Looking at LTE in Practice: A Performance Analysis of the LTE System Based on Field Test Results

This article introduces a practical performance analysis of the long-term evolution (LTE) cellular system based on field test results from a commercially deployed Third-Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP?s) Release 8 LTE network in Band-3 (i.e., 1,800 MHz, sometimes termed LTE1,800 MHz) with 20-MHz channel bandwidth. The presented analysis demonstrates the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) throughputs in mobility conditions in addition to other aspects of the LTE system such as link budget, cell coverage, spectral efficiency, and handover performance. LTE's key features such as multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) and higher-order modulation [i.e., 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)] are assessed in different radio frequency (RF) conditions. A comparison is presented between LTE and 3GPP Release 8 evolution of high-speed packet access (HSPA+) with a dual-cell high-speed DL packet access (DC-HSDPA) feature based on the universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) 2,100-MHz commercial network with 10-MHz bandwidth (i.e., 2x5-MHz adjacent carriers). The presented LTE network performance analysis and the comparison with the HSPA+ network can be used to benchmark the LTE system performance and evaluate the gains and merits of deploying the LTE network. It has been demonstrated that the LTE system outperforms the HSPA+ system in terms of spectrum efficiency, 64-QAM utilization, cell coverage, and handover delay. The LTE system offers a 34% improvement in spectrum efficiency, 40% 64-QAM utilization versus 7.4% for the HSPA+ system, and a 60% reduction in data interruption time during handover.