, poor coverage and uncomfortably hot handsets.
With LTE, we have reached some inconvenient, but fundamental, technological barriers, predominantly in the RF subsystem that are preventing the new generation of handsets from being dramatically different or better than previous models. In many cases, LTE will be a step backwards, not a step forwards.
Users who have LTE smartphones are finding that battery life is severely limited, measured in hours not days, with reports suggesting that many consumers have been forced to turn off their phone’s LTE functionality in order to achieve reasonable battery life.
And test results show that most LTE handsets can only transmit at half the required power, resulting in poor coverage, dropped calls and lower data rates. Operators confirm these findings, reporting that network coverage is almost always limited by the handset’s transmitter – the base station can’t hear your signal, not the other way round. To make things even worse, much of the new high-capacity LTE spectrum is deployed at 2.3 to 2.7 GHz, where radio waves have much greater path loss, and are more readily absorbed by buildings, trees and people, making coverage even more of a problem.
There are other issues at the network level. The increased number of frequency bands in use with LTE means that there are more situations where interference occurs as a result of narrow separation from adjacent bands. Whereas previously handset manufacturers could employ maximum power reduction waivers to work around these interference issues, operators are increasingly demanding that these limits to RF performance are eliminated to improve coverage, network capacity and user experience.
All of these factors are driving a step change in the innovation and complexity of the RF front end for LTE – a subsystem that had been largely commoditized and ignored in the era of 3G phones.
Wireless performance is crucial for next generation handsets
The fact is, from a hardware point of view, many of the latest phones are virtually “white label” products built on standardized reference designs, with very few differences in terms of components under the hood. All the innovation has arguably resulted in products which are less differentiated, rather than more. So if your handset looks the same as your competitor’s, and runs the same software, how are you going to differentiate it?
These concerns are forcing a major shift in attitudes among some original equipment manufacturers. The RF performance shortfalls are eroding the user experience gains from improved processor power and functionality. With all smartphones looking the same, some manufacturers are quietly stealing a march on their competitors, and focusing on wireless performance as a differentiator – after all, these are primarily wireless products.
This shift is already happening. Behind the scenes at Mobile World Congress this year, all of the significant technology stories were about LTE wireless performance – whether it was envelope tracking, multi-band PAs, antenna tuning or the major statement of intent from Qualcomm with its RF360 approach to the CMOS front end.
It is these new RF front end technologies that will deliver the true LTE benefits that operators and users are demanding – faster data, better battery life, coverage and call quality – and also enable far more innovation and differentiation in handset design.
Ultimately the manufacturers that are best able to integrate these innovative RF technologies in 2013 will take the lead in the next generation of handsets that will delight, rather than disappoint, the LTE generation at MWC next year.
Tim Haynes brings more than 20 years of telecoms experience to Nujira, most recently U.K. Operations Director at Symbionics, where he had management and operations responsibility for engineering staff within the Wireless & Multimedia Division at the company’s two U.K. Design Centres. During his eleven year tenure at Symbionics, Haynes successfully founded and managed its highly successful Cellular Business Group, securing multiple multi-million dollar contracts with major blue-chip clients. Haynes holds a first-class honours degree in electrical & electronic engineering.
