Authors: Suyash Tripathi, Vinay Kulkarni, and Alok Kumar, Continuous Computing

Introduction
The journey which initially started with UMTS 99 - aiming for high peak packet data rates of 2Mbps with support for both voice and data services is approaching a new destination known as Long Term Evolution. LTE targets to achieve 100Mbps in the downlink (DL) and 50 Mbps in the uplink (UL) directions with user plane latency less than 5ms due to spectrum flexibility and higher spectral efficiency. These exceptional performance requirements are possible due to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) functionality in the radio link at the physical layer.

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