LTE (Long Term Evolution) is initiated by 3GPP to improve the mobile phone standard to cope with future technology evolutions and needs. 3GPP work on the Evolution of the 3G Mobile System started with the RAN Evolution Work Shop, 2 - 3 November 2004 in Toronto, Canada.

The main targets for this evolution are increased data rates, improved spectrum efficiency, improved coverage, reduced latency and packet-optimized system that support multiple Radio Access Technologies.

Architecture overview

The evolved architecture comprises E-UTRAN (Evolved UTRAN) on the access side and EPC (Evolved Packet Core) on the core side.

The figure below shows the evolved system architecture

In E-UTRAN, eNBs provide the E-UTRA user plane protocols (PDCP/RLC/MAC/PHY) and control plane (RRC) protocol which terminates towards the UE.

The eNBs are interconnected with each other by means of the X2 interface. The eNBs are connected by the S1 interface to the EPC (Evolved Packet Core). The eNB connects to the MME (Mobility Management Entity) by means of the S1-MME interface and to the Serving Gateway (S-GW) by means of the S1-U interface. The S1 interface supports a many-to-many relation between MMEs / Serving Gateways and eNBs.

Read more in NgnGuru Solutions Whitepaper - Download