Topic-1-Notes On 4G
Topic-1-Notes On 4G
applications.
(reference Gordon L Stuber textbook, pg -28)
Fourth Generation (4G) Cellular Systems:
Fourth generation cellular systems have capabilities defined by the ITU in IMT-Advanced.
IMT-Advanced specifies peak data rates of 100 Mbps in high mobility applications and 1 Gbps
in stationary or low mobility applications. IMT-Advanced has the following requirements:
• Flexible channel bandwidth, between 5 and 20 MHz, optionally up to 40 MHz.
•A nominal peak data rate of 100 Mbps in high mobility, and 1 Gbps for stationary
environments.
• A data rate of at least 100 Mbps between any two points in the world.
• Bandwidth efficiency of up to 15 bit/s/Hz in the downlink, and 6.75 bit/s/Hz in the uplink.
• Spectral efficiency of up to 3 bit/s/Hz/cell in the downlink.
• Smooth handoff across heterogeneous networks.
• Seamless connectivity and global roaming across multiple networks.
• High quality of service (QoS) for next generation multimedia support.
• Backward compatibility with existing wireless standards.
• All Internet Protocol (IP) packet-switched network.
Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Long Term Evolution—Advanced (LTE-A) have been
commercially deployed, and LTE-A Pro has seen initial deployment. LTE-A Pro is a new radio
interface for low data rate narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT). As of 2016Q2, a total of
521 operators have commercially launched LTE, LTE-A, or LTE-A Pro networks in 170
countries. Of these, 147 mobile operators have launched LTE-Advanced or LTE-Advanced Pro
networks in 69 countries with 9 LTE-Advanced Pro networks deployed. During 2016 Q2, the
number of LTE subscribers worldwide doubled to 1.29 billion. By the end of 2016, it is expected
that there will be 560 LTE, LTE-A, or LTE-A Pro networks. It is also expected that 1-Gbps LTE
services could be introduced before the end of 2016. Operators in all regions are also ramping up
the deployment of voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) to support voice-over-Internet (VoIP). A total of 82
operators in 43 countries have so far launched commercial VoLTE services. As many LTE
operators have relied on circuit switch fall back to GSM to accommodate voice calls, LTE
operators will start discontinuing GSM as VoLTE is deployed.
WiMAX has also been commercially deployed. In 2014, there were 580 commercial WiMAX
networks in 149 countries, with 33.4 million subscribers worldwide. However, since 2015 the
number of WiMAX subscribers has been declining worldwide while the number of LTE
subscribers is increasing rapidly. Some operators are ending their WiMAX service and deploying
LTE, LTE-A, or LTE-A Pro networks instead.
LTE-A and LTE-A Pro are the only truly 4G technologies. The basic parameters of LTE, LTE-A
are summarized in Table 1.6.
Mobile WiMAX can deliver mobile broadband services, with peak data rates up to 40 Mbit/s, at
vehicular speeds greater than 120 km/hr while maintaining a quality of service (QoS)
comparable to broadband wireline access.
Some of the key features and attributes of WiMAX include the following:
• Tolerance to delay spread and multi-user interference due to orthogonality of OFDMA
sub-carriers in both the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) directions.
• Scalable channel bandwidths ranging from 1.25 to 20MHz through adjustment of the Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT) size in the baseband modulator/demodulator. Supported FFT sizes are
128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048.
• Hybrid-Automatic Repeat Request (H-ARQ) to provide robustness in high mobility
environments.
• Adaptive sub-carrier allocation (in time and frequency) to optimize connection quality based
on relative signal strengths on a connection-by-connection basis.
• Advanced modulation and coding schemes that use BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM together
with convolutional and turbo coding.
• Power management to ensure power efficient operation of mobile and portable devices in sleep
and idle modes.
• Network-optimized hard handoff to minimize overhead and achieve a handoff delay of less
than 50 ms.
• Advanced antenna systems including MIMO, beam forming, space-time coding, and spatial
multiplexing.
• Fractional frequency reuse to achieve high spectral efficiency.
5G radio access will be built upon evolved existing wireless technologies, particularly LTE-A,
LTE-A Pro, and evolved WiFi, while also introducing new radio access means, particularly
mm-wave cellular. The basic premises for 5G cellular are massive connectivity and massive
capacity, a growing variety of low and high data rate applications with grossly different QoS
requirements, and radio interfaces that simultaneously operate in different frequency bands.
Finally, energy-per-bit usage should be reduced by a factor of 10–100 to improve upon wireless
device battery life.
The demanding requirements of 5G systems will require innovations in several key technology
areas relating to future wireless communication, including but not limited to
• Ultra dense networks using hierarchical cellular architectures, simultaneous network
participation
• Ultra reliable and low latency communication
• Operation at higher frequencies, particularly at mm-wave frequencies
• Advanced coding, modulation, and multi-access techniques
• Advanced radio resource management protocols for interference management
• Moving networks, such as on trains, planes, and buses
• Massive MIMO
• Device-to-device communication
• Massive machine communications in IoT
• Low power communications
• Software defined networking and cloud-based systems
• Robust security.
***********************************************