4G - IMT-Advanced Requirements

IMT-Advanced Requirements

This article uses 4G to refer to IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced), as defined by ITU-R. An IMT-Advanced cellular system must fulfill the following requirements:Vilches, J. (2010, April 29). Everything you need to know about 4G Wireless Technology. TechSpot.

  • Be based on an all-IP packet switched network.
  • Have peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access.
  • Be able to dynamically share and use the network resources to support more simultaneous users per cell.
  • Using scalable channel bandwidths of 5–20 MHz, optionally up to 40 MHz.ITU-R, Report M.2134, Requirements related to technical performance for IMT-Advanced radio interface(s), Approved in Nov 2008Moray Rumney, "IMT-Advanced: 4G Wireless Takes Shape in an Olympic Year", Agilent Measurement Journal, September 2008
  • Have peak link spectral efficiency of 15 bit/s/Hz in the downlink, and 6.75 bit/s/Hz in the uplink (meaning that 1 Gbit/s in the downlink should be possible over less than 67 MHz bandwidth).
  • System spectral efficiency of up to 3 bit/s/Hz/cell in the downlink and 2.25 bit/s/Hz/cell for indoor usage.
  • Smooth handovers across heterogeneous networks.
  • The ability to offer high quality of service for next generation multimedia support.

In September 2009, the technology proposals were submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as 4G candidates.Nomor Research Newsletter: The way of LTE towards 4G Basically all proposals are based on two technologies:

  • LTE Advanced standardized by the 3GPP
  • 802.16m standardized by the IEEE (i.e. WiMAX)

Implementations of Mobile WiMAX and first-release LTE are largely considered a stopgap solution that will offer a considerable boost until WiMAX 2 (based on the 802.16m spec) and LTE Advanced are deployed. The latter's standard versions were ratified in spring 2011, but are still far from being implemented.

The first set of 3GPP requirements on LTE Advanced was approved in June 2008.3GPP specification: Requirements for further advancements for E-UTRA (LTE Advanced) LTE Advanced was to be standardized in 2010 as part of Release 10 of the 3GPP specification. LTE Advanced will be based on the existing LTE specification Release 10 and will not be defined as a new specification series. A summary of the technologies that have been studied as the basis for LTE Advanced is included in a technical report.3GPP Technical Report: Feasibility study for Further Advancements for E-UTRA (LTE Advanced)

Some sources consider first-release LTE and Mobile WiMAX implementations as pre-4G or near-4G, as they do not fully comply with the planned requirements of 1 Gbit/s for stationary reception and 100 Mbit/s for mobile.

Confusion has been caused by some mobile carriers who have launched products advertised as 4G but which according to some sources are pre-4G versions, commonly referred to as '3.9G', which do not follow the ITU-R defined principles for 4G standards, but today can be called 4G according to ITU-R. A common argument for branding 3.9G systems as new-generation is that they use different frequency bands from 3G technologies; that they are based on a new radio-interface paradigm; and that the standards are not backwards compatible with 3G, whilst some of the standards are forwards compatible with IMT-2000 compliant versions of the same standards.

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