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 nonRAN 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 selfconfiguration / 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 SCFDMA 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 nonreal-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 operators 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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