LTE and the Evolution to 4G Wireless: Design and Measurement Challenges, 2nd Edition

Foreword to the Second Edition

Since the first edition of this book a number of LTE networks have become operational and customer take-up has been enthusiastic. What is remarkable is that LTE is being launched not on a single band but now on over 16 bands worldwide—and yet my impression is that there has been much less fuss over the launches than was experienced at the introduction of UMTS networks around 2003. At times of launch, bad news tends to hang around longer than good news, so no fuss is generally preferred. And if I am right about the relatively smooth launch of LTE, it is perhaps because the technology represents evolution and not revolution. Maybe operators have learned from the 3G experience to manage their customers’ expectations more effectively. Another factor, quite possibly, is that the industry-wide effort to deliver conformance tests for both infrastructure and devices—available almost as soon as the core specifications matured—has paid dividends.

As the chairman of 3GPP RAN Working Group 5, I have been privileged to witness tremendous goodwill and cooperation by the test industry in particular to make conformance testing based on network emulators a reality even before the first LTE network was launched. With the availability of operational handsets thereafter, test development work continues apace. And yet the delivery of conformance tests has not been the only test story. In mid-2010, network operators demanded the ability to measure application layer throughput ...