An Overview of 3GPP Long-Term Evolution Radio Access Network

The growing demand for mobile Internet and wireless multimedia applications such as Internet browsing, interactive aming, mobile TV, video and audio streaming has motivated development of broadband wireless access technologies in the ecent years. As a result, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) initiated the work on the long-term evolution LTE) in late 2004. LTE will ensure 3GPPs competitive edge over other cellular technologies. The evolved UMTS terrestrial adio access network (E-UTRAN) substantially improves end-user throughputs, sector capacity and reduces user-plane and ontrol-plane latencies, bringing significantly improved user experience with full mobility. With the emergence of nternet Protocol (IP) as the protocol of choice for carrying all types of traffic, LTE is expected to provide support for P-based traffic with end-to-end quality of service (QoS). Voice traffic will be supported mainly as voice over IP (VoIP) nabling better integration with other multimedia services. Initial deployments of LTE are expected by 2010 and commercial availability on a larger scale will likely happen a few years later.