State transition latency reduction scheme in the LTE/LTE-A radio access network

With its higher bandwidth and lower latency, the LTE/LTE-A network has been successively deployed worldwide, leading to many changes in peoples' lifestyles over the years. Recently, as new demands on the cellular network have appeared from emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, latency reduction has become a key challenge to supporting emerging technologies and satisfying user expectations. Although latency reduction in the cellular network is a traditional issue that has been studied in various respects, the latency of the LTE/LTE-A radio access network has been undervalued and investigated by very few studies. This article presents the latency issues in the LTE/LTE-A radio access network based on the radio resource control (RRC). Furthermore, we propose new approaches to mitigate involuntary delay by optimizing the procedures of the RRC state transition.