LTE Advanced Pro – A Short Excursion

Type: Grandmetric GuidePaper
Author: Marcin Dryjanski

Abstract:

Everybody is currently talking about the upcoming 5G era but during this race to get to 5G, we should not forget about the evolution of LTE that’s taking place. One of the main reasons for this is the potential 5G requirement to have tight integration with the evolved LTE. With Rel-13 of 3GPP standards getting frozen a new step has been taken in the evolution of LTE, under the name of “LTE Advanced Pro”. We provide an overview of this new “LTE creature” herein. This Guidepaper starts with the features covered under the umbrella of LTE-Advanced Pro and is divided into
the ones standardized within Rel-13 and Rel-14. Further enhancements are also shortlisted and outlined in taking LTE-Advanced Pro to Rel-15. Next chapters elaborate some of the features in more details including: the integration of LTE-Advanced Pro with WiFi at the RAN level, LTE interface version for unlicensed spectrum access (Licensed Assisted Access), and LTE feature for massive MTC, namely Narrowband-IoT. Finally, the Guidepaper is summarized by showing the evolution of the system features, starting from LTE through LTE-Advanced Pro along with the changes in the theoretical peak throughput values.

Contents:

• Executive summary
• LTE-Advanced Pro – What is it?
  • LTE-Advanced Pro Rel-13 features
  • LTE-Advanced Pro v.2 – enhancements within Rel-14
  • Rel-15 enhancements to LTE-Advanced Pro
• LTE-Advanced Pro RAN level integration with WiFi
• LTE access to unlicensed spectrum
• Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) for massive MTC
• The evolution of LTE: from LTE Rel-8 through LTE-Advanced to LTE-Advanced Pro
  • Timeline
  • Main features
  • Magic throughput values
• Summary
• Glossary
• References
• About the author

Keywords: 3GPP evolution, LTE-Advanced Pro, NB-IoT, LAA