Long-Term Evolution (LTE)

With the ever growing demand on high throughput for mobile users, 3G cellular networks are limited in their network capacity for offering high data services to a large number of users. Consequently, many Internet services such as on-demand video and mobile TV are hard to be satisfactorily supported by the current 3G cellular networks. 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a recently proposed 4G standard, representing a significant advance of 3G cellular technology. Attractively, LTE would offer an uplink data speed up to 50 Mbps and a downlink speed up to 100 Mbps for various services such as traditional voice, high-speed data, multimedia unicast, and multimedia broadcasting. In such a short time, it has been broadly accepted by major wireless vendors such as Verizon-Vodafone, AT&T, NTT-Docomo, KDDI, T-Mobile, and China Mobile. In order for high data link speed, LTE adapts new technologies that are new to 3G network such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO). MIMO allows the use of more than one antenna at the transmitter and receiver for higher data transmission. The LTE bandwidth can be scalable from 1.25 to 20 MHz, satisfying the need of different network operators that may have different bandwidth allocations for services, based on its managed spectrum. In this chapter, we discuss the major advance of the LTE and its recent research efforts in improving its performance. Our illustration of LTE is comprehensive, spanning from the LTE physical layer to link layer. In addition, the LTE security is also discussed.