LTE tutorial | Tutorial on LTE Basics

This LTE tutorial covers LTE basics, LTE features, LTE air interface, LTE
channels and LTE frame structure. The tutorial on LTE also covers LTE protocol
stack, LTE physical layer, LTE network architecture and so on.

Introduction:
LTE standard has been published by 3GPP as an extension of UMTS(based on
3GPP standard) and 1xEV-DO(base on 3GPP2 standard) technologies. LTE is
mainly designed for high speed data applications both in the uplink and downlink.
LTE network offers about 300Mbps data rate in the downlink and about 75 Mbps
in the uplink. There is possibility of supporting voice over LTE(VoLTE) in the
future. There are various methods under progress to support VoLTE some of
them includes VOIP, legacy fallback to previous existing wireless networks.
LTE Air interface
The Air interface between LTE network and UE supports high data rate owing to
OFDM and Multiple antenna techniques employed. OFDMA is used from network
to UE air interface and SC-FDMA is used from UE to network air interface. Refer
following links to know OFDMA basics.
OFDMA Types   OFDM versus OFDMA   OFDMA Physical layer  
LTE Channels
The channels in LTE system are mainly categorized into logical, transport and
physical channels based on their functions. The downlink channels are PBCH,
PDSCH, PDCCH, PMCH, PCH etc. The uplink channels are PRACH, PUSCH
and PUCCH.

LTE Frame structure

LTE frame is 10 ms in duration and consists of 10 subframes. Each subframe
consists of two slots. The frame structure is different for FDD and TDD
topologies. Refer LTE Frame >>.
LTE Protocol Stack
The stack consists of different layers viz. Physical, MAC, RLC, PDCP and RRC
as shown in the figure. Refer LTE stack >>.
LTE Physical layer
The figure depicts LTE eNodeB physical layer and LTE UE physical layer
transmitter modules.
Refer LTE Physical Layer >> for more information.
LTE System Architecture Evolution
As shown in the figure LTE SAE(System Architecture Evolution) consists
UE,eNodeB and EPC(evolved packet core). Various interfaces are designed
between these entities which include Uu between UE and eNodeB, X2 between
two eNodeB, S1 between EPC and eNodeB. eNodeB has functionalities of both
RNC and NodeB as per previous UMTS architecture.LTE is completely IP based
network.

The basic architecture contains the following network elements.

1. LTE EUTRAN (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio)
2. LTE Evolved Packet Core.
LTE EUTRAN
It is a radio access network standard meant to be a replacement of the UMTS,
HSDPA and HSUPA . Unlike HSPA, LTE's E-UTRA is an entirely new air
interface system. It provides higher data rates, lower latency and is optimized for
packet data. EUTRAN (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio) consists of eNB
(Base station). EUTRAN is responsible for complete radio management in LTE.
When UE powered is on, eNB is responsible for Radio Resource Management,
i.e. it shall do the radio bearer control, radio admission control, allocation of
uplink and downlink to UE etc. When a packet from UE arrives to eNB, eNB shall
compress the IP header and encrypt the data stream. It is also responsible for
adding a GTP-U header to the payload and sending it to the SGW. Before the
data is actually transmitted the control plane has to be established. eNB is
responsible for choosing a MME using MME selection function. The QoS is taken
care by eNB as the eNB is only entity on radio. Other functionalities include
scheduling and transmission of paging messages, broadcast messages, and
bearer level rate enforcements also done by eNB.

LTE Evolved Packet Core (EPC)

The LTE EPC consists of MME, SGW, PGW, HSS and PCRF. Refer LTE
architecture >> for more information on functions of EPC network elements.
LTE Advanced Architecture
LTE Advanced architecture for E-UTRAN consists of P-GW, S-GW, MME, S1-
MME, eNB, HeNB, HeNB-GW, Relay Node etc. LTE Advanced protocol stack
consists of user plane and control plane for AS and NAS.
Refer LTE Advanced Architecture and Stack➤.
This LTE tutorial for beginners is very useful to learn basic knowledge on LTE
and LTE advanced technologies.

Basics of LTE Technology

This tutorial section on LTE basics covers following sub topics:
Main page  features  terminologies  Frame  TDD FDD  Channel
types  PHY  stack  throughput  VoLTE  CA   cell search  network
entry  Timers  PSS vs SSS  Security   LTE Bands  EARFCN  Hotspot  router 

LTE tutorial-Page2
This tutorial on LTE covers following topics.

Introduction:
LTE is the next generation of technology which is backward compatible with
cellular technologies such as HSPA,GSM,CDMA etc. LTE means Long Term
Evolution.LTE which is known as 4G technology is being specified in Release 8
and 9 of the 3GPP standard. Release 10 is referred as LTE-Advanced. The LTE
radio transmission and reception specifications are documented in TS 36.101 for
the UE ( User Equipment) and TS 36.104 for the eNB (Evolved Node B).
Downlink and uplink transmission in LTE are based on the use of multiple access
technologies: specifically, orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA) for the downlink, and single-carrier frequency division multiple access
(SC-FDMA) for the uplink. The work on the specifications is ongoing, and many
of the technical documents are updated quarterly. The latest versions of the 36-
series documents can be found at
https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/specs/archive/36_series/ LTE Physical layer is
described in TS36.211 and TS36.212 releases. 36.211 mentions physical
channels and modulation while 36.212 mentions multiplexing and channel
coding.
LTE system basic parameters and LTE Frame
structure:
Frame Size=10ms
No. of slots=20.
No of Slots per Sub frame =2.
Slot duration=0.5 ms
Sub frame duration=1 ms
Basic time unit Ts for BW of 20MHz, (1/15000)*2048 seconds equal to 32.55ns.

There are two types of frames in LTE;FDD and TDD. Type 1, applicable to FDD-
Here there are total 20 slots, each is 0.5ms. 2 slots constitute 1 sub frame. Total
Frame duration is 10ms.
Type 2, applicable to TDD- Here there are 10 sub frames, each is 1 ms,sub
frame 0 and 5 are dedicated for downlink always while sub frames 1 and 6 are
dedicated for control frame.Sub frames 2, 3, 4 and 7, 8, 9 depend on UL/DL
configuration table defined in the standard.Frame has switch point periodicity of 5
ms.

LTE Features
The key features of LTE physical layer are mentioned below.
Channel Bandwidth: 1.4/3/5/10/15/20 MHz
FFT size : 128/256/512/1024/1536/2048
Cyclic Prefix : Normal, Extended
DL multiple access: OFDMA
UL multiple access: SC-FDMA
Duplexing :FDD & TDD
Subcarrier mapping: Localized
Subcarrier hopping: Yes
Data Modulation : QPSK/16QAM/64QAM
Subcarrier spacing: 15KHz
Channel Coding : convolutional coding and turbo coding
MIMO :2 or 4 at transmit and 2 or 4 at receive side
HARQ :incremental redundancy
3GPP released documents of LTE and LTE-advanced are available at 3GPP
web site- https://www.3gpp.org

LTE Terminology
This tutorial section on LTE basics covers following sub topics:
Main page  features  terminologies  Frame  TDD FDD  Channel
types  PHY  stack  throughput  VoLTE  CA   cell search  network
entry  Timers  PSS vs SSS  Security   LTE Bands  EARFCN  Hotspot  router 

LTE tutorial-Page3
This page on LTE terminology covers LTE and LTE advanced technology
related terms. It include terms eNB,eNodeB,UE,OFDMA,SC-FDMA,LTE
frame,Resource block(RB), Resource Element(RE),Slot,sub frame,reference
signal, synchronization signal,S-GW,MME,X2 interface, S1 interface, Uu
interface, Control channel, data channel,LTE channel types,logical channel,
transport channel, physical channel, P-SS,S-
SS,PBCH,PDSCH,PDCCH,PCFICH,PCH,RS,SRS,DMRS,PRACH,
PUSCH,PUCCH, carrier aggregation,voice over LTE etc.
eNB or eNodeB It is similar to Base station which is used in GSM networks. Also
called as eNodeB.
UE: It is similar to mobile subscriber.
OFDMA: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, used in physical layer
of LTE Downlink.
SC-FDMA: Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access, used in physical
layer of LTE Uplink.
LTE Frame: LTE frame are of 2 types TDD and FDD. In both the cases, frame is
composed of 10 sub frames and each sub frame is made of 2 slots. Frame size
is 10ms.
Resource Block (RB): It is the smallest block of resource that can be allocated
to UE by eNB; it is 12 subcarriers for 7 symbols.
Resource Element (RE): The smallest unit of radio resources, one subcarrier for
one symbol.
Slot: 7 consecutive symbols for short Cyclic Prefix, 6 symbols for long cyclic
prefix.
Sub frame: 2 consecutive timeslots.
Reference Signal: Similar to pilot carrier and is used for channel estimation at
the receiver.
Synchronization signal: There are two synchronization signals, Primary and
secondary. Both are transmitted in slot 0 and slot 10 in all the frames. It is same
as preamble used in earlier systems and used for time, frequency
synchronization purpose.
S-GW: Serving Gateway
MME: Mobility Management Entity
X2 interface: Interface used between eNodeB and eNodeB.
S1 interface: Interface used between eNodeB and core network interface
(MME/S-GW).
Uu interface: This is the air interface used between eNodeB and UE.
Control channel: This channel carry control information used to make, maintain
and terminate the connection. Used for the transfer of control plane information in
LTE.
Data channel: This channel carry traffic information. Used for the transfer of user
plane information.
Channel structure in LTE:
LTE adopts a hierarchical channel structure. LTE defined three channel types i.e.
logical,transport and physical channels. Each associates with a service access
point (SAP). (SAP) between different layers. These channels are used by lower
layers to provide services to the upper layers.
Logical Channels: What to Transmit.
They are used by MAC layer to provide services to RLC layer. Each logical
channel is defined as per type of information it carries. In LTE, there are two
categories of logical channels depending on the service they provide: control
channels and traffic channels. The new LTE categories M1 and NB1 are added
in LTE 3GPP Release 13.
Transport Channels: How to Transmit.
PHY uses transport channel to offer services to the MAC layer. It is characterized
by how and with what characteristics data is transferred over the air.

Physical Channels: Actual Transmission

Each physical channel maps to a set of resource elements in the time frequency
grid that carry information from upper layers. The basic entities that make a
physical channel are REs and RBs. A resource element is one subcarrier by one
OFDM symbol and typically this could carry one (or two with spatial multiplexing)
modulated symbol(s). A resource block is a collection of resource elements and
in the frequency domain this represents the smallest quanta of resources that
can be allocated.
P-SS: Primary synchronization signal
S-SS: secondary synchronization signal
PBCH: Physical Broadcast Channel
PDSCH: Physical Downlink Shared Channel
PDCCH: Physical Downlink Control Channel
PCFICH: Physical Control Format Indicator Channel
PHICH: Physical Hybrid ARQ Indication Channel
PCH: Paging channel
RS: Reference Signal, used both in uplink and downlink
SRS: Sounding reference signal, used in uplink
DMRS: Demodulation Reference Signal
PRACH: Physical Random Access Channel used in uplink
PUSCH: Physical Uplink Shared Channel
PUCCH: Physical Uplink Control Channel

What is LTE | What does LTE mean

This tutorial section on LTE basics covers following sub topics:
Main page  features  terminologies  Frame  TDD FDD  Channel
types  PHY  stack  throughput  VoLTE  CA   cell search  network
entry  Timers  PSS vs SSS  Security   LTE Bands  EARFCN  Hotspot  router 

LTE stands for Long Term Evolution. The technology designed and developed by
3GPP as air interface for cellular mobile communication systems. It is used to
increase the capacity and data transfer speed of mobile telephone networks used
mainly for data communication.LTE is marketed as 4G technology. For current
release of LTE specifications, one can visit 3GPP site. One can refer list of 3GPP
reference documents. LTE Advanced is the latest enhancement to LTE
technology to further increase the data rate and coverage limit. Refer LTE vs LTE
Advanced to know features of both the technologies.
Though LTE was designed for high speed broadband data communication, voice
also can be supported using VOIP(Voice over IP) protocols or using other legacy
system fall-back.

source of figure: wikimedia commons

As mentioned in the diagram above LTE system composed of two main parts.
User device is referred as UE i.e. User Equipment and Base station is known as
eNB. eNB is connected to internet back bone via SGW(serving gateway) or
MME(Mobility Management Entity). Refer LTE tutorial which explains system
architecture mentioning connectivity between LTE system components.
Following are the silent parameters of the LTE system:
• LTE uses OFDMA in the downlink and SC-FDMA in the uplink, refer SC-FDMA
vs OFDMA.
• It supports two types of frame structures as per FDD and TDD topologies,
refer FDD LTE vs TDD LTE.
• The resource allocation in LTE is as based on resource block concept defined.
Refer LTE Terminology.
• LTE supports various frequency bands in both TDD(Band 33 to 43) and
FDD(Band 1 to 25).
Similarities and difference of LTE with other
wireless standards
LTE is somewhat similar to HSPA and its downlink access technique is similar to
mobile wimax i.e. OFDMA. Refer following links LTE vs WiMAX, LTE vs
GSM and LTE vs UMTS which compares LTE with WiMAX, GSM and UMTS
technologies respectively.
This page just covers what does lte stand for or what is LTE technology is all
about. For further and detailed study one can refer lte related links provided on
this page.

LTE UE category | UE category in LTE cat-

1, 2, 3, 4, 5
This page covers LTE UE category including PHY layer parameters. It covers UE
category in LTE viz. cat-1, cat-2, cat-3, cat-4 and cat-5.

The LTE UE downlink and uplink PHY layer parameters such as buffer sizes,
modulation type, data rate (Mbps), MIMO, max. MCH bits, DL-SCH transport
block size etc. are mentioned for different LTE UE categories in the table below.
 LTE ue LTE ue LTE ue LTE ue
Feature LTE ue Cat-1 Cat-2 Cat-3 Cat-4 Cat-5

Downlink(DL)
Data 10, DL 50, DL 100, DL 150, DL 300,
Rate(Mbps) Uplink(UL) 5 UL 25 UL 50 UL 50 UL 75

DL:
DL: DL: DL: DL: QPSK,
QPSK, QPSK, QPSK, QPSK, 16QAM,
16QAM, 16QAM, 16QAM, 16QAM, 64QAM,
64QAM, 64QAM, 64QAM, 64QAM, UL: QPSK,
Modulation type UL: QPSK, UL: QPSK, UL: QPSK, UL: QPSK, 16QAM,
supported 16QAM 16QAM 16QAM 16QAM 64QAM

2x2 MIMO Not supported Mandatory Mandatory Mandatory Mandatory

Not Not Not

4x4 MIMO Not supported supported supported supported Mandatory

Total Layer-2
Buffer
Size(Bytes) 150 000 700 000 1 400 000 1 900 000 3 500 000

Max. no. of bits

of a
MCH transport
block
received within
a TTI 10296 51024 75376 75376 75376

Max. no. of bits 10296 51024 75376 75376 149776

of a
DL-SCH
transport block
received within
a TTI

Max. no. of
supported
layers for spatial
multiplexing in
DL 1 2 2 2 4

Max. no. of bits

of an UL-SCH
transport
block
transmitted
within a TTI 5160 25456 51024 51024 75376