Evolution of LTE

Harsh Gupta#
#

Student, EXTC Department, MPSTME, NMIMS University, Mmbai, India

Abstract Mobile broadband is a reality today and is growing fast, as members of the internet generation grow accustomed to having broadband access wherever they go, and not just at home or in the office. The majority of these will be served by HSPA and LTE networks. LTE is continuously being developed to make sure that future requirements and scenarios are being met and prepared for in the best way. Mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to reach close to 5 billion by 2016 and around 90 percent of these subscriptions will involve the use of handheld devices. This paper involves a step towards the next generation of mobile communication which is the 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) or simply 4G. How it evolved from all the generations, this paper also includes how LTE offers ubiquitous coverage and roaming with existing 2G and 3G networks. Keywords HSPA, 3GPP, LTE, broadband, 2G, 3G.

The following graph shows the growth of commitment of companies towards LTE network as compared with HSPA+, HSDPA, HSUPA networks respectively, and confirms LTE as the fastest developing mobile system technology ever.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Long Term Evolution LTE describes the standard for the over the over-the-air (or airlink) component of mobile broadband. The 3GPP LTE system delivers capacity and data throughput enhancements and low latency, to support new services and features requiring higher levels of capability and performance. LTE is the next step in user experience, enhancing more demanding such as interactive TV, mobile video blogging, advanced gaming, and professional services. Data rates are significantly higher. LTE supports a full IP-based network and harmonization with other radio access technologies. LTE standardization covers FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division Duplex) modes. The uptake of LTE is a global phenomenon. The primary drive towards LTE from operators comes from the need for more network capacity, performance management and improved efficiencies to drive down the unit cost of delivering traffic. All 3G technologies can harmonize to LTE as a single unifying global standard, for even higher scale economies and simplifying roaming.

Fig 1: Network commitments for LTE

II.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The main aim of introducing LTE network is achieving reduced cost over per bit usage of data, increase in service provisioning i.e. more services at a lower cost with better user experience [3]. The major hurdle of using of existing frequency bands can overcome flexibly, simplify architecture and open interfaces and reasonable terminal power consumption [9]. Many attempts have been made to increase the peak data rates at 100Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink, to reduce Radio Access Network (RAN) latency to 10ms. Introducing LTE will improve spectrum efficiency (2 to 4 times as compared to other HSPA networks) [5]. Broadcasting will improve significantly.

We can use a scalable bandwidth of 20MHz, 15MHz, 10MHz, 5MHz, 3MHz and 1.4MHz [9]. III. SPECTRUM FOR LTE

and transport networks that are easier to build, maintain and introduce services on. IV. LTE TDD SYSTEMS

LTE can be deployed in existing 2G or 3G bands, and in new spectrum such as 2.6 GHz now being allocated in many regions, and the Digital Dividend bands (700 or 800 MHz depending on region). In the USA, LTE deployments are being made in 700 MHz spectrum and in existing AWS (1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum. There is strong demand in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to access new 800 MHz Digital Dividend spectrum for extended geographical coverage and improved in-building performance. The first commercial LTE800 services have launched in Germany for rural broadband services. There is also high interest in using re-farmed spectrum for LTE, e.g. 900, and particularly 1800 MHz bands as regulators adopt a technology-neutral approach. Initial deployments in Japan use 800 MHz, 1.5 GHz and 1.7 GHz (operator-dependant). LTE radio network products incorporate several features to simplify building and management of next-generation networks. Plug-and-play, selfconfiguration and self-optimization simplify and reduce network rollout and management cost. LTE will be deployed alongside simplified, IP-based core and transport networks that are easier to build, maintain and introduce services on. The following figure shows the different frequency bands used for LTE.

Most LTE commitments and deployments use the paired spectrum (FDD) mode. The LTE TDD mode for unpaired spectrum is complementary and valuable in several markets. LTE TDD provides a future-proof evolutionary path for TD-SCDMA, another 3GPP standard, which is widely deployed in China. LTE TDD is the perfect choice for providing high speed mobile broadband access in unpaired spectrum. It is an integral part of the 3GPP standards implementing a maximum of commonalities with LTE FDD and offering comparable performance characteristics with similarly high spectral efficiency. Within the globally assigned IMT bands for mobile (broadband) communication, significant spectrum resources are suitable for LTE TDD. The largest contiguous bands are at 2.3 GHz (100 MHz) and within the 2.6 GHz band (e.g. 50 MHz according to the CEPT band plan). Due to the recognized demand for radio technologies for unpaired bands and based on the commonalities, LTE TDD can exploit global economies of scale similar to LTE FDD, with a short time to market. V. LTE ADVANCED

LTE FDD and LTE TDD have a clear evolution towards LTE-Advanced which includes many features originally considered for the future ITU IMT-Advanced system. In October 2010 the ITU accepted and officially designated LTE-Advanced as an IMT-Advanced (4G) technology. Several LTE-Advanced test systems are operating or planned around the world. NTT DoCoMo is undertaking field experiments of LTE-Advanced in real radio environments in the cities of Yokosuka and Sagamihara. NTT DoCoMo has confirmed the performance of LTE-Advanced technologies using simulators in its R & D center, achieving transmission data rates of approximately 1 Gbps on the downlink and 200 Mbps on the uplink.

Fig 2: Frequency bands used for LTE

LTE radio network products incorporate several features to simplify building and management of next-generation networks. Plug-and-play, selfconfiguration and self-optimization simplify and reduce network rollout and management cost. LTE will be deployed alongside simplified, IP-based core

3GPP has published Release 10 of the standard (at the March 2011 Plenary meetings) and formally frozen the set of features for LTE-Advanced. The completion of Release 10 is the final step in the four year process to ensure that the 3GPP radio interface will meet the formal requirements of IMT-Advanced. As is the case with current work on HSPA Evolution (HSPA+), LTE work will continue beyond the current Release. It is a well proven method in 3GPP

that work is allowed to carry on, but is punctuated by a series of Releases, allowing the industry to make products and plan services from that point on. 3GPP is setting the Release 11 requirements during 2011, with its completion being scheduled for late 2012. Ericsson demonstrated a working version of LTEAdvanced to the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency in June 2011. Downlink speeds more than 10 x faster than todays LTE deployments were shown. 60MHz of aggregated spectrum was used, compared to 20 MHz maximum possible with the current LTE standard. Also 8x8 MIMO was used on the downlink. Nokia Siemens Networks demonstrated LTEAdvanced at CommunicAsia 2011 in Singapore. VI. TECHNICAL MERITS
Fig 3: A flat EPC network supporting multi-access technologies

A. Architecture In parallel with the LTE radio access, the packet core network is also evolving to a new flat IP-based multi-access core network. This new EPC network is designed to optimize network performance, improve cost-efficiency and facilitate the uptake of massmarket multimedia services. There are only two nodes in the EPS architecture user plane: the LTE base station (eNodeB) and the Packet Gateway, as shown in Figure 3. The LTE base stations are connected to the Packet Gateway using the Core Network-RAN interface, S1. LTE-EPC has adopted an effective class-based QoS concept. This provides a foundation for operators to offer service differentiation, depending on the type of subscription or application. B. OFDM radio technology LTE uses OFDM for the downlink that is, from the base station to the terminal. OFDM meets the LTE requirement for spectrum flexibility and enables cost-efficient solutions for very wide carriers with high peak rates. It is a well-established technology: for example, in standards such as IEEE 802.11a/b/g, 802.16, HIPERLAN-2, DVB and DAB. OFDM uses a large number of narrow sub-carriers for multi-carrier transmission. The basic LTE downlink physical resource can be seen as a timefrequency grid, as illustrated in Figure 3. In the frequency domain, the spacing between the subcarriers, f, is 15kHz. In addition, the OFDM symbol duration time is 1/f + cyclic prefix. The cyclic prefix is used to maintain orthogonally between the sub-carriers even for a time-dispersive radio channel.

The OFDM symbols are grouped into resource blocks. The resource blocks have a total size of 180 kHz in the frequency domain and 0.5ms in the time domain. Each user is allocated a number of so-called resource blocks in the time-frequency grid. The more resource blocks a user gets, and the higher the modulation used in the resource elements, the higher the bit rate. C. Advanced Antennas Advanced antenna solutions that have been introduced in HSPA Evolution are also used by LTE. Solutions incorporating multiple antennas meet nextgeneration mobile broadband network requirements for high peak data rates, extended coverage and extensive capacity. Advanced multi-antenna solutions are key in achieving these targets. There is no single antenna solution that addresses every scenario. Consequently, a family of antenna solutions is available for specific deployment scenarios. For instance, high peak data rates can be achieved with multi-layer antenna solutions such as 2x2 or 4x4 multiple-input, multipleoutput (MIMO), whereas extended coverage can be achieved with beam-forming. In LTE Release 10 the LTE downlink multi-antenna transmission capabilities are expanded to support spatial multiplexing with up to eight transmit antennas and eight corresponding transmission layers. VII. CONCLUSION

LTE is well positioned today, and is already meeting the requirements of next-generation mobile networks-both for existing 3GPP/3GPP2 operators.

It enables operators to offer high-performance, mass-market mobile broadband services, through a combination of high bit-rates and system throughput in both the uplink and downlink with low latency. LTE infrastructure is designed to be as simple as possible to deploy and operate, through flexible technology that can be deployed in a wide variety of frequency bands. LTE offers scalable bandwidths, from 1.4MHz up to 20MHz, together with support for both FDD paired and TDD unpaired spectrum. The LTE-SAE architecture reduces the number of nodes, supports flexible network configurations and provides a high level of service availability. Furthermore, LTE-SAE interoperates with GSM, WCDMA/HSPA, TD-SCDMA, MiFi and CDMA. Today LTE is already available in USB dongles, laptop/netbooks, smartphones, routers and tablets, and will soon be available through other devices that benefit from mobile broadband

VIII.
[1] [2]

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