Introduction

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The evolution of UMTS is termed Evolved Packet System (EPS).

In more detail, the evolution of the 3GPP radio technology is being specified under the
name Long Term Evolution (LTE). The Evolved Packet Core (EPC) describes the
non-RAN aspects of the system.

EPS = LTE + EPC

EPS: Evolved Packet System (describes evolution of UMTS)
LTE: Long Term Evolution (describes the new radio access technology)
EPC: Evolved Packet Core

LTE/EPC is the 3GPP system for the years 2010 to 2020 and beyond.
LTE/EPC shall be ready for commercial launch around 2010.
The motivation of LTE/EPC is mainly driven by the need to stay competitive. In order
to be future-proof, UMTS shall be evolving towards a true mobile broadband packet
access system. In many aspects it will be superior compared with existing 3G
alternatives.

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Fully packet-oriented mobile broadband network providing:

- Peak data rates of 100 Mbps (DL) and 50 Mbps (UL)
- Very low latency
- Seamless and lossless handover
- Sophisticated QoS to support important real time applications such as voice, video
and interactive gaming
- Support for terminal speeds of 150-500 Km/h and cell ranges of up to 100 Km.
- Reduced cost per bit:
LTE/EPC deploys a simplified architecture and open interfaces. It is full IP-based and
uses IP transport. In this way it utilizes low-cost equipment and infrastructure.
Additionally this contributes to reduction of operational costs. Further sophisticated
features like self-configuration / self-optimization capabilities are beneficial in this
context.
- Maximized exploitation of frequency resources:
LTE provides high throughput per cell and supports flexible frequency bandwidths and
in particular allows for re-farming of existing and deployment of new frequency bands.
Furthermore by means of OFDM, MIMO, HARQ etc. an outstanding spectrum
efficiency can be achieved.
- Extended interworking functionality: LTE/EPC provides seamless mobility with
other 3GPP access systems (UMTS, GPRS), with 3GPP2/cdma2000 and where
possible with non-3GPP (e.g. WLAN).
- Reduced terminal complexity. Due to the specific transmission schemes the
complexity of the terminals is kept reasonable. Also the power consumption shall be
minimized. Both contributes to cost reduction and makes it attractive for mass market
deployment.

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LTE FDD and TDD modes have been harmonized in the sense that both modes
share the same underlaying framework including the radio access schemes (OFDM
in DL and SC-FDMA in UL for both), basic frame formats and protocols.
As a clear indication of harmonisation the TDD mode is included together with the
FDD mode in the same set of specifications . Protocols and procedures are kept the
same for FDD and TDD and therefore it is expected a high level of commonalities for
the implementation. This will make possibile to implement FDD and TDD in the same
mobile terminal with a big potential for roaming between FDD and TDD and the other
way arround. However the scenarios for coexistences still need to be further
investigated.
Another key feature of TDD mode is the commonality with TD-SCDMA. This is a big
advantege since China is already having TD-SCDMA so the gloabal roaming will be
possibile.

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Generic:
The requirements input list for LTE/EPC contains the following crucial elements:
higher data rates: Obviously this is a general requirement requested from any new
system.
quality of service, lower delay: To enable true convergence between real-time and
non-real-time services quality of service awareness is of absolute importance. This
must already be paid attention to during the design of the physical layer. So LTE/EPC
will be QoS aware from the very beginning on and not have QoS as an add-on, which
is usually not very efficient.
expected new spectrum allocation: It is expected to get some new frequency
bands assigned to 3G. LTE should be ready to use these bands.
flexible bandwidth usage: LTE should be able to deal with frequency bands of
different size. So a fixed bandwidth ultra-wideband system is not of big use. Rather
LTE should be able to scale the frequency requirements dependent on the operator’s
choice.
reduced terminal complexity: 3G terminals are very complex and thus suffer often
from poor performance due to hardware limitations and very often also software
limitations (or bugs). LTE terminals should have essentially lower complexity. This
would also offer the possibility to implement other performance enhancement
techniques later on.
These points result in a long list of requirements for LTE/EPC. So 3GPP/ETSI
demand to have downlink bit rates of greater than 100 Mbps and uplink bit rates of 50
Mbps. Of high importance is also to increase the cell edge bit rates compared to
HSPA.

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The transition times between different levels of activity are also named C-plane
latency. The one-way transit time can be seen as U-plane latency.

Furthermore for the C-plane capacity targets are stated as number of active users:
200 (5 MHz) and at least 400 for wider bands.

The UL/DL resource scheduling of course requires that the scheduler can handle and
distinguish different quality of service classes.

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Targets are defined related to the Rel. 6 baseline.

TIP!
Note, bit rates are defined for 20 MHz bandwidth and for smaller bands proportional
scaling applies.

2 Tx antennas at the Node B and 2 Rx antennas at the UE are assumed for DL. For
UL the targets are set considering a single Tx antenna at the UE and 2 Rx antennas
at the eNB.

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Functionality:
eNB obtains the UE radio capabilities via:
- The S1AP initial setup request message
- The X2AP in case of handover
- The RRC in any other cases

eNB sends the UE radio capabilities to:

- The MME if it has been retrieved from RRC signalling
- The neighbour eNB in case of handover

UE category determines:
- MIMO settings
- PRB allocation and AMC limitation (e.g. 64QAM in UL)
- ROHC (Robust Header Compression) profile
- Inter RAT handover support

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BASED ON THE REQUIREMENTS 3GPP AGREED UPON STANDARD

FEATURES:

OFDMA/SC-FDMA.
MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output)
HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Retransmission on reQuest)
Scalable bandwidth
Evolved Node B
IP transport layer
UL/DL resource scheduling
QoS awareness
Self configuration
Self optimization
Packet Switched Domain only
3GPP (GTP) or IETF (MIPv6) option
Non-3GPP access

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SAE: System Architecture Evolution

SAE GW: Serving Gateway +PDN Gateway

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The LTE/EPC architecture is driven by the goal to optimize the system for packet data
transfer.

TIP!
There are no circuit switched components in LTE/EPC

There is a new approach in the inter-connection between radio access network and
core network. The EPS architecture is made up of an EPC (Packet Core Network,
also referred as EPC) and an eUTRAN Radio Access Network (also referred as LTE)

The CN provides access to external packet IP networks and performs a number of

CN related functions (e.g. QoS, security, mobility and terminal context management)
for idle (camped) and active terminals. The RAN performs all radio interface related
functions.

The LTE/EPC radio access network - Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN) - will only contain
Node Bs. No RNC is provided anymore. This means, that the evolved Node Bs take
over the radio management functionality.

This will make radio management faster and the network architecture simpler. E-
UTRAN exclusively uses IP as transport layer. Behind the EPC follow one or more IP
networks. A major example will be IMS, that can benefit especially from the QoS
awareness of LTE.

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The state-of-the-art design of the LTE air interface is characterised by OFDMA (DL)
and SC-FDMA (UL) together with MIMO.

The downlink modulation is based on OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiple Access). OFDMA is a variant of OFDM which has the advantage that
receiver complexity is at a reasonable level, it can handle scalable bandwidth
requirements and it supports various modulation schemes from BPSK, QPSK,
16QAM to 64QAM. This allows adaptive modulation on a per user base. In uplink
direction a variant of OFDMA called SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access) is used. It has the advantage against OFDMA to have a lower PAPR
(Peak-to-Average Power Ratio), which leads to lower power consumption and less
expensive RF amplifiers in the terminal.

LTE will support MIMO. It describes the possibility to have multiple transmitter and
receiver antennas in a system. Other names are beam-forming or smart antennas. Up
to four antennas can be used by a single LTE cell. This allows having spatial
multiplexing and beam-forming. MIMO is considered to be the core technology to
increase spectral efficiency. Currently the performance of MIMO for high mobility
cases is still under investigation.

HARQ implements a protocol on layer 1/layer 2 that allows for fast retransmission.
Furthermore blocks can be retransmitted with increased coding.

In contrast to UMTS where physical resources are either shared or dedicated, the
Evolved Node B in EUTRAN handles all physical resource via a scheduler and
assigns them dynamically to users and channels. This provides greater flexibility than
the older system

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The specification of LTE/EPC starts with UMTS release 7 for the studies and reports
and UMTS release 8 contains the first complete set of technical specifications.
E-UTRAN which takes the biggest part will be specified in series TS/TR 36.xxx.
In TS 23.401/402 one will find the network architecture.

All 3GPP specifications have a specification number consisting of 4 or 5 digits. (e.g.

09.02 or 29.002).
The first two digits define the series, followed by 2 further digits for the 01 to 13 series
or 3 further digits for the 21 to 55 series.

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Support wider bandwidth

Carrier aggregation to achieve wider bandwidth
Support of spectrum aggregation
 Peak data rate, spectrum flexibility
Advanced MIMO techniques
Extension to up to 8-layer transmission in downlink
Introduction of single-user MIMO up to 4-layer transmission in uplink
 Peak data rate, capacity, cell-edge user throughput
Coordinated multipoint transmission and reception (CoMP)
CoMP transmission in downlink
CoMP reception in uplink
 Cell-edge user throughput, coverage, deployment flexibility
Further reduction of delay
AS/NAS parallel processing for reduction of C-Plane delay
Relaying
Type 1 relays create a separate cell and appear as Rel. 8 LTE eNB to Rel. 8
LTE UEs
 Coverage, cost effective deployment

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• Uplink MIMO for up to 4 UE antennas

Increase peak data rate, and average and the cell edge throughput
Fall back to TX diversity available for data and control (use the power
amplifiers of all antennas even if multi-stream doesn’t work)
Advancements in reference signal structure, channel sounding and feedback
• DL MIMO for 8 TX antennas
Increase peak data rate, and average and the cell edge throughput
Release 8 LTE UEs support up to 4 TX antennas (which are actually
combinations of the 8 physical antennas)
Improved reference signal design, scheduling and feedback schemes

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• Joint Processing (JP):

data is available at each cell in the CoMP set
As if all sites formed a single multi antenna base station

• Coordinated Scheduling/Beamforming (CS/CB): data only at the serving cell

scheduling coordinated among cells

• Standardization will be done in Rel. 11

Utilizing enhanced reference schemes introduced for MIMO enhancements,
which were already done forward looking to CoMP applications

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The term “Heterogeneous Networks” does not necessarily refer to a specific

technology or feature as such, but is instead used to describe networks that have
both wide area and local area (small cell) deployments. In many expected
deployment scenarios, heterogeneous networks spread across multiple radio access
technologies. Autonomous or automated interference coordination and handover
optimization in such hierarchical network architectures are key aspects of
heterogeneous networks. Other coordination technologies like self-configuration and
self-optimization have been covered under Self Organized/Optimized Networks
(SON) and Minimized Drive Testing (MDT) related study and work items since
Release 8.

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LTE-A enables a smooth and backward compatible evolution of LTE towards true 4G
performance
• LTE-A comprises of various tools to enhance mobile broadband user experience
and network efficiency
• There are serious interdependencies between network implementation and the
various tools of LTE-A, which require an experienced partner when planning and
implementing LTE-A
• Nokia Siemens Networks has always been at the forefront of LTE-A research and
development, with a strong focus on real operator opportunities in terms of efficiency
and user experience

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