LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the next major step in mobile radio communications, and will be introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 8.

The aim of this 3GPP project is to improve the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile phone standard and provide an enhanced user experience and simplified technology for next generation mobile broadband. Researchers and development engineers worldwide – representing more than 60 operators, vendors and research institutes – are participating in the joint LTE radio access standardization effort.

While 3GPP Release 8 has yet to be ratified as a standard, much of the standard will be oriented around upgrading UMTS to 4G mobile communications technology, and an all-IP flat architecture system.

LTE targets requirements of next generation networks including downlink peak rates of at least 100Mbit/s, 50 Mbit/s in the uplink and RAN (Radio Access Network) round-trip times of less than 10ms. LTE supports flexible carrier bandwidths, from 1.4MHz up to 20MHz as well as both FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division Duplex).

The goals for LTE include improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum and refarmed spectrum opportunities, and better integration with other open standards. The architecture that will result from this work is called EPS (Evolved Packet System) and comprises E-UTRAN (Evolved UTRAN) on the access side and EPC (Evolved Packet Core) on the core side. EPC is also known as SAE (System Architecture Evolution) and E-UTRAN is also known as LTE.

The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play from day one, FDD and TDD in the same platform, superior end-user experience and simple architecture resulting in low Operating Expenditures (OPEX). LTE will also support seamless connection to existing networks, such as GSM, CDMA and WCDMA. However LTE requires a completely new RAN and core network deployment and is not backward compatible with existing UMTS systems.