Long Term Evolution: Air Interface, Capabilities and Performance

Abstract

The aim of this project was to describe the radio interface, characteristics and perfor-mance of LTE, the latest generation of mobile communications so far. To achieve that objective, first, a brief summary of the first and second generation of mobile communi-cations was given. Then, the evolution of the third generation was studied in order to understand the changes produced in the LTE technology as well as the similarities be-tween the third and fourth generation. To give an explanation about the performance, two measurement were made, a fixed-location test in Leppävaara, Espoo and a drive test from Leppävaara to Helsinki. Those measurements were done with TEMS Investi-gations software, which was also introduced in the project.

The results obtained from the measurement revealed that LTE, as expected, provides a higher data rate than in the third generation and better performance in general. These measurements gave a different point of view of the performance of LTE, since the drive test handled here was never done before.