The Evolution of LTE towards IMT-Advanced

This paper provides a high-level overview of some technology components currently considered for the evolution of LTE, referred to as LTE-Advanced. First, a brief overview of LTE and some of its technologies are given and then the IMT-Advanced requirements are discussed. One of the targets with the evolution of LTE is to reach or seven surpass these requirements. The technology components considered for LTE-Advanced include extended spectrum flexibility to support up to 100MHz bandwidth, enhanced multi-antenna solutions with up to eight layer transmission in the downlink and up to four layer transmission in the uplink, coordinated multi-point transmission/reception, and the use of advanced repeaters/relaying.