LTE NOTES

Downlink peak 300mbs, Uplink 76mbs

o Transfer latency of less than 5ms
Supports scalable carrier bandwidths from 1.4 Mhz to 20 Mhz
o Frequency division duplexing and time division duplexing
Ip based network architecture Evolved Packet Core was designed to
replace the GPRS core network
o Supports voice and data to cell towers with older network tech
Much simpler architecture results in lower operating costs
Large amount of work is aimed to simplify the architecture of the
system, from UMTS circuit + packet switching to an all-IP flat
architecture system.
Support for all frequency bands currently used by IMT systems by ITU-R
Increased spectrum flexibility: 1.4 Mhz, 3,5,10,15 and 20 Mhz
Supports at least 200 active data clients in every 5 Mhz cell
Voice
LTE standard supports packet switching (all-Ip network)
o Voice calls in GSM, UMTS and CDMA2000 are circuit switched
Will need to be re-engineered (voice call network)
Which came with three different approaches
1. Voice over LTE
a. No dependency on the legacy circuit switched voice
network to be maintained. VoLTE has up to three times
more voice and data capacity than 3g umts.
2. Circuit switched fallback
a. LTE just provides data services and when a voice call is
to be initiated or received it will fall back to the circuit
switched domain.
i. When using this solution operators just need to
upgrade the MSC instead of deploying the IMS,
and therefore can provide services quickly but a
big disadvantage is longer call setup delay.
3. Simultaneous voice and LTE
a. With Lte mode providing data services and the circuit
switched mode providing the voice service.
i. Disadvantage of this solution is that the phone
can become expensive with high power
consumption

Enhanced voice quality- 3gpp demands at least AMR-NB codec (narrow

band) but the recommended speech codec for VoLTE is Adaptive MultiRate Wideband also known as HD voice
o This codec is mandated in 3GPP networks that support 16 khz
sampling
Frequency Bands- Covers a range of many bands which is designated
by both a frequency and a band number.
o North America 700,750,800,850,1900,1700/2100 (AWS)
o Canada 2500 and 2600 Mhz bands 4,7,12,13,17,25,26,41
o South America 2500 Mhz
o Europe 800,900,1800,2600 Mhz bands 3,7,20
o Asia 1800, 2600 Mhz bands 1,3,5,7,8,11,13,40
o Australia 1800 Mhz and 2300 Mhz
o New Zealand bands 3,40
Frequency and Bandwidth-Most of the bands are set up for
frequency division duplexing (FDD) which uses two separate bands for
uplink and downlink. (bands 1-28)
o Time division duplexing- bands 33 to 44 and the same
frequencies are used for both uplink and downlink
Modulation- Uses the orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM)
modulation scheme. Channel divides into many narrower subcarriers.
The spacing is such that the subcarriers are orthogonal.
o All subcarriers have a complete number of sine wave cycles
that upon demodulation will sum to zero.
The channel spacing is 15 khz. The symbol period
therefore is 1/15 khz = 66.7us
OFDM uses frequency and time to spread the data,
providing high speeds and greater signal reliability
Basic data rate through a 15 khz subcarrier channel is
15kbits/s.
Higher level modulations, higher data rates are
possible.
MME Mobility Management Entity(MME offload Engine)
SGW- Serving gateway(SGW offload engine
PGW- Packet data network gateway (PGW offload engine)
HSS- home subscriber servier
RAN-radio access network
IMS- Internet multimedia subsystems

LTE antenna system

Downlink MIMO
o Supports up to 4x4 MIMO in the DL (2x2 configuration for MIMO is
assumed as baseline configuration),uses four transmit antennas at
the node B to transmit orthogonal data streams to the four receive
antennas at the user equipment.
To be most effective, MIMO needs a high signal to noise ratio
at the UE and a rich scattering environment. High SNR
ensures that the UE is able to decode the incoming signal,
and a rich scattering environment ensures the orthogonality
of the multiple data streams.
Beamforming
o Increases the user data rates by focusing the transmit power in the
direction of the user, effectively increasing the received signal
strength at the UE.

System architecture evolution- is the core network architecture of

3gpps LTE wireless communication standard.
o Simplified architecture
o All ip network (AIPN)
o Support for multiple heterogeneous access networks, eutra(LTE and LTE advanced), 3gpp legacy systems, non-3gpp
systems
each e NodeB is a base station that controls the mobiles in one or
more cells. The base station that is communicating with a mobile is
known as its serving eNB.
o eBN sends and receives radio transmissions to all the mobiles
using the analogue and digital signal processing functions of
the LTE air interface.
o The eNB controls the low level operation of all its mobiles by
sending them signaling messages such as handover
commands

Each eBN connects with the EPC by means of the S1

interface and it can also be connected to nearby base
stations by the X2 interface, which is mainly used for
signaling and packet forwarding during handover.
A home eNB is a base station that has been purchased
by a user to provide femtocell coverage within the
home. A home eNB belongs to a closed subscriber
group CSG and can only be accessed by mobiles with a
USIM that also belongs to the closed subscriber group.
EPC Evolved Packet Core

Will serve as the equivalent GPRS networks(MME, Serving gateway

and PDN gateway subcomponents.) It communicates with the
packet data networks in the outside world such as the internet,
private corporate networks or the IP multimedia subsystem. The
interfaces between the different parts of the system are denoted
Uu, S1 and SGi as shown below:
o MME-Key control node for the LTE access network.
Responsible for Idle mode user equipment paging and
tagging procedure including retransmissions.
Its the termination point in the network for
ciphering/integrity protection for NAS signaling and
handles the security key management.
Also provides the control plane function for mobility
between LTE and 2g/3g access networks with the s3
interface terminating at the MME from the SGSN. The
MME also terminates the S6a interface towards the
home HSS for roaming UEs.
Significant part of the bearer
activation/deactivation process
User authentication through interaction with the
HSS
Selection of the SFW and PDN GW
Replication of the user traffic for lawful
interception applications
Mobility and interaction between the LTE and
2g/3g access networks
o Serving Gateway-routes and forwards user data packets,
while also acting as the mobility anchor for the user plane
during inter-eNodeB handovers and as the anchor for mobility
between LTE and other 3gpp tech.

o PDN Gateway-provides connectivity from the user

equipment(UE) to external packet data networks by being the
point of exit and entry of traffic for the UE.
o Home subscriber server-is a central database that contains
user-related and subscription related information.
o Access Network discovery and selection function.- provides
information to the UE about connectivity to 3gpp and non
3gpp access networks(such as wifi)
Purpose of the ANDSF is to assist the UE to discover the
access networks in their vicinity and to provide rules to
prioritize and manage connections to these networks.
o Evolved packet data gateway-main function of the epdg is to
secure the data transmission with a UE connected to the EPC
ver an untrusted non-3GPP access.
For this pupose the epdg acts as a termination node of
IPsec tunnels established with the UE.

o http://www.tutorialspoint.com/lte/lte_network_architec
ture.htm *****
o http://www.advantech.com/networkstelecom/ApplicationDetail.aspx?doc_id=%7BCE5126C0-EA214CDF-A45A-D8E364E60AC
o http://www.freescale.com/files/wireless_comm/doc/white_pap
er/LTEPTCLOVWWP.pdf
o http://www.rcrwireless.com/20140513/networkinfrastructure/lte/lte-network-architecture-diagram
o http://electronicdesign.com/4g/introduction-lte-advancedreal-4g
o http://www.academia.edu/5825829/LTE_fundamentals_and_sy
stem_architect
t