Understanding LTE

Anritsu’s “Understanding LTE” guide contains a comprehensive overview of LTE technology and the testing issues it presents to both the engineer and the network operator. This 60-page guide provides an essential reference for engineers wanting to gain a better understanding of LTE.

LTE/SAE Introduction

Release 7 of 3GPP includes study items to introduce MIMO and 64QAM as transmission technologies to increase data rate of the air interface, and IMS phase 2 introduces all IP network capability. This will reach the practical limits in data rates and capacity for the existing 3G networks based on 5 MHz W-CDMA technology. Release 7 has been deployed as an upgrade for existing HSPA networks, and is sometimes called “HSPA+,” or “HSPA Evolution.” Beyond here W-CDMA is still evolving in Release 8 and later, using multi-carrier technologies to increase data rates and further improvements in signalling to increase data rates and reduce latency.

To move past the limitations of a 5 MHz W-CDMA system, 3GPP is now deploying a new standard for new mobile networks, and this is called the Long Term Evolution (LTE) and System Architecture Evolution (SAE) for next generation mobile networks. This is the next step in the continuous move to wider bandwidth and higher data rates. LTE and SAE are specified within 3GPP as part of the Release 8 version of specifications within the 36.xxx series of specifications. LTE will be a new "evolved" radio interface and access network (E-UTRAN – Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network), but will co-exist with W-CDMA (UTRAN) that will also continue to evolve within 3GPP. The overall description for LTE/SAE is in TS 36.300, and the architecture description is in TS 36.401. E-UTRAN will also further evolve in 3GPP Release 9, and then into IMT-Advanced as Release 10 & Release 11 for data rates towards 1 GB/s.