3GPP Long Term Evolution: Paving the Way towards Next 4G

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the new standard recently specified by the 3GPP in the next step forward towards fourth generation mobile. This paper presents the main technical features of this standard as well as its performance in terms of peak bit rate and average cell throughput, among others. LTE entails a big technological improvement as compared with previous 3G standard. However, this paper also demonstrates that LTE performance does not fulfils the technical requirements established by ITU-R to classify one radio access technology as a member of the IMT-Advanced family of standards. That is why, an addition to analyzing comparatively these very ambitious goals, this paper describes the procedure followed by the 3GPP to cope with these challenging requirements. By means of the design and optimization of some new radio access techniques and a further evolution of the system, the 3GPP is currently laying down the foundations of the future LTE-Advanced standard, the 3GPP candidate for 4G. This paper offers a brief insight into all these technological trends.