Gift of tongue-the ability to communicate- is a major factor that places human race above other animals.Anything that enhances that ability makes human life better, both from an individuals perspective and from a community perspective.That is why we have tried to improve this facility-always. In earlier times, first problem with the communication was that of distance-Messengers to post office came to solve this, and it worked for thousands of years. Inherent disadvantage of the system- delay, led us to find a real time solution and thus were born telephones. Earlier telephones were fixed lines, that was an inconvenience because men need to travel and thus came mobiles. Meanwhile development was happening in a lot of other areas- from industry to business to travel to entertainment. All these led to an explosion of data and it became very important to access this data on the move.New generation wireless technologies like 4GLTE become relevant in this context.
LTE , 3GPP Long Term Evolution is a standard for high speed mobile phones. It is an evolution of the 3GPP GSM/UMTS standards.LTE aims at very high data speeds, comparable with that of fixed/wifi broadband with very low delays along with high spectral efficiency. LTE is usually referred to as 4G, though current version doesnt really satisfy ITU-R guidelines. (Future releases of LTE (referred to as LTE Advanced ) are expected to satisfy the requirements to be considered 4G.).
Salient features of LTE are given below:We take current LTE release (Release 8) as benchmark:
- LTE Release 8 supports around 300 Mbps Downlink and 75 Mbps Uplink data rates, round trip delay of less than 10 ms can be realised.
- LTE supports scalable carrier bandwidths , from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz. The architecture and design allows the mobiles to access the technology without knowing the bandwidth before hand.
- LTE supports both frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duples (TDD).
- LTE is designed for getting high throughputs at low mobility and a decent performance with high speeds.It can support upto 350 kmph
- The architecture of the network is simplified to a flat IP-based network architecture.Access Network has only one element (eNodeb),even the core network is simplified.
- LTE doesnt have a CS domain, however CS like voice quality is expected to be realised with the QoS provisioning
- LTE though is a 3GPP standard, can interwork with non 3GPP technologies also (3GPP2,IETF etc).
- LTE is endorsed by almost all CDMA Operators as their next mobile broadband standard,making it into the first truly global standard.
- Lower call setup delay (Fewer nodes,fewer messages and fewer states).Call setup delay of less than 100ms is to be realised
Due to the above mentioned features,LTE will revolutionise the communication space by enhancing a lot of existing applications and introducing a lot of newer ones.Following are some of the applications expected to gain traction with LTE
1.Telepresence Applications
2.High quality video conferencing
3.Mobile email,video messaging
4.On demand television,hd broadcasting
5.Mobile handsets as payment devices, with rapid transaction completion
6.VPN
7.Highly enriched real time gaming experience
8.Video Survielence and home security systems
9.Cloud on the move
From an operator perspective in addition to the extra revenue generated from the new applications and the volume of data consumed by the customer, there will be significant reduction in the operating expenses due to increased spectral efficiency,self optimising nature of networks,multivendor RAN, all IP nature of network etc.Coexistence with existing technologies including non 3GPP technologies,scalable spectrum etc will help in reducing capital expenditure also.
[To be continued]
