E-UTRA

E-UTRA is the air interface of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) upgrade path for mobile networks.

EUTRAN has the following features: Although UMTS, with HSDPA and HSUPA and their evolution, deliver high data transfer rates, wireless data usage is expected to continue increasing significantly over the next few years due to the increased offering and demand of services and content on-the-move and the continued reduction of costs for the final user.

This increase is expected to require not only faster networks and radio interfaces but also higher cost-efficiency than what is possible by the evolution of the current standards.

These improvements in performance allow wireless operators to offer quadruple play services – voice, high-speed interactive applications including large data transfer and feature-rich IPTV with full mobility.

[3] The EUTRAN protocol stack consists of:[3] Interfacing layers to the EUTRAN protocol stack: E-UTRA uses orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology depending on the terminal category and can also use beamforming for the downlink to support more users, higher data rates and lower processing power required on each handset.

[10] In the uplink LTE uses both OFDMA and a precoded version of OFDM called Single-Carrier Frequency-Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) depending on the channel.

Two different lengths of the cyclic prefix are available to support different channel spreads due to the cell size and propagation environment.

Both modes have their own frame structure within LTE and these are aligned with each other meaning that similar hardware can be used in the base stations and terminals to allow for economy of scale.

For non-Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) subframes, the OFDMA sub-carrier spacing in the frequency domain is 15 kHz.

3GPP Release 8 defines five LTE user equipment categories depending on maximum peak data rate and MIMO capabilities support.