The Evolution to 4G Cellular Systems: Architecture and Key Features of LTE-Advanced Networks

The era of new wireless communications is upon us. Eventually it will penetrate into our daily life and change the way we live just like many technological innovations whose original research came from the life needs. To achieve these requirements, the society of 3 Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is presently evolving Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTEAdvanced) as a development of the standard of LTE. The goal of this generation is to produce specifications for a new radio-access technology geared to higher data rates, low latency and greater spectral efficiency. LTE-Advanced is therefore not a new technology; it is an evolutionary step in the continuing development of LTE The description in this article is based on LTE release 10 and thus provides a complete description of the LTE-Advanced radio access from the bottom up. Also it provides a deeper insight into some of the technologies that are part of LTE and its evolution and introduces describing to the background for the development of the LTE system, in terms of events, activities, organizations and other factors that have played an important role. This paper provides detailed coverage of the air-interface technologies and protocols that survived the analysis of the highly sophisticated technology evaluation process typically used in the LTE-Advanced networks. Keywords-LTE, LTE-Advanced, E-UTRAN