An Introduction of

3GPP Long Term Evolution

(LTE)

Outline

History of 3GPP LTE

Basic Concepts of LTE
Introduction of LTE Protocol
Compare with LTE and LTE-Advanced
Conclusion

What is LTE ?
In Nov. 2004, 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership
Project) began a project to define the Long-Term
Evolution (LTE) of Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System (UMTS) cellular
technology
Higher performance
Backwards compatible
Wide applications

History of LTE
LTE is a standard for wireless data communications
technology and an evolution of the GSM/UMTS standards.
The goal of LTE was to increase the capacity and speed of
wireless data networks using new DSP (digital signal
processing) techniques and modulations.
A further goal was the redesign and simplification of the
network architecture to an IP-based system with
significantly reduced transfer latency compared to the 3G
architecture.
The LTE wireless interface is incompatible with 2G and 3G
networks, so that it must be operated on a separate wireless
spectrum.
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History of LTE(Contd)
LTE was first proposed by NTT DoCoMo of Japan
in 2004, and studies on the new standard officially
commenced in 2005.
The LTE standard was finalized in December 2008,
and the first publicly available LTE service was
launched by TeliaSonera in Oslo and Stockholm on
December 14, 2009 as a data connection with a
USB modem.
Samsung Galaxy Indulge being the worlds first
LTE smartphone starting on February 10, 2011.
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History of LTE(Contd)
Initially, CDMA operators planned to upgrade to
rival standards called UMB and WiMAX
But all the major CDMA operators (such as
Verizon, Sprint and MetroPCS in the United States,
Bell and Telus in Canada, au by KDDI in Japan,
SK Telecom in South Korea and China
Telecom/China Unicom in China) have announced
that they intend to migrate to LTE after all.
The evolution of LTE is LTE Advanced, which was
standardized in March 2011. Services are expected
to commence in 2013.
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Evolution of Radio Access

Technologies
802.16m
802.16d/e

LTE (3.9G) :
3GPP release 8~9
LTE-Advanced :
3GPP release 10+

LTE Basic Concepts

LTE employs Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiple Access (OFDMA) for downlink data
transmission and Single Carrier FDMA (SCFDMA) for uplink transmission
SC-FDMA is a new single carrier multiple access
technique which has similar structure and
performance to OFDMA
A salient advantage of SC-FDMA over OFDM is
the low Peak to Average Power (PAP) ratio :
Increasing battery life
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LTE Uplink (SC-FDMA)

Multi-Antenna Techniques

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Generic Frame Structure

Allocation of physical resource blocks (PRBs) is

handled by a scheduling function at the 3GPP base
station: Evolved Node B (eNodeB)

Frame 0 and frame 5 (always downlink)

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Generic Frame Structure (Contd)

DwPTS field: This is the downlink part of the

special subframe and its length can be varied from
three up to twelve OFDM symbols.
The UpPTS field: This is the uplink part of the
special subframe and has a short duration with one
or two OFDM symbols.
The GP field: The remaining symbols in the special
subframe that have not been allocated to DwPTS or
UpPTS are allocated to the GP field, which is used
to provide the guard period for the downlink-touplink and the uplink-to-downlink switch.
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Resource Blocks for OFDMA

One frame is 10 ms consisting of 10 subframes

One subframe is 1ms with 2 slots
One slot contains N Resource Blocks (6 < N < 110)

One Resource Block contains M subcarriers for

each OFDM symbol

The number of downlink resource blocks depends on the

transmission bandwidth.

The number of subcarriers in each resource block

depends on the subcarrier spacing f

The number of OFDM symbols in each block

depends on both the CP length and the subcarrier
spacing.
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LTE Spectrum (Bandwidth and

Duplex) Flexibility

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LTE Downlink Channels

The LTE radio interface, various "channels" are

used. These are used to segregate the different types
of data and allow them to be transported across the
radio access network in an orderly fashion.
Physical channels: These are transmission channels
that carry user data and control messages.
Transport channels: The physical layer transport
channels offer information transfer to Medium
Access Control (MAC) and higher layers.
Logical channels: Provide services for the Medium
Access Control (MAC) layer within the LTE protocol
structure.
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LTE Downlink Channels

Paging Control Channel

Paging Channel
Physical Downlink Shared Channel

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LTE Downlink Logical Channels

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LTE Downlink Logical Channels

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LTE Downlink Transport Channel

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LTE Downlink Transport Channel

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LTE Downlink Physical Channels

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LTE Downlink Physical Channels

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LTE Uplink Channels

Random Access Channel

CQI report
Physical Uplink Shared Channel
Physical Radio Access Channel
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LTE Uplink Logical Channels

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LTE Uplink Transport Channel

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LTE Uplink Physical Channels

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LTE Release 8 Key Features (1/2)

High spectral efficiency

OFDM in Downlink
SingleCarrier FDMA in Uplink
Very low latency
Short setup time & Short transfer delay
Short hand over latency and interruption time
Support of variable bandwidth
1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz

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LTE Release 8 Key Features (2/2)

Compatibility and interworking with earlier

3GPP
FDD and TDD within a single radio access
technology
Efficient Multicast/Broadcast

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Evolution of LTE-Advanced

Asymmetric transmission bandwidth

Layered OFDMA
Advanced Multi-cell Transmission/Reception
Techniques
Enhanced Multi-antenna Transmission Techniques
Support of Larger Bandwidth in LTE-Advanced

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Asymmetric Transmission
Bandwidth

Symmetric transmission

Voice transmission: UE to UE

Asymmetric transmission

Streaming video : the server to the UE (the downlink)

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Layered OFDMA

The bandwidth of basic frequency block is, 15 - 20

MHz
Layered OFDMA comprises layered transmission
bandwidth assignment (bandwidth is assigned to
match the required data rate), a layered control
signaling structure, and support for layered
environments for both the downlink and uplink.

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Coordinated Multi-Point
Transmission/Reception (CoMP)

The CoMP is one of the candidate techniques for

LTE-Advanced systems to increase the average cell
throughput and cell edge user throughput in the
both uplink and downlink.

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Enhanced Multi-Antenna
Transmission Techniques

In LTE-A, the MIMO scheme has to be further improved

in the area of spectrum efficiency, average cell through
put and cell edge performances
In LTE-A the antenna configurations of 8x8 in DL and
4x4 in UL are planned

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Enhanced Techniques to Extend

Coverage Area

Remote Radio Requirements (RREs) using optical

fiber should be used in LTE-A as effective technique
to extend cell coverage

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Support of Larger Bandwidth in

LTE-Advanced

Peak data rates up to 1Gbps are expected from

bandwidths of 100MHz. OFDM adds additional
sub-carrier to increase bandwidth

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LTE vs. LTE-Advanced

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Conclusion

LTE-A helps in integrating the existing networks,

new networks, services and terminals to suit the
escalating user demands
LTE-Advanced will be standardized in the 3GPP
specification Release 10 (LTE-A) and will be
designed to meet the 4G requirements as defined
by ITU

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