LTE Solutions

Background

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G wireless broadband technology developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an industry trade group. 3GPP named the technology "Long Term Evolution" because it represents the next step (4G) in a progression from GSM, a 2G standard, to UMTS, the 3G technologies based upon GSM. LTE provides significantly increased peak data rates, with the potential for 100Mbps downstream and 50Mbps upstream, reduced latency, scalable bandwidth capacity, and backwards compatibility with existing GSM and UMTS technology.

The table below shows mobile data standards: The improved downlink data peak rate is around 4 times better compared to 3GPP release 7, the improved uplink data peak rate is around 5 times better compared to 3GPP release 7, and the improved round trip time is around 5 times better compared to 3GPP release 7.

Evolution Technology: The upper layers of LTE are based upon TCP/IP, which is an all-IP network similar to the current state of wired communications. LTE supports mixed types of data: text, voice, video and messaging traffic. LTE uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) for downlink access technique, SC-FDMA (Single Carrier- Frequency Division Multiple Access) for uplink access technique and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antenna technology similar to that used in the IEEE 802.11n wireless local area network (WLAN) standard. The higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver enabled by MIMO, along with OFDM, provides improved coverage and throughput, especially in dense urban areas.

Mobile operators can upgrade existing infrastructure to support LTE rather than start from scratch. As a 4G technology, LTE becomes increasingly important to mobile operators as the amount of data traffic on their networks grows.

Mobile Data Standards