DOCOMO’s standardization activity

Japanese

As a continued effort in providing comfortable, safe and secure mobile network and services, DOCOMO is actively contributing to international standardization activities including 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).In this section, international standardization is explained generally, and also DOCOMO’s contributions and international standardization activities for future innovations are introduced.

What is standardization?

Standardization is an activity to establish a unified specification within an industry to enable interoperability among products manufactured by different manufacturers. In mobile communications industry, the scope of standardization covers spectrum, radio technologies, communication procedures, signal interfaces, etc.

As a result of standardization, any terminals all over the world can connect to networks in any country, enabling mobile communications around the world. Further, by adopting products based on the same specification, terminals and network equipment can be commonized globally, which is expected to reduce their prices.

Although there are multiple standardization organizations such as 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), we would like to introduce 3GPP which establishes cellular technologies’ specifications.

  • Articles on ITU and OMA in NTT DOCOMO Technical Journal.

What is 3GPP?

3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) was founded in December 1998 aimed to establish the third generation mobile communication systems (3G). It is headquartered in Sophia Antipolis, France. After completion of the standardization of 3G, Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE-Advanced and 5G was standardized, and currently, 5G Evolution and 6G are being standardized.

DOCOMO’s contribution to 3GPP

The following are some of DOCOMO’s contributions to 3GPP.

Contribution to standardized technical specifications

The following are activities aimed at improving safety and security, quality and higher-speed communication along with areas of contribution in the future.

  • Each link from the activity area will take you to related articles in Technical Journal.
Activity area DOCOMO’s contributions
Ensuring communications in the case of disasters
(Safety & Security)
DOCOMO contributed to establish the technical specification for a system to distinguish types of communications and assign them priorities in order to ensure critical communications such as calling emergency numbers (e.g. 110 and 119) in the case of disasters.
Emergency alert
(Safety & Security)
There are many natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. As a Japanese representative of Japanese mobile operator, DOCOMO contributed to establish the technical specification for a system (CBS and ETWS) as a platform to promptly send emergency alerts to people who might be affected.
Higher-speed & higher capacity
(LTE/LTE-Advanced)
DOCOMO proposed the concept of LTE, aiming at smooth migration to higher-speed and higher capacity mobile communications systems. Upon receiving supports from operators and manufactures over the world, DOCOMO led its standardization activities.
DOCOMO contributed to the establishment of a technical specification for LTE-Advanced, comprising carrier aggregation technologies, advance multi-antenna technologies, etc. to cope with further increase in mobile traffic.
Combined 3G/LTE mobility management
(LTE)
In order to provide LTE early, which enables higher rate packet communications comparing to 3G, DOCOMO contributed to the establishment of a technical specification for a system to allow continuous communications by switching back to 3G in case the LTE service area is not available.
Enhanced communications quality when moving at high velocity
(LTE)
DOCOMO reflected the discussion on the availability of LTE even in high-velocity transportation, such as bullet trains in Japan, and contributed to the establishment of a technical specification for continuous LTE packet communications when users move even at high velocities beyond several-hundred km/h.
Improvement of voice quality DOCOMO contributed to the establishment of a technical specification for Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) which provides communication’s voice quality closer to real voice than at initial VoLTE service.
Key technologies for 5G For 5G, DOCOMO is leading standardization in a large number of key technologies which enable higher data rates, lower latency and a larger number of connections than LTE/LTE-A. By collaborating with other operators, DOCOMO contributed to the promotion of overall 5G standardization.

Contribution to promotion of standardized technologies

DOCOMO patents the technical know-hows obtained through its standardization activities, and also licenses them in order to contribute to the spread of 3GPP-standardized specifications.

Intellectual Property

Technical Journal featuring standardization

The following are the Technical Journals featuring ‘standardization’.
For ‘higher data rates and higher capacity’, see the pages introducing corresponding technologies.

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