Proof of concept implementation of UMTS long term evolution

Abstract: In recent years, mobile communication has evolved rapidly and demand for
mobile devices with new and higher quality services is increasing. The
existing 3G standard, Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), is
currently being upgraded with High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) to meet
current demands. However, in the longer term this will not be sufficient.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has investigated the long
term evolution of UMTS (LTE) to meet future demands and ensure the
competitiveness of the standard. The objective is a radio access technology
with higher data rates, lower latencies and optimal support for packet
services such as multimedia, games and internet services. Telephony should
be supported by means of Voice over IP (VoIP) with at least as good quality
as circuit switched telephony.

This thesis will cover the technology and architecture of LTE. The focus is
on Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) Layer 2
functionality and a proof of concept LTE system. The purpose is to
demonstrate how user plane traffic is transferred through the system. The
specifications of LTE are not yet finalized. Therefore, the implementation
is based on work in progress specifications and meeting protocols from 3GPP
work groups.

The prototype resulted in a system capable of handling multiple user
equipments with streams in both uplink and downlink. In Layer 2, the
prototype has a complete implementation of user plane data transfer in
unacknowledged mode, featuring segmentation, concatenation and
multiplexing. The prototype also supports retransmissions and basic
scheduling.