Fundamentals of LTE

Chapter 2. Wireless Fundamentals

Wireless data rates have typically lagged wired data rates by a factor of between 10 and 100, or equivalently, by about 10–15 years for the same data rate. For example, wireless LANs were 1 Mbps (and largely unavailable) when Ethernet was 10 Mbps, advanced to 10+ Mbps when Ethernet was at 100 Mbps, and so on. Similarly, cellular communication systems have trailed residential wired broadband services by roughly the same factor. At the time of writing, 3G cellular data services such as HSDPA have finally become widespread and advertise peak data rates in the 10 Mbps and above range, but despite such claims empirically offer typical throughput only approaching 1 Mbps, which has been available in DSL or cable modem ...