Long Term Evolution (LTE)

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G wireless broadband technology developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an industry trade group. LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System(UMTS) which was introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project-Release 8.

The LTE specification provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least 50 Mbps. TE supports scalable carrier BW from 20 MHz down to 1.4 MHz.

Although there are many new features introduced by LTE, I will start with a few of them !!

• S1-flex Mechanism

The S1-flex concept provides support for network redundancy and load sharing of traffic across network elements in the CN, the MME and the SGW, by creating pools of MMEs and SGWs and allowing each eNB to be connected to multiple MMEs and SGWs in a pool.

• Network Sharing

The LTE architecture enables service providers to reduce the cost of owning and operating the network by allowing the service providers to have separate CN (MME, SGW, PDN GW) while the E-UTRAN (eNBs) is jointly shared by them. This is enabled by the S1-flex mechanism by enabling each eNB to be connected to multiple CN entities. When a UE attaches to the network, it is connected to the appropriate CN entities based on the identity of the service provider sent by the UE.