Alcatel-Lucent's research arm, Bell Labs, in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz Institut, and antenna supplier Kathrein, has conducted the industrys first live field tests of Coordinated Multipoint Transmission (CoMP), a new technology that will increase data transmission rates and help ensure consistent service quality and throughput on Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 3G networks.
By coordinating and combining signals from multiple antennas, CoMP, will make it possible for mobile users to enjoy consistent performance and quality when they access and share videos, photos and other high-bandwidth services, whether they are close to the centre of an LTE cell, or at its outer edges.
The CoMP solution builds on Bell Labs research in wireless networking and takes advantage specifically of Network MIMO (Multiple Input-Multiple Output), a technique developed by Bell Labs that reduces interference and increases efficiency in wireless networks, by tightly coordinating the transmission and reception of signals at multiple access points. 
The live tests were carried out in Berlin as part of a joint research project sponsored by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) called Enablers for Ambient Services and Systems (EASY-C). These are the first ever live tests of a technique that had been extensively evaluated for introduction in wireless networks around the world, but not previously tested in the field.
Transmissions between mobile devices and base stations during the field tests made use of the 2.6 GHz frequency band, which is expected to be the predominant band for the introduction of commercial LTE services in Europe. Signals transmitted from mobile devices were received by two active remote radio heads deployed on two buildings located 500m from one another, then forwarded across an optical fibre link to a central unit comprising the modem and controller elements of an Alcatel-Lucent LTE base station (eNodeB). The signals were then combined with one another to increase the strength of the signal.
The configuration of this solution differs from that of basic MIMO primarily in the deployment and positioning of antennas. In MIMO, antennas involved in the solution are deployed on a single site. CoMP interconnects antennas deployed at a number of sites that are in proximity to one another. Tight coordination of the transmission and reception of signals at these multiple access points reduces interference and increases efficiency.
The results we have achieved with this new transmission technology are built on our world-leading multi-antenna wireless research, says Gee Rittenhouse, Head of Bell Labs Research. In the future, as LTE networks become widely deployed, we expect that CoMP will help enable our customers to meet the next wave of demand from users who expect to access all sorts of exciting high-bandwidth applications with their mobile phones.