Toward LTE commercial launch and future plan for LTE enhancements (LTE-Advanced)

As a promising radio access technology for next generation mobile communication systems, LTE (Long-Term Evolution) is being standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) international standardization organization. LTE Release 8 has many advantages to the other systems, e.g., the peak throughput is 300Mbps in Downlink (DL) and 75Mbps in Uplink (UL), 2–3 time higher spectrum efficiency than Rel. 6 HSPA (High Speed Packet Access), very low latency around 5msec in RAN (Radio Access Network) and 100msec for connection setup time. With Release 8, the first version for LTE specification, being completed in March 2009, the LTE standard is now being developed towards commercialization in various countries in the world. This paper addresses the plan for LTE commercial launch in NTT DOCOMO and future plan for LTE Rel. 9 and LTE-Advanced (LTE Rel. 10 and beyond).