EV-DO Rev B

Taking EV-DO to the Next Level

EV-DO Revision B (Rev B) is an evolutionary step on the CDMA2000 roadmap, providing improved support for multimedia content, substantially improved packet data, and VoIP performance with minimal capital investment.

Many emerging alternative OFDM-based air interface technologies are under development. But these alternatives are primarily designed for wideband 10-20 MHz deployments in new spectrum. The standard for Rev B was published by the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) in 2006 and is very competitive with these emerging alternatives. Rev B offers backward compatibility, lower deployment cost, and a significant time-to-market advantage.

Rev B Benefits
Rev B extends EV-DO to multi-carrier operation by serving users simultaneously over multiple 1.25 MHz carriers. As a result, Rev B delivers a dramatically improved user experience as measured by user throughput and latency.

Superior Performance
By allowing user traffic to flow over more than one carrier, Rev B improves user data rates and transaction latencies, on both forward link and reverse link, in proportion to the number of carriers used. This is a dramatic improvement in user experience relative to a Rev A system.

Radio Access Network	Required Spectrum	Peak Forward Link Throughput	Peak Reverse Link Throughput
EV-DO Rev A (One carrier)	1.25 MHz	3.1 Mbps	1.8 Mbps
EV-DO Rev B (Two carriers)	2.50 MHz	6.2 Mbps	3.6 Mbps
EV-DO Rev B (Three carriers)	3.75 MHz	9.3 Mbps	5.4 Mbps

Low-cost Upgrade
EV-DO Rev A base station channel cards can be easily upgraded to Rev B, thereby protecting an operator’s Rev A hardware investment. In some cases, the entire upgrade to Rev B can be achieved without adding any new hardware. Existing base station channel cards and Radio Network Controllers (RNCs) can be upgraded in software, and base station radio transceivers in existing radio modules can be activated to support the new carriers. RNCs, such as those from Airvana that can be clustered using IP RAN technology, can meet the increased capacity needs of Rev B without introducing new EV-DO subnet boundaries. No changes are required to operators’ Packet Data Service Nodes (PDSNs), Home Agents (HAs), or other core network elements.

Backward Compatibility
Rev B carriers will continue to support older Rel 0 and Rev A devices. In addition, new Rev B handsets will continue to receive uninterrupted service from Rel 0 and Rev A networks. This will allow operators to roll out Rev B as needed in critical, high density and high performance markets supporting subscribers with high data ARPU.

Full QoS Support
EV-DO Rev A was specifically designed to support VoIP and multimedia applications. Rev B builds on that foundation and provides the same QoS capabilities in the RAN.

Flexible Device Support
Since Rev B is a multi-carrier air interface technology, a Rev B network has the flexibility to support both single-carrier and multi-carrier devices on the same spectrum. This means the operator can offer lowest-cost single-carrier handsets to its most cost-sensitive subscribers, while providing higher-end multi-carrier handsets, PDAs, and PC cards to serve the needs of its high-performance subscribers.

Non-contiguous Spectrum Configurations
Because available spectrum may often be non-contiguous, operators need the flexibility of using non-adjacent channels to improve performance. Rev B allows multiple carriers to be aggregated even if they are in non-adjacent or non-contiguous blocks of spectrum.[source]