LTE Advanced

Main Features
Anders Dahln Fredrik Florn Approved by Per Emanuelsson v1.0

2012-10-17

Internal (T 19298-12 Uen)

Main Features
Carrier aggregation Enhanced and higher order uplink and downlink MIMO
For both single-user (SU) and multi-user (MU) cases

Heterogeneous networks Advanced relays As a result, the following is achieved:

Improved cell capacities in both pure macro and mixed macro/micro/femto scenarios Improved coverage, mainly due to UL MIMO and advanced relays Increased user rates (peak, average and cell edge)

Carrier Aggregation
Transmit and receive over multiple carriers simultaneously
Specifications support up to five combined carriers Currently (Rel-10) tests defined only for two combined carriers (i.e. up to 40 MHz BW)

Intra-band aggregation, contiguous or non-contiguous

Component Carrier #1 Component Carrier #2 Component Carrier #2

Inter-band aggregation 2600 MHz band (for example)

Component Carrier #1 Component Carrier #2

f 1800 MHz band (for example) 2600 MHz band (for example)

Enhanced and Higher Order MIMO

Support for up to 8x8 downlink introduced Support for 4x4 uplink MIMO introduced
MIMO for uplink is not possible in Rel-8 Uplink two-antenna transmit diversity for control channel also introduced

Improved reference symbol schemes in order to reduce

overhead for high-order MIMO schemes

Increased (up to four) number of terminals transmitted to

simultaneously in downlink MU-MIMO

Heterogeneous Networks
When capacity demands grow in urban areas, only feasible
solution is to add small cells (micro, pico, etc.)

Small cells under umbrella of macro cells. Network is no longer homogeneous Rel-10 provides tools to increase capacity for this scenario
high-power macro cell

low-power small cells

Heterogeneous Networks Tools

Coordination on same
carrier, i.e., inter-cell coordination of time frequency resources
Macro cell: Protected subframes with reduced power

Small cell: Subframes with reduced interference. Schedule cell-edge users here.

Use carrier aggregation,

i.e., multiple carriers.
Cross-carrier scheduling
fP fS

Macro cell

Small cell

Low power

Schedule celledge users here

Advanced Relays and Repeaters

Increase coverage and
throughput in problematic areas
Wireless backhaul

Decode-and-forward, in
contrast to amplify-and forward

Wireless backhaul provides

S1 and X2

Donor cell

Relay cell

Isolation of backhaul in
frequency, time and/or spatial domains

LTE Advanced Performance

Single Carrier Downlink
Downlink MIMO gains at high load in 20MHz Urban macro, indoor
Cell capacity [Mbps/cell] Cell edge [Mbps] Peak bit rate
[Mbps] Antenna configuration 2x2 4x2 4x2 gain relative 2x2 4x4 4x4 gain relative 2x2 4x4 gain relative 4x2 Rel-8 SUMIMO 45 51 +13% 68 +51% +33% Rel-10 MUMIMO 54 69 +28% 94 +74% +36% +38% MU gain relative Rel-8 SU +20% +35% Rel-8 SUMIMO 1,6 2,0 +25% 2,9 +81% +45% Rel-10 MUMIMO 1,8 2,4 +33% 4,1 +128% +71% +42% MU gain relative Rel-8 SU +13% +20% SU-MIMO and MUMIMO 150 150 +0% 300 +100% +100%

Source: 3GPP TR 36.814

LTE Advanced Performance

Single Carrier Uplink
Uplink MIMO gains at high load in 20MHz Urban macro, indoor
LTE-A Configuration
Rel-8 1x2 SU-MIMO Rel-8 1x4 SU-MIMO Rel-10 2x4 SU-MIMO 2x4 gain relative 1x2

Average Cell Capacity

[Mbps/cell] 27 40 45 +67%

Cell Edge
[Mbps]

Peak bit rate

[Mbps]

0,9 1,5 1,8 +100%

50 or 75 50 or 75 100 +33% or +100%

2x4 gain Other sources indicate that the gain of Rel-8 1x4 over Rel-8 1x2 +13% +20% +33% or +100% relative 1x4

is significant, in the range +80% to +100% Source: 3GPP TR 36.814

LTE Advanced Performance

Carrier Aggregation
As a rough estimate the throughput gain scales linearly with the additional bandwidth aggregated

Heterogeneous Networks
Significant gains, but gains are too scenario-specific to give any general rule-of-thumb

Advanced Relays and Repeaters

Significant coverage gains, but these can also be achieved by traditional repeaters. Few use cases identified for wireless backhaul.

DL MIMO
Significant gain with both MU-MIMO and 4x4 antenna configuration Fair gain deploying only MU-MIMO or 4x2 antenna configuration