A comprehensive survey of TDD-based mobile communication systems from TD-SCDMA 3G to TD-LTE(A) 4G and 5G directions

TDD (Time Division Duplex) is one of the two duplex modes. TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous CDMA) is the first TDD-based cellular mobile system which is commercialized in wide area and large scale and TD-SCDMA is also the first cellular mobile system which adopted smart antenna technology (also called as beamforming). As the long term evolution of TD-SCDMA, TD-LTE(A) (Time Division-Long Term Evolution, and TD-LTE Advanced) introduced OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and enhanced smart antenna technology together with MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), which are adopted by LTE FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) either. It is indicated that TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE(A) have opened a sustainable utilization era of TDD and smart antenna technologies in the wireless mobile communication. This paper aims to present a systematic introduction to TDD-based mobile communications from TD-SCDMA to TD-LTE and beyond, with particular focuses on TDD key technologies, principles of TDD cellular mobile systems, TDD evolution path, and future TDD 5G directions. The comparisons between TDD and FDD are also included. We hope that this paper will provide a comprehensive overview of TDD technology upgrade and its standard evolution, and serve as a valuable reference for research on 5G mobile communication systems. It is believed that TDD will play more important role in 5G.