3GPP Long Term Evolution

3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), is the latest standard in the mobile network technology tree that previously realized the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSxPA network technologies.^[1] It is a project of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), operating under a name trademarked by one of the associations within the partnership, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

The current generation of mobile telecommunication networks are collectively known as 3G (for "third generation"). Although LTE is often marketed as 4G, first-release LTE is actually a 3.9G technology since it does not fully comply with the IMT Advanced 4G requirements. The pre-4G standard is a step towards LTE Advanced, a 4th generation standard (4G)^[2] of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks. LTE Advanced is backwards compatible with LTE and uses the same frequency bands, while LTE is not backwards compatible with 3G systems.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility in the United States and several worldwide carriers announced plans, beginning in 2009, to convert their networks to LTE. The world's first publicly available LTE-service was opened by TeliaSonera in the two Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo on the 14th of December 2009. LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) which was introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8. Much of 3GPP Release 8 focuses on adopting 4G mobile communication's technology, including an all-IP flat networking architecture. On August 18, 2009, the European Commission announced it will invest a total of €18 million into researching the deployment of LTE and 4G candidate system LTE Advanced.^[3]

While it is commonly seen as a mobile telephone or common carrier development, LTE is also endorsed by public safety agencies in the US^[4] as the preferred technology for the new 700 MHz public-safety radio band. Agencies in some areas have filed for waivers^[5] hoping to use the 700 MHz^[6] spectrum with other technologies in advance of the adoption of a nationwide standard.

Overview

The LTE specification provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least 50 Mbps and RAN round-trip times of less than 10 ms. LTE supports scalable carrier bandwidths, from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz and supports both frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD).

Part of the LTE standard is the System Architecture Evolution, a flat IP-based network architecture designed to replace the GPRS Core Network and ensure support for, and mobility between, some legacy or non-3GPP systems, for example GPRS and WiMax respectively.^[7]

The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD in the same platform, an improved end-user experience and a simple architecture resulting in low operating costs. LTE will also support seamless passing to cell towers with older network technology such as GSM, cdmaOne, UMTS, and CDMA2000. The next step for LTE evolution is LTE Advanced and is currently being standardized in 3GPP Release 10.

Current state

Much of the standard addresses upgrading 3G UMTS to 4G mobile communications technology, which is essentially a mobile broadband system with enhanced multimedia services built on top.

The standard includes:

• Peak download rates of 326.4 Mbit/s for 4x4 antennas, and 172.8 Mbit/s for 2x2 antennas (utilizing 20 MHz of spectrum).^[8]
• Peak upload rates of 86.4 Mbit/s for every 20 MHz of spectrum using a single antenna.^[8]
• Five different terminal classes have been defined from a voice centric class up to a high end terminal that supports the peak data rates. All terminals will be able to process 20 MHz bandwidth.
• At least 200 active users in every 5 MHz cell. (Specifically, 200 active data clients)
• Sub-5 ms latency for small IP packets
• Increased spectrum flexibility, with supported spectrum slices as small as 1.4 MHz and as large as 20 MHz (W-CDMA requires 5 MHz slices, leading to some problems with roll-outs of the technology in countries where 5 MHz is a commonly allocated amount of spectrum, and is frequently already in use with legacy standards such as 2G GSM and cdmaOne.) Limiting sizes to 5 MHz also limited the amount of bandwidth per handset
• In the 900 MHz frequency band to be used in rural areas, supporting an optimal cell size of 5 km, 30 km sizes with reasonable performance, and up to 100 km cell sizes supported with acceptable performance. In city and urban areas, higher frequency bands (such as 2.6 GHz in EU) are used to support high speed mobile broadband. In this case, cell sizes may be 1 km or even less.
• Good support for mobility. High performance mobile data is possible at speeds of up to 350 km/h, or even up to 500 km/h, depending on the frequency band used.^[9]
• Co-existence with legacy standards (users can transparently start a call or transfer of data in an area using an LTE standard, and, should coverage be unavailable, continue the operation without any action on their part using GSM/GPRS or W-CDMA-based UMTS or even 3GPP2 networks such as cdmaOne or CDMA2000)
• Support for MBSFN (Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network). This feature can deliver services such as Mobile TV using the LTE infrastructure, and is a competitor for DVB-H-based TV broadcast.

A large amount of the work is aimed at simplifying the architecture of the system, as it transits from the existing UMTS circuit + packet switching combined network, to an all-IP flat architecture system.

Timetable

• In early 2008, LTE test equipment began shipping from several vendors, and at the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona Ericsson demonstrated the world’s first end-to-end mobile call enabled by LTE on a small handheld device.^[10] Motorola demonstrated a LTE RAN standard compliant eNodeB and LTE chipset at the same event.
• In December 2008, the Rel-8 specification was frozen for new features meaning only essential clarifications and corrections were permitted.
• In January 2009, the ASN.1 code was frozen. The Rel-8 standard was complete enough that hardware designers had been designing chipsets, test equipment and base stations for some time. LTE standards development continues with 3GPP Release 9 which was frozen in December 2009. Updates to all 3GPP specifications are made every quarter and can be found at the 3GPP web site.
• On December 14, 2009, the world's first publicly available LTE service was opened by TeliaSonera in the two Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo.
• On February 10, 2010, AT&T U.S. announced its rollout of LTE service in 2011
• On May, 11, 2010. TeliaSonera, Telenor, 3 and TDC Network announce LTE roll out begin in Denmark, and expected that LTE service will be online in 1Q 2011.
• On May, 28, 2010. Russian operator Scartel announced to launch LTE network in Kazan by the end of the 2010.^[11]
• On June, 1, 2010. Thailand's National Telecommunications Commission announced it will hold an auction for LTE license to 3 mobile service providers in September 2010. LTE service will be online by 4Q 2010.
• On August, 30, 2010 «Scartel» launched LTE network in Kazan, but LTE network was closed (shut down) on the next day because of license absence.
• On August, 31, 2010, Kenya's Safaricom announced plans to roll out LTE technology within two months.
• In August 2010, Alcatel-Lucent and Texas Energy Network, LLC (TEN), a new startup founded by Gregory M. Casey, former Executive Vice President at Qwest Communications, successfully tested an LTE base station working over a range of 12km by simulating energy industry video and field operation activity. The tests were conducted within the Permian Basin, in the Artesian area of southeastern New Mexico.

An "All IP Network" (AIPN)

Next generation networks are based upon Internet Protocol (IP). See, for example, the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN).^[12]

In 2004, 3GPP proposed IP as the future for next generation networks and began feasibility studies into All IP Networks (AIPN). Proposals developed included recommendations for 3GPP Release 7 (2005),^[13] which are the foundation of higher level protocols such as LTE. These recommendations are part of the 3GPP System Architecture Evolution (SAE). Some aspects of All-IP networks, however, were already defined as early as release 4.^[14]

E-UTRAN Air Interface

E-UTRAN is the air interface of LTE. It's main features are:

• Peak download rates up to 292 Mbit/s and upload rates up to 71 Mbit/s depending on the user equipment category.
• Low data transfer latencies (sub-5ms latency for small IP packets in optimal conditions), lower latencies for handover and connection setup time than with previous radio access technologies.
• Support for terminals moving at up to 350 km/h or 500 km/h depending on the frequency band.
• Support for both FDD and TDD duplexes as well as half-duplex FDD with the same radio access technology
• Support for all frequency bands currently used by IMT systems by ITU-R.
• Flexible bandwidth: 1.4 MHz, 3 MHz, 5 MHz 15 MHz and 20 MHz are standardized.
• Support for cell sizes from tenths of metres radius (femto and picocells) up to 100 km radius macrocells
• Simplified architecture: The network side of EUTRAN is composed only by the enodeBs
• Support for inter-operation with other systems (e.g. GSM/EDGE, UMTS, CDMA2000, WiMAX...)
• Packet switched radio interface.

Technology demonstrations

• In September 2006, Siemens Networks (today Nokia Siemens Networks) showed in collaboration with Nomor Research the first live emulation of an LTE network to the media and investors. As live applications two users streaming an HD-TV video in the downlink and playing an interactive game in the uplink have been demonstrated.^[15]
• The first presentation of an LTE demonstrator with HDTV streaming (>30 Mbit/s), video supervision and Mobile IP-based handover between the LTE radio demonstrator and the commercially available HSDPA radio system was shown during the ITU trade fair in Hong Kong in December 2006 by Siemens Communication Department.
• In February 2007, Ericsson demonstrated for the first time in the world LTE with bit rates up to 144 Mbit/s^[16]
• In September 2007, NTT docomo demonstrated LTE data rates of 200 Mbit/s with power consumption below 100 mW during the test.^[17]
• In November 2007, Infineon presented the world’s first RF transceiver named SMARTi LTE supporting LTE functionality in a single-chip RF silicon processed in CMOS ^[18][19]
• At the February 2008 Mobile World Congress:
  • Huawei demonstrated Long Term Evolution ("LTE") applications by means of multiplex HDTV services and mutual gaming that has transmission speeds of 100 Mbps.
  • Motorola demonstrated how LTE can accelerate the delivery of personal media experience with HD video demo streaming, HD video blogging, Online gaming and VoIP over LTE running a RAN standard compliant LTE network & LTE chipset.^[20]
  • Ericsson EMP (now ST-Ericsson) demonstrated the world’s first end-to-end LTE call on handheld^[10] Ericsson demonstrated LTE FDD and TDD mode on the same base station platform.
  • Freescale Semiconductor demonstrated streaming HD video with peak data rates of 96 Mbit/s downlink and 86 Mbit/s uplink.^[21]
  • NXP Semiconductors (now a part of ST-Ericsson) demonstrated a multi-mode LTE modem as the basis for a software-defined radio system for use in cellphones.^[22]
  • picoChip and Mimoon demonstrated a base station reference design. This runs on a common hardware platform (multi-mode / software defined radio) with their WiMAX architecture.^[23]
• In April 2008, Motorola demonstrated the first EV-DO to LTE hand-off - handing over a streaming video from LTE to a commercial EV-DO network and back to LTE.^[24]
• In April 2008, LG Electronics and Nortel demonstrated LTE data rates of 50 Mbit/s while travelling at 110 km/h.^[25]
• In April 2008 Ericsson unveiled its M700 mobile platform, the world’s first commercially available LTE-capable platform, with peak data rates of up to 100 Mbit/s in the downlink and up to 50 Mbit/s in the uplink. The first products based on M700 will be data devices such as laptop modems, Expresscards and USB modems for notebooks, as well other small-form modems suitable for consumer electronic devices. Commercial release is set for 2009, with products based on the platform expected in 2010.
• In November 2008 Motorola demonstrated industry first over-the-air LTE session in 700 MHz spectrum.^[26]
• Researchers at Nokia Siemens Networks and Heinrich Hertz Institut have demonstrated LTE with 100 Mbit/s Uplink transfer speeds.^[27]
• At the February 2009 Mobile World Congress:
  • Huawei demonstrated the world' s first unified frequency-division duplex and time-division duplex (FDD/TDD) long-term evolution (LTE) solution.
  • Aricent gave a demonstration of LTE eNodeB layer2 stacks.
  • Setcom Streaming a Video ^[28]
  • Infineon demonstrated a single-chip 65 nm CMOS RF transceiver providing 2G/3G/LTE functionality^[29]
  • Launch of ng Connect program, a multi-industry consortium founded by Alcatel-Lucent to identify and develop wireless broadband applications.^[30]
  • Motorola provided LTE drive tour on the streets of Barcelona to demonstrate LTE system performance in a real-life metropolitan RF environment ^[31]
• In May 2009 Setcom Streaming HD Video at GSMA MWC and LTE World Summit
• In July 2009 Nujira demonstrated efficiencies of more than 60% for an 880 MHz LTE Power Amplifier^[32]
• In August 2009, Nortel and LG Electronics demonstrated the first successful handoff between CDMA and LTE networks in a standards-compliant manner ^[33]
• In August 2009, Alcatel-Lucent receives FCC certification for LTE base stations for the 700 MHz spectrum band.^[34]
• In September 2009, Nokia Siemens Networks demonstrated world's first LTE call on standards-compliant commercial software.^[35]
• In October 2009, Ericsson and Samsung demonstrated interoperability between the first ever commercial LTE device and the live network in Stockholm, Sweden.^[36]
• In October 2009, Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz Institut and antenna supplier Kathrein conducted live field tests of a technology called Coordinated Multipoint Transmission (CoMP) aimed at increasing the data transmission speeds of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 3G networks.^[37]
• In November 2009, Alcatel-Lucent completed first live LTE call using 800 MHz spectrum band set aside as part of the European Digital Dividend (EDD).^[38]
• In November 2009, Nokia Siemens Networks and LG completed first end-to-end interoperability testing of LTE.^[39]
• On December 14, 2009, the first commercial LTE deployment was in the Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo by the Swedish-Finnish network operator TeliaSonera and its Norweigan brandname NetCom (Norway). TeliaSonera incorrectly branded the network "4G". The modem devices on offer were manufactured by Samsung (dongle GT-B3710), and the network infrastructure created by Huawei (in Oslo) and Ericsson (in Stockholm). TeliaSonera plans to roll out nationwide LTE across Sweden, Norway and Finland.^[40] TeliaSonera used spectral bandwidth of 10 MHz (out of the maximum 20 MHz), and Single-Input and Single-Output transmission. The deployment should have provided a physical layer net bitrates of up to 50 Mbit/s downlink and 25 Mbit/s in the uplink. Introductory tests showed a TCP goodput of 42.8 Mbit/s downlink and 5.3 Mbit/s uplink in Stockholm.^[41]
• In December 2009, ST-Ericsson and Ericsson first to achieve LTE and HSPA mobility with a multimode device.^[42]
• In January 2010, Alcatel-Lucent and LG complete a live handoff of an end-to-end data call between Long Term Evolution (LTE) and CDMA networks.^[43]
• In February 2010, Nokia Siemens Networks and Vodafone Italy complete the first LTE call in Italy. The test was undertaken with commercial hardware and software. During the call a throughput of about 70 Mbit/s downlink and 19 Mbit/s uplink have been reached.
• In February 2010, Nokia Siemens Networks and Movistar test the LTE in Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain, with both indoor and outdoor demonstrations.^[44]
• In May 2010, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) and Huawei showed an indoor LTE network at "Sviaz-Expocomm 2010" in Moscow, Russia.^[45] MTS expects to start a trial LTE service in Moscow by the beginning of 2011. Earlier, MTS has received a license to build a LTE network in Uzbekistan, and intends to commence a test LTE network in Ukraine in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent.
• At the Shanghai Expo 2010 in May 2010, Motorola demonstrated a live LTE in conjunction with China Mobile. This included video streams and a drive test system using TD-LTE.^[46]

Carrier adoption

Most carriers supporting GSM or HSUPA networks can be expected to upgrade their networks to LTE at some stage:

• The world's first publicly available LTE-service was opened by TeliaSonera in the two Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo on the 14th of December 2009
• In January 2009 TeliaSonera signed a contract for an LTE network with Huawei covering Oslo, Norway. Under the agreement, Huawei will provide an end-to-end LTE solution including LTE base stations, core network and OSS (Operating Support System). The Huawei contract was cancelled in January 2010 and a new contract was signed with Ericsson.
• AT&T Mobility has stated that they intend on upgrading to LTE as their 4G technology in 2011, but will introduce HSUPA and HSPA+ as bridge standards.^[47]
• In January 2009 Ericsson and TeliaSonera announced the signing of a commercial LTE network. The roll-out of the 4G mobile broadband network will offer the highest data rates ever realized, with the best interactivity and quality. This network will cover Sweden’s capital Stockholm and the contract is Ericsson’s first for commercial deployment of LTE.
• T-Mobile, Vodafone, France Télécom and Telecom Italia Mobile have also announced or talked publicly about their commitment to LTE.
• In August 2009 Telefónica selected six countries to field-test LTE in the succeeding months: Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Czech Republic in Europe, and Brazil and Argentina in Latin America.^[48]
• On November 24th, 2009 Telecom Italia announced ^[49] the first outdoor pre-commercial experimentation in the world, deployed in Torino and totally integrated into the 2G/3G network currently in service.
• The Dutch telecom provider KPN announced that it will use LTE for its 4G network.^[50]
• AlMadar Aljadeed, the biggest Libyan mobile phone operator, has announced that it will be adopting the LTE technology passing straight from 2G technology to 4G.^[51]
• The Belgian telecom provider Telenet has announced that it will be testing LTE on specific locations.^[52] The Belgian telecom provider Belgacom will be preparing their network for LTE.^[53]
• On March 18, 2010 Australian telecommunications carrier Telstra announced LTE trials lasting six months involving Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens beginning in May 2010 ^[54]

Despite initial development of the rival UMB standard, which was designed as an upgrade path for CDMA networks, most operators of networks based upon the latter system have also announced their intent to migrate to LTE, resulting in discontinuation of UMB development.

• Verizon Wireless completed its first test LTE data calls in August 2009 and plans to deploy LTE beginning in 2010 with system-wide deployment completed in 2013.^[55]
• Bell Mobility has stated their intention to use LTE as a future upgrade to their HSPA+ network.^[56]
• Telus Mobility has announced that it will adopt LTE as its 4G wireless standard.^[57]
• MetroPCS recently announced that it would be using LTE for its upcoming 4G network.^[58]
• The newly formed China Telecom/China Unicom^[59] and Japan's KDDI^[60] have announced they have chosen LTE as their 4G network technology.

Some newcomers to the mobile phone market are or will be using LTE for their networks.

• Cox Communications has its first tower for wireless LTE network build-out.^[61] Wireless services should launch late 2009.
• The Irish telco Digiweb is currently operating a 4G service in the Dublin area. It shall be noted though that Digiweb employs Flash-OFDM technology and not LTE.
• Zain KSA Telecom Company has announced its plans to "build the largest 4G network in the globe" when it signed on Sunday Feb. 14 2010, at its HQ office, an agreement with three global giants in the provision of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE): Motorola, Ericsson and Huawei.The agreement covered the implementation of phase one of the 4G LTE covering 4 major cities: Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Al-Khobar.^[62]
• Maxis Communications Malaysia is currently testing LTE with its technology partners, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei demonstrated an LTE connection with peak download speed of 60 and 104Mbps, using both 10Mhz and 20Mhz bandwidth channels.^[63]
• Sprint Nextel On July 13, 2010 announced possibly constructing their own LTE network despite already using WiMAX as their 4G standard.^[64]
• Mobyland On September 8, 2010 launched first three LTE base stations in Poland. [3]</ref>

See also

• E-UTRA
• LTE Advanced
• System Architecture Evolution
• WiMax
• Zadoff–Chu sequence
• Flat IP - Flat IP Architectures in Mobile Networks

References

Further reading

• Chris Johnson, "LTE in BULLETS", CreateSpace, 2010, ISBN 978-1452834641
• Erik Dahlman, Stefan Parkvall, Johan Sköld, Per Beming, "3G Evolution - HSPA and LTE for Mobile Broadband", 2nd edition, Academic Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-12-374538-5
• Stefania Sesia, Issam Toufik, and Matthew Baker, "LTE - The UMTS Long Term Evolution - From Theory to Practice", John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-69716-0
• Borko Furht, Syed A. Ahson, "Long Term Evolution: 3GPP LTE Radio And Cellular Technology", Crc Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4200-7210-5
• F. Khan, "LTE for 4G Mobile Broadband - Air Interface Technologies and Performance", Cambridge University Press, 2009
• Mustafa Ergen, "Mobile Broadband - Including WiMAX and LTE", Springer, NY, 2009
• H. Ekström, A. Furuskär, J. Karlsson, M. Meyer, S. Parkvall, J. Torsner, and M. Wahlqvist, "Technical Solutions for the 3G Long-Term Evolution," IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 44, no. 3, March 2006, pp. 38–45
• E. Dahlman, H. Ekström, A. Furuskär, Y. Jading, J. Karlsson, M. Lundevall, and S. Parkvall, "The 3G Long-Term Evolution - Radio Interface Concepts and Performance Evaluation," IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) 2006 Spring, Melbourne, Australia, May 2006
• K. Fazel and S. Kaiser, Multi-Carrier and Spread Spectrum Systems: From OFDM and MC-CDMA to LTE and WiMAX, 2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-99821-2
• Agilent Technologies, "LTE and the Evolution to 4G Wireless: Design and Measurement Challenges", John Wiley & Sons, 2009 ISBN 978-0-470-68261-6
• Sajal Kumar Das, John Wiley & Sons (April 2010): "Mobile Handset Design", ISBN 978-0470824672 .

External links

• LTE homepage from the 3GPP website
• Linkedin.com, Public LTE Discussion Forum]

Industry reaction

• "Mobile Broadband: The Global Evolution of UMTS/HSPA - 3GPP Release 7 and Beyond" by 3G Americas
• Experience LTE by Motorola
• Verizon Wireless Global LTE Deployment Plans

Whitepapers and other information