DoCoMo steps up Super 3G plans

Japan’s first placed mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, said Tuesday that it has selected local vendors NEC and Fujitsu to deliver prototype and commercial equipment for the deployment of Super 3G.

Super 3G is DoCoMo’s own proposal for the evolution of 3G and has been submitted to the 3GPP working group for consideration as part of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard.

Fujitsu has been selected to develop and manufacture prototypes and commercial equipment for DoCoMo’s super 3G wireless base stations. The infrastructure will feature a multi-antenna system to improve transmission speeds as well as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) to split the bandwidth into multiple frequency channels to improve spectrum utilization efficiency and enable faster transmission.

NEC meanwhile will develop equipment for Super 3G handsets, with a view to delivering commercial devices in 2010.

Super 3G is expected to offer downlink transmission rates of over 100Mbps and uplink rates of over 50Mbps and is expected to provide an advanced environment for services such as high-speed video distribution as well as enable improved spectrum utilization.