The road to IMT-advanced communication systems: State-of-the- art and innovation areas addressed by the WINNER + project

Phases I and II of the WINNER project contributed to the development, integration, and assessment of new mobile network techniques from 2004 to 2007. Some of these techniques are now in the 3GPP LTE and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) standards, while others are under consideration for LTE-Advanced and 802.16m. The WINNER+ project continues this forwardlooking work for IMT-advanced technologies and their evolution, with a particular focus on 3GPP LTE-Advanced. This article provides an overview of the WINNER system concept and several of its key innovative components.