LTE Advanced

What’s new in LTE-Advanced

In the feasibility study for LTE-Advanced, 3GPP determined that LTE-Advanced would meet the ITU-R requirements for 4G. The results of the study are published in 3GPP Technical Report (TR) 36.912. Further, it was determined that 3GPP Release 8 LTE could meet most of the 4G requirements apart from uplink spectral efficiency and the peak data rates. These higher requirements are addressed with the addition of the following LTE-Advanced features:

  • Wider bandwidths, enabled by carrier aggregation
  • Higher efficiency, enabled by enhanced uplink multiple access and enhanced multiple antenna transmission (advanced MIMO techniques)
  • Coordinated multipoint transmission and reception (CoMP)
  • Relaying
  • Support for heterogeneous networks
  • LTE self-optimizing network (SON) enhancements
  • Home enhanced-node-B (HeNB) mobility enhancements
  • Fixed wireless customer premises equipment (CPE) RF requirements

    • System Performance Requirements

Spectrum flexibility

In addition to the bands currently defined for LTE Release 8, TR 36.913 identifies the following new bands:

  • 450–470 MHz band
  • 698–862 MHz band
  • 790–862 MHz band
  • 2.3–2.4 GHz band
  • 3.4–4.2 GHz band
  • 4.4–4.99 GHz band

Some of these bands are now formally included in the 3GPP Release 9 and Release 10 specifications. Note that frequency bands are considered release independent features, which means that it is acceptable to deploy an earlier release product in a band not defined until a later release.

LTE Advanced is designed to operate in spectrum allocations of different sizes, including allocations wider than the 20 MHz in Release 8, in order to achieve higher performance and target data rates. Although it is desirable to have bandwidths greater than 20 MHz deployed in adjacent spectrum, the limited availability of spectrum means that aggregation from different bands is necessary to meet the higher bandwidth requirements. This option has been allowed for in the IMT-Advanced specifications.

SAI LTE-Advanced Development

SAI is heavily invested in developing complete LTE solution for 3GPP LTE Release 10 and beyond (LTE Advanced). The areas of enhancements are based on current solutions described in LTE UE and eNodeB. The EPC cores are being upgraded to support full system validation based on solutions described in LTE EPC page.

Following are snapshot of developments

LTE UE

  • LTE PHY
  • LTE Protocol Stack
  • Complete Reference Platform

LTE eNodeB

  • LTE PHY
  • LTE Protocol Stack
  • Complete Reference Platform

LTE EPC

  • MME
  • S-GW
  • P-GW