T-Mobile and Vodafone launch research project to evaluate the future of wireless broadband technology

Bonn/Düsseldorf (Dresden), 12 July, 2007. T-Mobile and Vodafone have joined forces alongside the German government, German university partners and vendors to develop and trial new technologies capable of producing faster wireless broadband speeds for the future.

With 3G broadband services based on HSDPA available in numerous networks and countries around the globe, the mobile internet is here today. As the data traffic is facing an impressive growth, there is an increasing desire for wireless access anywhere, anytime. This leads to continued demand for increased capacity in mobile networks in the future.

The trial partners, with financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will evaluate ways to increase the throughput and capacity of future cellular networks.

The EASY-C (Enablers for Ambient Services and Systems Part C) project will look to optimise multi-antenna techniques and multi-cell cooperative techniques which lie at the heart of next-generation wireless broadband networks. The project includes field trials in Dresden and Berlin.

The project will seek to capitalise on research that aims to deliver higher spectral efficiencies and improved system performance by investigating relaying, interference coordination and cancellation. EASY-C will be the first project worldwide in which a prototype cellular network will be built to implement and trial these innovative techniques. This project will enable the verification of theoretical assumptions based on fundamental technologies.

The prototype network will include 10 base-station sites in downtown Dresden and will consist of 30 cells. In addition, a test bed for application oriented demonstrations driven by the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories will be installed in Berlin with 2 base-stations and 4 cells. Construction of the prototype network starts soon and will be ready for first field tests in 2008. It is expected that the EASY-C project will have a strong impact on future standardization activities.

In a unique way, the project brings together academics, silicon vendors, equipment manufacturers and operators to deliver a real world test environment where new technologies can be trialled. EASY-C is a research project financed by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), which will be jointly led by T-Mobile and Vodafone and coordinated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Fettweis at the Vodafone Chair Mobile Communications Systems, Technische Universität Dresden, in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) in Berlin. The project consortium includes 13 further industrial partners, semiconductor manufacturers, equipment suppliers, hardware & software tools providers and regulators. This project will support the German research community. The scientific results will determine Germanys leading role in technology for mobile communications.