LTE Advanced: 3GPP Solution for IMT-Advanced

12.7 Release 12 LTE-Advanced Outlook

3GPP will determine, from mid-2012 onwards, the overall framework for the Release 12 work, starting from the 3GPP TSG RAN workshop scheduled for mid-2012 addressing work from 3GPP TSG RAN Release 12 and beyond, with some of the topics addressed already earlier in 3GPP presented here. It is worth noting that the Release 12 work program is not yet concluded and is expected to contain several additional topics to the expected items listed in the following. The topics postponed from Release 11 include:

• Device-to-device communication is a topic with work on-going in 3GPP already in the requirements domain from 2H/2011 onwards. The different use cases include close proximity communications for such users that would have large amount of data to transmit to users close by. Another type of use case is the use of LTE for public safety where direct communication between terminals would also be desired in addition to the regular cellular type of communications. The RAN level study item proposal can be found from [9].
• LTE and WLAN dynamic path switching (referred also as LTE/WLAN carrier aggregation) looks for tighter interworking than the existing core network off-loading solutions. The key motivation factor with integration in the radio level of WLAN and LTE is performance. The faster the WLAN use can be control, the more reliable and with better performance (of combined system performance) the joint operation can be carried out. 3GPP has defined in earlier ...