Single Carrier FDMA: A New Air Interface for Long Term Evolution

4

SC-FDMA in 3GPP Long Term Evolution

4.1 Introduction

4.1.1 3GPP Technical Specifications

Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) has been adopted by the third generation partnership project (3GPP) [1] for uplink transmission in technology standardized for long term evolution (LTE) of cellular systems. 3GPP publishes standards for cellular systems that build on GSM, the second generation cellular system that has been adopted by hundreds of operating companies and used by billions of people throughout the world. GSM uses time division multiple access (TDMA) for radio transmission in 200 kHz bands. The third generation successor to GSM is referred to as Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) and relies on wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) for radio transmission in 5 MHz bands. The letter G in GSM stands for “global” and the U in UTRA stands for “universal”. LTE technology is referred to as E-UTRA (evolved UTRA), perhaps because 3GPP could not find an adjective more comprehensive than universal. It is anticipated that LTE technology will be ready for deployment in 2010. LTE uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) for downlink radio transmission and SC-FDMA for uplink radio transmission. LTE anticipates transmissions in spectrum bands with widths ranging from 1.4 to 20 MHz. This choice of transmission technologies places the complex, power-hungry operations of frequency domain equalization (in SC-FDMA) and linear power amplification ...