Long Term Evolution

Long Term Evolution(LTE) is also referred  as 3GPP Long Term Evoluion. 3rd Generation Partnership Project(3GPP) operates under European Telecommunication Standard Institue(ETSI). LTE is smooth and efficient transition towards more advanced technology to increase speed of wireless network data.3GPP engineers named the technology "Long Term Evolution" because it represents the next step(4G) in progression from GSM,a 2G standard, to UMTS,to 3G based  upon GSM. LTE provides significantly increased peak data rates with potential for 100Mbps downstream and 30 Mbps upstream,reduced latency, scalable bandwidth capacity with existing GSM and UMTS technology. Future developments could yield upto 300 Mbps. Research is being carried on.

The figure below shows the development over time

The world's first first publicly available LTE service was launched by Telia Sonera in Oslo and Stockholm on 14th December,2009. LTE was first proposed by NTT Docomo of Japan in 2004.The LTE standards covers range of many different frequencies and bands. 

• In North America,700,800,1900 and 2100 MHz are used (4,12,13,17,25 bands)

• 2500 in South America

• 800,9001800,2600 MHz in Europe(3,7,20 bands)

• 1800 and 2600 MHz in Asia (1,3,5,7,8,11,13,40 bands)

• 1800 MHz in Australia and New Zealand  (3,40)

As a result ,phones from one country may not work in another.Users will need a multiple band capable phone for international roaming.

The upper layers of LTE are based upon TCP/IP,which will likely result in all IP network similar to current state of wired communications. LTE will support mixed data,voice,video and messaging traffic. LTE uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and in later releases,MIMO(Multiple In Multiple Output) antenna technology similar used in WLAN. The higher signal to noise ratio(SNR) at the receiver enabled by MIMO along with OFDM,provides improved coverage especially in dense urban areas.

Operators gain advantage of higher data  rates per cell from 4G LTE,larger customer capacity per cell and more efficient use infrastructure for services that are increasingly data dominated.Operators can upgrade existing infrastructure to mobile operators as the amount of data traffic on their networks grows.

Thus,this blog provides general overview of what is Long Term Evolution and when was it started.In the next blog,we will in more depth what exactly is Long Term Evolution.