What is e-Utran ?

e-UTRAN or eUTRAN is the air interface of 3GPP's Long Term Evolution (LTE) upgrade path for mobile networks. It is the abbreviation for evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network, also referred to as the 3GPP work item on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) also known as the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) in early drafts of the 3GPP LTE specification.

It is a radio access network standard meant to be a replacement of the UMTS, HSDPA and HSUPA technologies specified in 3GPP releases 5 and beyond. Unlike HSPA, LTE's E-UTRA is an entirely new air interface system, unrelated to and incompatible with W-CDMA. It provides higher data rates, lower latency and is optimized for packet data. It uses OFDMA radio-access for the downlink and SC-FDMA on the uplink.

Rationale for E-UTRA

Although UMTS, with HSDPA and HSUPA and their evolution, deliver high data transfer rates, wireless data usage is expected to continue increasing significantly over the next years due to the increased offering and demand of services and content on the move and the continued reduction of costs for the final user. This increase is expected to require not only faster networks and radio interfaces but also more cost efficient than what is possible by the evolution of the current standards. Thus the 3GPP consortium set the requirements for a new radio interface (EUTRAN) and core network evolution (System Architecture Evolution SAE) that would fulfill this need. These improvements in performance allow wireless operators to offer quadruple play services - voice, high-speed interactive applications including large data transfer and feature-rich IPTV with full mobility.

Starting with the 3GPP Release 8, e-UTRA is designed to provide a single evolution path for the GSM/EDGE, UMTS/HSPA, CDMA2000/EV-DO and TD-SCDMA radio interfaces, providing increases in data speeds, and spectral efficiency, and allowing the provision of more functionality.
Features:

·  Peak download rates of 299.6 Mbit/s for 4x4 antennas, 150.8 Mbit/s for 2x2 antennas with 20 MHz of spectrum.

·  Peak upload rates of 75.4 Mbit/s for every 20 MHz of spectrum.

·  Low data transfer latencies (sub-5ms latency for small IP packets in optimal conditions), lower latencies for handover and connection setup time.

·  Support for terminals moving at up to 350 km/h or 500 km/h depending on the frequency band.