What is LTE ?

LTE was first proposed by NTT DoCoMo of Japan in 2004, and studies on the new standard officially commenced in 2005. In May 2007, the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI) alliance was founded as a global collaboration between vendors and operators with the goal of verifying and promoting the new standard in order to ensure the global introduction of the technology as quickly as possible

The LTE standard only supports packet switching with its all-IP network. Voice calls in GSM, UMTS and CDMA2000 are circuit switched, so with the adoption of LTE, carriers will have to re-engineer their voice call network.

 Three different approaches are there:

VoLTE (Voice Over LTE): This approach is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, with specific profiles for control and media planes of voice service on LTE defined by

 GSMA in PRD IR.92  [ it is the ip multimedia subsystem (ims) profile for voice and sms, documented in this permanent reference document (prd), it defines a profile that identifies a minimum mandatory set of features which are defined in 3gpp specifications that a wireless device (the user equipment (ue)) and network are required to implement in order to guarantee an interoperable, high quality ims-based telephony service over long term evolution (lte) radio access ].

This approach results in the voice service (control and media planes) being delivered as data flows within the LTE data bearer. This means that there is no dependency on (or ultimately, requirement for) the legacy Circuit Switch voice network to be maintained.

CSFB (Circuit Switched Fallback): In this approach, LTE just provides data services, and when a voice call is to be initiated or received, it will fall back to the CS (Circuit Switched) domain. When using this solution, operators just need to upgrade the MSC instead of deploying the IMS, and therefore, can provide services quickly. However, the disadvantage is longer call setup delay.

SVLTE (Simultaneous Voice and LTE): In this approach, the handset works simultaneously in the LTE and CS modes, with the LTE mode providing data services and the CS (Circuit Switched)  mode providing the voice service. This is a solution solely based on the handset, which does not have special requirements on the network and does not require the deployment of IMS either. The disadvantage of this solution is that the phone can become expensive with high power consumption.

LTE is the global standard for the fourth generation of mobile broadband (4G), supported by all major players in the industry. It is the fastest developing system in the history of mobile communication.

Verizon’s LTE network is the world’s largest commercial installation to date. Just like the world’s first LTE network, launched by TeliaSonera in Sweden, it was supplied by Ericsson.

Time-Division Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE), also referred to as Long-Term Evolution Time-Division Duplex (LTE TDD), is a 4-G mobile-telecommunications technology and standard co-developed, since late 2007, by Datang Telecom, China Mobile, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Leadcore, etc.  It is one of two variants of the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, the other being Frequency-Division Long-Term Evolution (FD-LTE or LTE FDD). Likewise, TD-LTE-Advanced is an LTE Advancedtime-division variant, an evolutionary upgrade version of TD-LTE.

Technical highlights

TD-LTE offers asymmetric use of unpaired spectrum. In "unpaired spectrum" transmissions travel in both directions on the same frequency band. It is distinct from "paired spectrum," where two frequencies are allocated, one for the transmit channel and the other for the receive channel (hence "Frequency Division.") "Time Division" means the receive channel and the transmit channel take turns (i.e. divide the time between them) on the same frequency band. In this instance, "asymmetric" means that more time-slots are allocated to data going down to the phone than coming back up from the phone. The usage patterns of the future (fewer phone calls, more Internet) are asymmetric.

The frequency bands used by TD-LTE are 3.4–3.6 GHz in Australia and UK, 2.57−2.62 GHz in the US and China, 2.545-2.575 GHz in Japan, and 2.3–2.4 GHz in India and Australia. The technology supports scalable channel bandwidth, between 1.4 and 20 MHz. A typical range is up to 200 metres (660 ft) indoors on a 2.57–2.62 GHz radio frequency link.

Although marketed as a 4G wireless service, LTE (as specified in the 3GPP Release 8 and 9 document series) does not satisfy the technical requirements the 3GPP consortium has adopted for its new standard generation, and which were originally set forth by the ITU-Rorganization in its IMT-Advanced specification. However, due to marketing pressures and the significant advancements that WIMAX,HSPA+ and LTE bring to the original 3G technologies, ITU later decided that LTE together with the aforementioned technologies can be called 4G technologies. The LTE Advanced standard formally satisfies the ITU-R requirements to be considered IMT-Advanced. And to differentiate LTE-Advanced and WiMAX-Advanced from current 4G technologies, ITU has defined them as "True 4G".

 LTE Long Term Evolution

LTE was first proposed by NTT DoCoMo of Japan in 2004, and studies on the new standard officially commenced in 2005. In May 2007, the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI) alliance was founded as a global collaboration between vendors and operators with the goal of verifying and promoting the new standard in order to ensure the global introduction of the technology as quickly as possible

The LTE standard only supports packet switching with its all-IP network. Voice calls in GSM, UMTS and CDMA2000 are circuit switched, so with the adoption of LTE, carriers will have to re-engineer their voice call network.

 Three different approaches are there:

VoLTE (Voice Over LTE): This approach is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, with specific profiles for control and media planes of voice service on LTE defined by

 GSMA in PRD IR.92  [ it is the ip multimedia subsystem (ims) profile for voice and sms, documented in this permanent reference document (prd), it defines a profile that identifies a minimum mandatory set of features which are defined in 3gpp specifications that a wireless device (the user equipment (ue)) and network are required to implement in order to guarantee an interoperable, high quality ims-based telephony service over long term evolution (lte) radio access ].

This approach results in the voice service (control and media planes) being delivered as data flows within the LTE data bearer. This means that there is no dependency on (or ultimately, requirement for) the legacy Circuit Switch voice network to be maintained.

CSFB (Circuit Switched Fallback): In this approach, LTE just provides data services, and when a voice call is to be initiated or received, it will fall back to the CS (Circuit Switched) domain. When using this solution, operators just need to upgrade the MSC instead of deploying the IMS, and therefore, can provide services quickly. However, the disadvantage is longer call setup delay.

SVLTE (Simultaneous Voice and LTE): In this approach, the handset works simultaneously in the LTE and CS modes, with the LTE mode providing data services and the CS (Circuit Switched)  mode providing the voice service. This is a solution solely based on the handset, which does not have special requirements on the network and does not require the deployment of IMS either. The disadvantage of this solution is that the phone can become expensive with high power consumption.

LTE is the global standard for the fourth generation of mobile broadband (4G), supported by all major players in the industry. It is the fastest developing system in the history of mobile communication.

Verizon’s LTE network is the world’s largest commercial installation to date. Just like the world’s first LTE network, launched by TeliaSonera in Sweden, it was supplied by Ericsson.

Time-Division Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE), also referred to as Long-Term Evolution Time-Division Duplex (LTE TDD), is a 4-G mobile-telecommunications technology and standard co-developed, since late 2007, by Datang Telecom, China Mobile, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Leadcore, etc.  It is one of two variants of the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, the other being Frequency-Division Long-Term Evolution (FD-LTE or LTE FDD). Likewise, TD-LTE-Advanced is an LTE Advancedtime-division variant, an evolutionary upgrade version of TD-LTE.

Technical highlights

TD-LTE offers asymmetric use of unpaired spectrum. In "unpaired spectrum" transmissions travel in both directions on the same frequency band. It is distinct from "paired spectrum," where two frequencies are allocated, one for the transmit channel and the other for the receive channel (hence "Frequency Division.") "Time Division" means the receive channel and the transmit channel take turns (i.e. divide the time between them) on the same frequency band. In this instance, "asymmetric" means that more time-slots are allocated to data going down to the phone than coming back up from the phone. The usage patterns of the future (fewer phone calls, more Internet) are asymmetric.

The frequency bands used by TD-LTE are 3.4–3.6 GHz in Australia and UK, 2.57−2.62 GHz in the US and China, 2.545-2.575 GHz in Japan, and 2.3–2.4 GHz in India and Australia. The technology supports scalable channel bandwidth, between 1.4 and 20 MHz. A typical range is up to 200 metres (660 ft) indoors on a 2.57–2.62 GHz radio frequency link.

Although marketed as a 4G wireless service, LTE (as specified in the 3GPP Release 8 and 9 document series) does not satisfy the technical requirements the 3GPP consortium has adopted for its new standard generation, and which were originally set forth by the ITU-Reorganization in its IMT-Advanced specification. However, due to marketing pressures and the significant advancements that WIMAX,HSPA+ and LTE bring to the original 3G technologies, ITU later decided that LTE together with the aforementioned technologies can be called 4G technologies. The LTE Advanced standard formally satisfies the ITU-R requirements to be considered IMT-Advanced. And to differentiate LTE-Advanced and WiMAX-Advanced from current 4G technologies, ITU has defined them as "True 4G".

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