Topic -1: 4G Technology - Introduction, features challenges and

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.

Two candidate 4G systems have been standardized and deployed commercially,

(1) Long Term Evolution (LTE) as standardized by 3GPP, and
(2) IEEE 802.16e (Mobile WiMAX) as standardized by the IEEE.

However, it is debatable as to whether or not these first versions should be considered 4G

standards at all, since they do not meet the IMT-Advanced requirements. Nevertheless, LTE and
Mobile WiMAX are often branded as being 4G systems as they are technical precursors to their
more advanced versions Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) and Mobile WiMAX Release
2 (IEEE 802-2012). Unlike the 3G cellular systems that use CDMA technology, the 4G cellular
system proposals use multi-carrier methods, namely orthogonal frequency division multiple
access (OFDMA) and single carrier frequency division multiple access (SCFDMA).

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, LTE-A, and LTE-A Pro

LTE is an all IP technology that uses OFDMA on the downlink and SC-FDMA on the uplink.
LTE is compatible with previous mobile technologies including GSM, GPRS, UMTS, EDGE,
WCDMA, HSPA, cdmaOne, cdma2000, and EV-DO. LTE-A builds on LTE to further increase
data rate as defined in 3GPP Releases 10 and 11. There are five major features:
● Carrier aggregation,
● Increased MIMO,
● Coordinated multipoint transmission or cooperative MIMO,
 ● Heterogeneous network (HetNet) support, and
● Relays.
Carrier aggregation combines up to five 20MHz channels into one to increase data speed. The
channels can be contiguous or non-contiguous. With a maximum 8x8 MIMO configuration,
64QAM, and 100MHz bandwidth, a peak downlink data rate of 1 Gbit/s is possible.

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.

LTE-A Pro will have the following key attributes:

● Data speeds in excess of 3 Gbps (LTE-A: 1 Gbps),
● 640MHz of carrier bandwidth (LTE-A: 100 MHz),
● Latency: 2ms (LTE-A: 10 ms).
●
WiMAX
WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a telecommunications protocol
that provides fixed and fully mobile Internet access. There are several versions of the WiMAX
standard. IEEE 802.16-2004, also known as 802.16d, is sometimes referred to as “Fixed
WiMAX,” since it does not support mobility. IEEE 802.16e-2005, often abbreviated as 802.16e,
includes support for mobility among other things and is commonly known as “Mobile WiMAX.”

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.

Fifth Generation (5G) Cellular and Beyond

5G wireless networks are currently being researched and developed, and are expected to be
deployed between 2020 and 2030. The objectives of 5G cellular systems are varied. With the
proliferation of wireless data and the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G wireless systems are sought
that will support 100–1000-fold gains in network sum capacity, provide connections for at least
100 billion devices, low-data-rate machine-to-machine communication, offer 10Gbps peak data
rates with submillisecond latencies and response times, and provide for very high reliability. Low
latency and extremely high reliability will be essential for mobile industrial automation,
vehicular connectivity and automated driving, and other IoT applications.

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.

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