LTE Advanced is the next step in the evolution of LTE. As happened to I study in-depth on how exactly LTE Advanced works, here is an insight to readers to get a sense of the technology that can give upto 1 Gbps of High Speed mobile Broadband on your SmartPhone.
The Key features using which LTE Advanced is made possible is as follows,
Carrier Aggregation enables multiple LTE carriers to be used together to provide the high data rates required for 4G LTE Advanced. LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation is being used to attain higher data rates by combining lower and higher band spectrum to improve bandwidth and overall spectral efficiency. Carrier aggregation can be used for both FDD and TDD modes.
Currently this technology is being used globally for FDD LTE with bands 850, 900, 1800, 2100. Carrier aggregation is available with two technologies, WCDMA and LTE. However, for good spectral efficiency, deploying it in WCDMA needs 5MHz of continuous spectrum in the two bands while LTE technology needs 10MHz of continuous spectrum in the two bands, e.g. Telstra combines 1800+900 bands, SKT combines 1800+850, LGU combines 2100+850.
LTE Coordinated Multipoint is a technique that enables the dynamic coordination of transmission and reception over a variety of different base stations. The aim is to improve overall quality for the user as well as improving the utilization of the network.
State of Voice Over LTE – VoLTE
LTE is primarily being sold as a data technology, but people still tend to see their smartphone as a voice device first with data capabilities added on. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is designed to enable voice calls over a 4G LTE network. South Korea is currently the only country with full LTE coverage. If you don’t have full coverage, then you have to deploy SRVCC to fall back (again) to 2G / 3G whenever the customer leaves 4G coverage.
VoLTE is not an investment intensive technology. Talking to equipment companies, we understand that the existing LTE technology can be adapted to voice by an additional software and hardware deployment. However, this is the next logical step after commercial pan-India deployment of the LTE networks.