umts long term evolution (lte)
umts lte is to ensure the competitiveness of umts for the next ten years and beyond and to provide a low-latency and packet-optimized system with high data rate. lte is also known as eutra (evolved umts terrestrial radio access) and eutran (evolved umts terrestrial radio access network). besides peak data rates of 100 mbps in the downlink and 50 mbps in the uplink, a significant increase in spectrum efficiency and capacity as well as a significant latency reduction are planned.
deployment
eutran can be deployed as a standalone network, but integration with existing umts and gsm/gprs/edge networks is a major deployment scenario as well.
ofdma
orthogonal frequency division multiple access is a multiuser version of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ofdm) digital modulation scheme. ofdma systems use a large number of closely spaced carriers to transmit data. each carrier transmits at a much lower data rate than the complete system, and is therefore less susceptible to the distortions that may occur in the rf channel. the ofdma modulation scheme is used in the downlink of lte.
sc-fdma
single-carrier frequency division multiple access is the modulation format used in the uplink. it is closely related to ofdma but has a lower peak-to-average ratio and has been chosen by the standardization committee because this feature will lead to better efficiency in the user equipment.
mimo
mimo is the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communications performance. it offers significant increases in data throughput and link range without additional bandwidth or transmit power. mimo can be subdivided into three main categories, i.e. precoding, spatial multiplexing, and diversity coding.