SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) announced today that it has successfully developed the world’s first technology that removes the need for inter-cell handover, the main cause of  quality degradation in the small cell environment, under cooperation with Ericsson, a world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment and services. Named ‘Handover-Free Cell,’ the technology ensures improved cell system capacity and high quality voice/data transmission, even in cell boundary areas, through adaptive coordination between base station and mobile terminal, depending on the terminal location. When a terminal is located in a cell edge, multiple base stations adjacent to the terminal jointly transmit the same signal to it, thus removing the need for inter-cell handover.
 
The key enabling technology behind Handover-Free Cell is Transmission Mode 9 (TM-9), a core LTE-Advanced technology that SK Telecom and Ericsson demonstrated in January 2013, for the first time in the world. TM-9 defines the transmission between mobile devices and base stations.
 
As part of its ‘SUPER Cell’ strategy, launched to accelerate the next-generation network evolution, SK Telecom joined hands with Ericsson to begin developing the Handover-Free Cell technology in March 2013 at its Bundang Building. The company said that the technology has proven to improve the transmission rate by 1.5 to 2 times, and total cell system capacity by 5 to 10 percent. SK Telecom plans to apply the technology to its mobile network in the first half of 2014.
 
Furthermore, SK Telecom and Ericsson successfully developed and demonstrated, for the first time in the world, a technology called ‘Reduced-Power Subframe (RPS)’, which is an upgraded version of SK Telecom’s ‘enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination’ (eICIC), one of the core LTE-Advanced technologies. Although the eICIC technology was successful in reducing inter-cell interference, it has, in some cases, decreased cell system capacity. With RPS, unnecessary transmission power can be reduced without compromising capacity, resulting in dramatically reduced interference to terminals in small cells located inside of a Macro cell. Compared to eICIC, RPS improves cell system capacity by as much as 62 percent.
 
“SK Telecom is delighted to announce the successful development of Handover-Free Cell and Reduced-Power Subframe technologies achieved through aggressive efforts with Ericsson,” said Choi Jin-sung, Executive Vice President and Head of ICT R&D Division at SK Telecom. “With these technologies, SK Telecom is one step closer to realizing the vision of SUPER Cell, while securing a differentiated competitive edge in the global mobile market.”