LTE-advanced in 3GPP Rel -13/14: an evolution toward 5G

As the fourth generation (4G) LTE-Advanced network becomes a commercial success, technologies for beyond 4G and 5G are being actively investigated from the research perspective as well as from the standardization perspective. While 5G will integrate the latest technology breakthroughs to achieve the best possible performance, it is expected that LTE-Advanced will continue to evolve, as a part of 5G technologies, in a backward compatible manner to maximize the benefit from the massive economies of scale established around the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) LTE/LTE-Advanced ecosystem from Release 8 to Release 12. In this article we introduce a set of key technologies expected for 3GPP Release 13 and 14 with a focus on air interface aspects, as part of the continued evolution of LTE-Advanced and as a bridge from 4G to 5G.