Radio Protocols for LTE and LTE-Advanced

Chapter 1

Introduction

In recent years, the world has seen many changes in terms of how we experience wireless communication. A few years ago, when we talked about wireless cellular communication, we usually meant voice calls through a small handset device or text exchange called Short Message Service (SMS). However, with the wide penetration of smartphones and tablet PCs, people are starting to see possibilities beyond simple voice and text calls. Any time, anywhere, and any place, people can now connect to the Internet to receive up-to-date information such as the latest news, weather information, stock price quotes, traffic information, map data, and so on. The number of applications accessing the Internet is growing rapidly and the bandwidth that these applications require is also growing rapidly. As the use of the Internet through wireless connectivity increases explosively, wireless communication systems are required to provide not just simple connectivity to the Internet but also broadband experiences.

1.1 3GPP

3GPP is an acronym for 3rd Generation Partnership Project [1], which has its roots in the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). As the name suggests, the original work scope of 3GPP was to produce technical specifications for the 3G wireless system. The intended 3G wireless system was an evolutionary step from the legacy GSM system, and many functional and network elements of the intended system were to be adopted from the legacy GSM system. In the end, ...