ITU Requirements and 4G wireless Standards

This article uses 4G to refer to IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced), as defined by ITU-R. An IMT-Advanced cellular system must fulfill the following requirements:

• Based on an all-IP packet switched network.
• Peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access, according to the ITU requirements.
• Dynamically share and use the network resources to support more simultaneous users per cell.
• Scalable channel bandwidth 5–20 MHz, optionally up to 40 MHz.
• Peak link spectral efficiency of 15 bit/s/Hz in the downlink, and 6.75 bit/s/Hz in the uplink (meaning that 1 Gbit/s in the downlink should be possible over less than 67 MHz bandwidth).
• System spectral efficiency of up to 3 bit/s/Hz/cell in the downlink and 2.25 bit/s/Hz/cell for indoor usage.
• Smooth handovers across heterogeneous networks.
• Ability to offer high quality of service for next generation multimedia support.
• In September 2009, the technology proposals were submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as 4G candidates. Basically all proposals are based on two technologies:
• LTE Advanced standardized by the 3GPP
• 802.16m standardized by the IEEE (i.e. WiMAX)

Present implementations of WiMAX and LTE are largely considered a stopgap solution that will offer a considerable boost while WiMAX 2 (based on the 802.16m spec) and LTE Advanced are finalized. Both technologies aim to reach the objectives traced by the ITU, but are still far from being implemented.

The first set of 3GPP requirements on LTE Advanced was approved in June 2008. LTE Advanced will be standardized in 2010 as part of the Release 10 of the 3GPP specification. LTE Advanced will be fully built on the existing LTE specification Release 10 and not be defined as a new specification series. A summary of the technologies that have been studied as the basis for LTE Advanced is included in a technical report.

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