LTE-Advanced: The path towards gigabit/s in wireless mobile communications

This paper addresses the performance targets and the technology components being studied by 3GPP for LTE-Advanced. LTE-advanced is the next major step in the evolution of UTRAN Long Term Evolution (LTE) release 8, currently being finalized by 3GPP. The high level targets of LTE-Advanced are to meet or exceed the IMT-advanced requirements set by ITU-R and furthermore, meet any additional operator requirements. This for instance includes the target of supporting more than one gigabit/s data rates, higher cell throughput and lower cost per bit. The technology components being identified as part of the LTE-Advanced Study Item include component carrier aggregation to enable up to 100 MHz bandwidth, advanced MIMO options up to 8times8 in DL and 4times4 in UL, coordinated multiple point transmission and reception (CoMP), relay nodes (RN) and autonomous component carrier selection (ACCS) for uncoordinated femto cell deployment.