Fourth‐Generation (4G) Cellular Communications

The aggressive evolution of the cellular networking landscape has rapidly brought us to the era of fourth-generation (4G) cellular communications. This chapter focuses on 3GPP long term evolution (LTE)/LTE-Advanced, starting with the baseline standard defined in 3GPP Release 8 (Rel-8). It discusses the key enhancements defined in 3GPP Release 10 (Rel-10) for LTE-Advanced, which has been accepted into the International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-Advanced family of standards as a fully compliant 4G cellular broadband technology. The chapter provides a technical overview of the essential concepts, architecture, and protocols of an LTE cellular network. It gives an introduction to the key enhancements defined in 3GPP Rel-10 as part of LTE-Advanced-namely, carrier aggregation for wider bandwidths and increased bandwidth flexibility; enhanced multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) multiple antenna transmission for improved spectral efficiency; relay nodes for expanded coverage; and enhanced support for heterogeneous network (HetNet) deployments. Controlled Vocabulary Terms antennas and propagation; cellular networks; Land mobile radio cellular systems; long term evolution