Design, Deployment and Performance of 4G-LTE Networks: A Practical Approach

Preface

Cellular mobile networks have been evolving for many years. Several cellular systems and networks have been developed and deployed worldwide to provide the end user with quality and reliable communication over the air. Mobile technologies from the first to third generation have been quickly evolving to meet the need of services for voice, video, and data.

Today, the transition to smartphones has steered the user's interest toward a more mobile-based range of applications and services, increasing the demand for more network capacity and bandwidth. Meanwhile, this transition presents a significant revenue opportunity for network operators and service providers, as there is substantially higher average revenue per user (ARPU) from smartphone sales and relevant services. While the rollout of more advanced radio networks is proceeding rapidly, smartphone penetration is also increasing exponentially. Therefore, network operators need to ensure that the subscribers' experience stays the same as, or is even better than, with the older existing systems.

With the growing demand for data services, it is becoming increasingly challenging to meet the required data capacity and cell-edge spectrum efficiency. This adds more demand on the network operators, vendors and device providers to apply methods and features that stabilize the system's capacity and consequently improves the end-user experience. 4G systems and relevant advanced features have the capabilities to keep up with today's ...