Review on LTE-Advanced Mobile Technology

Abstract

Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) is the next drive in the broadband mobile communication, which allows operators to improve networks performance and service capabilities. LTE-A targets the peak data rates of 1Gbps in the downlink and 500Mbps in the uplink. This requirement is only fulfilled by a transmission bandwidth of up to 100MHz. However the accessibility of such large part of the contiguous spectrum is uncommon in practice. Therefore LTE-A uses some new features on top of the existing LTE standards to provide very high data rate transmission. Some of the most significant features introduced in LTE-A are carrier aggregation, heterogeneous network enhancement, coordinated multipoint transmission and reception, enhanced multiple input and multiple output, and development relay nodes with universal frequency reuse. This review paper presents an overview of the above mentioned LTE-A key features and functionalities. Based on this review, in the conclusion we discuss the current technical challenges for future broadband mobile communication systems.