Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 4

With the standards definitions

the 3G services, eyes are now


truly 4G technology named IMT
r the auspices of 3GPP to meet

now available for LTE, the Long Term Evolution of


turning towards the next development, that of the
Advanced. The new technology being developed unde
these requirements is often termed LTE Advanced.

In order that the cellular telecommunications technology is able to keep pace wi


th technologies that may compete, it is necessary to ensure that new cellular te
chnologies are being formulated and developed. This is the reasoning behind star
ting the development of the new LTE Advanced systems, proving the technology and
developing the LTE Advanced standards.

Typical cellphone handsets that can operate on a 4G LTE-Advanced network


In order that the correct solution is adopted for the 4G system, the ITU-R (Inte
rnational Telecommunications Union - Radiocommunications sector) has started its
evaluation process to develop the recommendations for the terrestrial component
s of the IMT Advanced radio interface. One of the main competitors for this is t
he LTE Advanced solution.
One of the key milestones is October 2010 when the ITU-R decides the framework a
nd key characteristics for the IMT Advanced standard. Before this, the ITU-R wil
l undertake the evaluation of the various proposed radio interface technologies
of which LTE Advanced is a major contender.
Key milestones for ITU-R IMT Advanced evaluation
The ITU-R has set a
vanced technologies
is given below and
ent of IMT Advanced
s to be evaluated.

number of milestones to ensure that the evaluation of IMT Ad


occurs in a timely fashion. A summary of the main milestones
this defines many of the overall timescales for the developm
and in this case LTE Advanced as one of the main technologie

Key Milestones on the Development of 4G LTE-Advanced


Milestone
Date
Issue invitation to propose Radio Interface Technologies. March 2008
ITU date for cut-off for submission of proposed Radio Interface Technologies. O
ctober 2009
Cutoff date for evaluation report to ITU. June 2010
Decision on framework of key characteristics of IMT Advanced Radio Interface Tec
hnologies. October 2010
Completion of development of radio interface specification recommendations. Feb
ruary 2011
LTE Advanced development history
With 3G technology established, it was obvious that the rate of development of c
ellular technology should not slow. As a result initial ideas for the developmen
t of a new 4G system started to be investigated. In one early investigation whic
h took place on 25 December 2006 with information released to the press on 9 Feb

ruary 2007, NTT DoCoMo detailed information about trials in which they were able
to send data at speeds up to approximately 5 Gbit/s in the downlink within a 10
0MHz bandwidth to a mobile station moving at 10km/h. The scheme used several tec
hnologies to achieve this including variable spreading factor spread orthogonal
frequency division multiplex, MIMO, multiple input multiple output, and maximum
likelihood detection. Details of these new 4G trials were passed to 3GPP for the
ir consideration
In 2008 3GPP held two workshops on IMT Advanced, where the "Requirements for Fur
ther Advancements for E-UTRA" were gathered. The resulting Technical Report 36.9
13 was then published in June 2008 and submitted to the ITU-R defining the LTE-A
dvanced system as their proposal for IMT-Advanced.
The development of LTE Advanced / IMT Advanced can be seen to follow and evoluti
on from the 3G services that were developed using UMTS / W-CDMA technology.

Comparison of LTE-A with other Cellular Technologies

WCDMA
(UMTS)
HSPA
HSDPA / HSUPA
HSPA+
LTE
LTE Advanced
(IMT Advanced)
Max downlink speed
bps 384 k 14 M 28 M 100M 1G
Max uplink speed
bps 128 k 5.7 M 11 M 50 M 500 M
Latency
round trip time
approx 150 ms 100 ms 50ms (max) ~10 ms less than 5 ms
3GPP releases Rel 99/4 Rel 5 / 6 Rel 7 Rel 8 Rel 10
Approx years of initial roll out 2003 / 4 2005 / 6 HSDPA
2007 / 8 HSUPA 2008 / 9 2009 / 10 2014 / 15
Access methodology CDMA CDMA CDMA OFDMA / SC-FDMA OFDMA / SC-FDMA
LTE Advanced is not the only candidate technology. WiMAX is also there, offering
very high data rates and high levels of mobility. However it now seems less lik
ely that WiMAX will be adopted as the 4G technology, with LTE Advanced appearing
to be better positioned.
LTE Advanced key features
With work starting on LTE Advanced, a number of key requirements and key feature
s are coming to light. Although not fixed yet in the specifications, there are m
any high level aims for the new LTE Advanced specification. These will need to b

e verified and much work remains to be undertaken in the specifications before t


hese are all fixed. Currently some of the main headline aims for LTE Advanced ca
n be seen below:
1.Peak data rates: downlink - 1 Gbps; uplink - 500 Mbps.
2.Spectrum efficiency: 3 times greater than LTE.
3.Peak spectrum efficiency: downlink - 30 bps/Hz; uplink - 15 bps/Hz.
4.Spectrum use: the ability to support scalable bandwidth use and spectrum aggre
gation where non-contiguous spectrum needs to be used.
5.Latency: from Idle to Connected in less than 50 ms and then shorter than 5 ms
one way for individual packet transmission.
6.Cell edge user throughput to be twice that of LTE.
7.Average user throughput to be 3 times that of LTE.
8.Mobility: Same as that in LTE
9.Compatibility: LTE Advanced shall be capable of interworking with LTE and 3GPP
legacy systems.
These are many of the development aims for LTE Advanced. Their actual figures an
d the actual implementation of them will need to be worked out during the specif
ication stage of the system.
LTE Advanced technologies
There are a number of key technologies that will enable LTE Advanced to achieve
the high data throughput rates that are required. MIMO and OFDM are two of the b
ase technologies that will be enablers. Along with these there are a number of o
ther techniques and technologies that will be employed.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex, OFDM OFDM forms the basis of the radio
bearer. Along with it there is OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Ac
cess) along with SC-FDMA (Single Channel Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access). These will be used in a hybrid format. However the basis for all of the
se access schemes is OFDM.

Note on OFDM:
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) is a form of transmission that us
es a large number of close spaced carriers that are modulated with low rate data
. Normally these signals would be expected to interfere with each other, but by
making the signals orthogonal to each other there is no mutual interference. The
data to be transmitted is split across all the carriers to give resilience agai
nst selective fading from multi-path effects..
Click on the link for an OFDM tutorial
Multiple Input Multiple Output, MIMO: One of the other key enablers for LTE Adv
anced that is common to LTE is MIMO. This scheme is also used by many other tech
nologies including WiMAX and Wi-Fi - 802.11n. MIMO - Multiple Input Multiple Out
put enables the data rates achieved to be increased beyond what the basic radio
bearer would normally allow.

Note on MIMO:
Two major limitations in communications channels can be multipath interference,
and the data throughput limitations as a result of Shannon's Law. MIMO provides
a way of utilising the multiple signal paths that exist between a transmitter an

d receiver to significantly improve the data throughput available on a given cha


nnel with its defined bandwidth. By using multiple antennas at the transmitter a
nd receiver along with some complex digital signal processing, MIMO technology e
nables the system to set up multiple data streams on the same channel, thereby i
ncreasing the data capacity of a channel.
Click on the link for a MIMO tutorial
For LTE Advanced, the use of MIMO is likely to involve further and more advance
d techniques including the use of additional antennas in the matrix to enable ad
ditional paths to be used, although as the number of antennas increases, the ove
rhead increases and the return per additional path is less.
In additional to the numbers of antennas increasing, it is likely that techniqu
es such as beamforming may be used to enable the antenna coverage to be focused
where it is needed.
Carrier Aggregation, CA: As many operators do not have sufficient contiguous sp
ectrum to provide the required bandwidths for the very high data rates, a scheme
known as carrier aggregation has been developed. Using this technology operator
s are able to utilise multiple channels either in the same bands or different ar
eas of the spectrum to provide the required bandwidth. Read more about Carrier A
ggregation, CA
Coordinated Multipoint : One of the key issues with many cellular systems is th
at of poor performance at the cell edges. Interference from adjacent cells along
with poor signal quality lead to a reduction in data rates. For LTE-Advanced a
scheme known as coordinated multipoint has been introduced. Read more about Coor
dinated Multipoint, CoMP
LTE Relaying: LTE relaying is a scheme that enables signals to be forwarded by
remote stations from a main base station to improve coverage. Read more about LT
E Relaying
Device to Device, D2D: LTE D2D is a facility that has been requested by a numbe
r of users, in particular the emergency services. It enables fast swift access v
ia direct communication - a facility that is essential for the emergency service
s when they may be on the scene of an incident. Read more about Device to Device
communications
With data rates rising well above what was previously available, it will be nece
ssary to ensure that the core network is updated to meet the increasing requirem
ents. It is therefore necessary to further improve the system architecture.
These and other technologies will be used with LTE Advanced to provide the very
high data rates that are being sought along with the other performance character
istics that are needed.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi