DoCoMo trials "Super 3G"

Japan’s number one mobile operator NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is to beginning testing an experimental “super” 3G system.

The carrier hopes to achieve a downlink transmission rate of 300Mbps. This compares with current HSDPA deployments now at between 1.8 Mbps and 14.4Mbps.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is currently discussing standardization of Super 3G under the name Long Term Evolution (LTE).

Some dub the technology “4G” since it is an evolved version of High-Speed Packet Access, which in turn came from WCDMA packet transmission technologies standardised by the 3GPP.

The Japanese carrier will begin with an indoor experiment to test transmission speed using one transmitting and one receiving antenna.

The firm will then expand the experiment to examine downlink transmission by employing up to four Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas for both the base station (transmission side) and mobile station (receiving side).

DoCoMo expects to complete development of Super 3G technology by 2009.