24/4/2017 What is LTE-Advanced Pro?

Home (/) 5G guides (/guides/) What is LTE-Advanced Pro?

WHAT IS LTE-ADVANCED PRO?

LTE-Advanced Pro is the new of cial marker approved by the 3GPP in October 2015 to denote
the next stage in development towards 5G, following LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) and LTE before it.

LTE-Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro) will be used for speci cations de ned under 3GPPs Release 13
(R13) and Release 14 (R14). LTE-A Pro will build on previous iterations to further improve the LTE
platform as well as address new use cases. Release 15 (R15), work on which was outlined in detail
in June 2016 and is set to be completed in June 2018, will be the rst 3GPP release to include
speci cations for 5G technology

WHAT IS LTE?
Before we consider LTE-A Pro, lets take a step back to understand LTE and LTE-A. Speci cations
for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) access network were agreed in late 2008. In legacy 3G
networks, the radio network controller (RNC) controlled the NodeB 3G base stations. In an LTE
network, a series of evolved NodeB (eNB) base stations have control functionality embedded, so
there is no need for a RNC. This atter, simpler network architecture allows quicker response
times.

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Just like LTE sought to provide higher mobile data transfer rates than legacy 3G, LTE-A aimed to
improve on LTE, as well as to ful l the requirement set by the ITU for 4G. LTE-A Pro will do the
same and prepare for 5G.

Essentially, we can think of LTE as 3.5G or pre-4G, LTE-A as 4G, and LTE-A Pro as 4.5G or pre-5G.

WHAT ARE R13 AND R14?
3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) is the global organisation that consolidates and
de nes speci cations for mobile technology standards, and has become the focal point for
mobile networks beyond 3G. Its progress in revising speci cations is measured in Releases, and
new features are frozen and ready for implementation when a Release is completed. 3GPP
works on a number of Releases in tandem and aims to make all systems both backwards and
forwards compatible.

R13 and R14 add to the LTE-A technology path. R13 was begun in September 2012 and was
frozen (completed) in March 2016 with some 170 high level features and studies.
Standardisation of NB-IOT, the new narrowband radio technology developed for the IoT, was
completed in June 2016 and concluded a major effort in R13 to address the IoT market. R14,
building on many of the projects and features of R13, began in September 2014 and the work is
slated for completion by June 2017. By the end of 2015 more than 50 projects had been de ned
for R14.

WHAT WILL LTE-A PRO DO?

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LTE-A Pro aims to signi cantly increase the data speeds and bandwidth available for mobile
communications. It will also bring a much wider range of connected devices and platforms
under a single standard.

LTE-A Pro seeks to improve and optimise the capacity, performance, functionality and ef ciency
of LTE-A, as well as to further reduce latency, to provide a better user experience. It will also
enhance the LTE platform for the delivery of new services to new markets as we move towards
IoT with 5G.

The key attributes that will de ne LTE-Advanced Pro are:

Data speeds in excess of 3Gbps (LTE-A: 1Gbps)

640MHz of carrier bandwidth (LTE-A: 100MHz)
Latency: 2ms (LTE-A: 10ms)

HOW WILL IT DO IT?
LTE-A Pro will incorporate a number of different technologies, many of which will be more
advanced forms of features already present in LTE-A and even LTE.

Carrier Aggregation enables faster data speeds by increasing the bandwidth available to devices
by using more than one carrier (channel). It was a key feature of LTE-A speci cations, supporting
aggregation across FDD and TDD (frequency division duplex and time division duplex)
spectrum types. Advanced carrier aggregation in LTE-A Pro will increase the number of different
carriers that can be simultaneously supported from ve (under LTE-A) to 32.

This will be achieved through Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), which was introduced by the 3GPP
in 2015; the rst over-the-air trial was conducted by Qualcomm in Germany in November 2015.
Spectrum availability is an issue with LTE but there is signi cant unlicensed 5GHz frequency
available that is currently used by WiFi networks. LAA allows the simultaneous use of licensed
and unlicensed spectrum bands to make the most ef cient use of all available spectrum, while
LTE WiFi (Link) Aggregation (LWA) enables aggregation between LTE and WiFi.

Enhanced LAA (eLAA) is a project within R14 that will allow licensed and unlicensed spectrum
aggregation in the uplink, in addition to the downlink streams supported by LAA.

Small cells are ideal for use in unlicensed spectrum and are typically deployed as hotspots
within macro cell coverage. They are increasingly being used to meet growing data transfer
demands. Aggregation between small and macro cells through dual connectivity will
signi cantly improve per-user throughput and mobility robustness, and LTE-A Pro will continue
work already begun in this area.

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New for LTE-A Pro, dynamic uplink and downlink aggregation will allow operators to
dynamically adjust to varying traf c needs by (a) changing the uplink/downlink con guration
based on traf c and (b) enabling downlink traf c of oading. The new FDD/TDD design will
reduce latency more than tenfold.

Beamforming and MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) have been identi ed as key

technologies to address future capacity demand. Prior to LTE-A, beamforming focused on the
azimuth dimension, essentially at ground level. LTE-A began investigations into elevation
beamforming, where antenna arrays target taller buildings. LTE-A Pro will exploit full dimension
MIMO (FD-MIMO), which simultaneously supports both elevation and azimuth beamforming to
signi cantly boost capacity and coverage.

At the same time, the use of many more antennas will evolve towards Massive MIMO, a key
enabler for 5G. R13 saw support for eight, 12 and 16-antenna elements; R14 will go beyond with
up to 64 antenna ports at the eNB.

WHAT WILL IT ENABLE?
LTE-A Pro will pave the way for IoT by introducing new devices and new services to serve new
industries than is possible in current 4G networks.

Work on new devices is focused on increasing the battery life, reducing the cost of the device
and its deployment, and extending coverage.

A new category of low cost and low throughput devices is needed for many IoT applications.
LTE-A Pro encompasses NB-IOT and LTE-M technologies that will provide lower speed
narrowband access for low power devices. LTE-M is a variant of LTE that has been developed for
machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. High bandwidth networking will be reserved for
more powerful devices needing high throughput and low latency.
(/)
The LTE Direct protocol was borne out of work done by Qualcomm. The device-to-device (D2D)
technology enables the discovery of thousands of devices within a proximity of around 500m
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safety applications
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began in LTE-Ais- projects, and continues into R13. Future work will also look at social applications.
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R13 further aimed to allow operators to multiplex reduced bandwidth machine-type
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communications (MTC) devices and regular devices in existing LTE networks.
(/newsletter/)
A speci c area of focus in R14 will be D2D and device-to-network relays for IoT and wearables,
considering how remote MTC devices like wearables connect to other devices, which
search: in turn
connect to the access network. Speci cally, R14 aims to de ne a generic device-to-network relay
architecture.

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The use of LTE for emergency services and public safety was an important aspect of R13,
culminating in the rst set of speci cations covering mission-critical services, notably the
mission-critical Push-To-Talk (MC-PTT) protocol. This work will continue into R14 with mission-
critical video and data services.

A key project within R14 is vehicle-to-anything (V2X) communications, which will ultimately
support vehicles connected with infrastructure, people and networks to enable autonomous
(self-driving) cars.

WHOS DOING IT?
According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), as of June 2016 47 operators
globally had trialled, deployed or commercially launched LTE-A Pro technologies. At that time
commercial services were available in Australia (Telstra), South Korea (SK Telecom), Thailand (AIS,
True) and Turkey (Turkcell, Turk Telecom, Vodafone).

All the main equipment manufacturers are working on LTE-A Pro.

WHEN WILL IT BE AVAILABLE?
Despite the progress made in 4.5G speci cations, none of the commercial operations have yet
achieved (or come close to achieving) the 3Gbps data speeds that have been de ned for LTE-A
Pro. GSA data shows that Telstra and Turk Telecom both offer services at 600Mbps, and the
latter has demonstrated speeds up to 1.2Gbps, but thats still only just ahead of LTE-A capability.

And there are as yet no 3Gbps phones on the market. LG, Samsung and Sony all have 600Mbps
capable phones, but the next to come to market will only support 1Gbps. In February 2016
Qualcomm announced what it claims was the rst Category 16 LTE modem chipset. The
Snapdragon X16 supports download speeds of up to 1Gbps and LAA, again signi cantly off what
is needed for LTE-A Pro.

Clearly, full commercial LTE-A Pro services are still some time off.

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EricMc 2 months ago

LTE-A Pro is an amazing advancement. I can hardly wait!
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