INTRODUCTION Mobile communications has become an everyday commodity.

In the last decades, it has evolved from being an expensive technology for a few selected individuals to todays ubiquitous systems used by a majority of the worlds population. To understand the complex mobile-communication systems of today, it is important to understand where they came from and how cellular systems have evolved. The task of developing mobile technologies has also changed, from being a national or regional concern, to becoming an increasingly complex task undertaken by global standards-developing organizations such as the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and involving thousands of people. Mobile communication technologies are often divided into generations, with 1G being the analog mobile radio systems of the 1980s, 2G the first digital mobile systems, and 3G the first mobile systems handling broadband data. The Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is often called 4G, but many also claim that LTE release 10, also referred to as LTE-Advanced, is the true 4G evolution step, with the first release of LTE (release 8) then being labeled as 3.9G. This continuing race of increasing sequence numbers of mobile system generations is in fact just a matter of labels. In this context, it must first be pointed out that LTE and LTE-Advanced is the same technology, with the Advanced label primarily being added to highlight the relation between LTE release 10 (LTE-Advanced) and ITU/IMT-Advanced. This does not make LTE-Advanced a different system than LTE and it is not in any way the final evolution step to be taken for LTE. LTE is now being deployed and is the way forwards for high speed cellular services. There has been a rapid increase in the use of data carried by cellular services, and this increase will only become larger in what has been termed the "data explosion". To cater for this and the increased demands for increased data transmission speeds and lower latency, further development of cellular technology have been required.

MOTIVATION FOR LTE (4G) Building on the technical foundations of the 3GPP family of cellular systems that embraces GSM, GPRS and EDGE as well as WCDMA and now HSPA (High Speed Packet Access), the 4G wireless system is expected to provide a comprehensive IP solution where multimedia applications and services can be delivered to the user on an Anytime, Anywhere basis with a satisfactory high data rate and premium quality and high security, which is not achievable using the 3G (third generation) wireless infrastructure. LTE can be seen for provide a further evolution of functionality, increased speeds and general improved performance.
WCDMA (UMTS) Max downlink speed bps Max uplink speed bps Latency round trip time approx 3GPP releases Approx years of initial roll out Access methodology 384 k 128 k 150 ms Rel 99/4 2003 / 4 CDMA HSPA HSDPA / HSUPA 14 M 5.7 M 100 ms Rel 5 / 6 2005 / 6 HSDPA 2007 / 8 HSUPA CDMA HSPA+ 28 M 11 M 50ms (max) Rel 7 2008 / 9 CDMA LTE 100M 50 M ~10 ms Rel 8 2009 / 10 OFDMA / SC-FDMA

Table 1.1 Evolution to LTE

The advantages of 4G over 3G

The advantages of 4G over 3G are listed in Table 1.2. Clearly 4G has improved upon the 3G system significantly not only in bandwidth, coverage and capacity, but also in many advanced features, such as QoS, low latency, high mobility, and security support, etc.

Driving force Network architecture Bandwidth (bps) Frequency band (GHz) Switching

3G Predominantly voice driven, data is secondary concern Wide area networks 384K2M 1.82.4 Circuit switched and packet switched CDMA family Not supported

4G Converged data and multimedia services over IP Integration of Wireless LAN and Wide area networks 100M for mobile 1 G for stationary 28 Packet switch only OFDMA family Supported Supported Supported

Access technology QoS and security Multi-antenna Very limited support techniques Multicast/broadcast Not supported service Table 1.2 Comparison of 3G and 4G