China Mobile and SK Telecom have successfully completed a joint TD-LTE (LTE TDD) field trial that started last August. The objective of the trial is to verify the functionality and performance of TD-LTE with pre-commercial equipments in real over-the-air network.

The first and second phases of China Mobile-SK Telecom joint trial were focused on lab and small scale field test and had been completed successfully in January and May 2009 respectively. The third phase, i.e., the field trial, started from July 2010 in Seongnam, a small city near Seoul, South Korea. Over 50 test cases were defined to verify what performance can be achieved and what user experience TD-LTE will bring to customers in real scenarios.

The trials attained average cell throughput (10MHz system bandwidth) with a downlink average cell throughput of 14.6Mbps (spectral efficiency: 2.69bps/Hz), while uplink average cell throughput was 6.2Mbps (spectral efficiency: 1.55bps/Hz), both meeting NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) requirements.

Latency: Measured end-to-end latency with both pre-scheduled and non-scheduled cases can meet 3GPP and NGMN targets. Inter-eNB and intra-eNB handovers were demonstrated in the field, the success rate being 100% and data interruption time of around 30ms, meeting 3GPP and NGMN requirements.

Basic QoS: TD-LTE supporting GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) and Non-GBR services was verified and dynamically change of service priority is proved.

The testing results showed that the expected TD-LTE performance is satisfying and the industry requirements can be met. The companies did\'t outline details of any future trials though.