Using SystemVue to overcome 4G challenges

Daren McClearnon and Wu Huan, Agilent Technologies
12/5/2011 9:59 AM EST

LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) is an emerging mobile communications standard being developed by 3GPP. Specified as part of Release 10 of the 3GPP specifications, it is now approved for 4G IMT-Advanced. LTE-A leverages many existing LTE Release 8/9 parameters, while also incorporating a number of enhancements, including carrier aggregation, an enhanced multiple access scheme and MIMO transmission, multi-hop transmission, coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission/reception, and support for heterogeneous networks. These enhancements enable significant benefits, but they also create baseband and RF design challenges that further complicate the 4G physical layer (PHY) architecture development. Next-generation Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, with their array of new capabilities, offer a viable resolution to this dilemma. The trick is in understanding what these new capabilities are and how they can be used to overcome 4G challenges.

A number of EDA tools available on the market today can be used for LTE-based design; however, creating superior systems designs for the emerging LTE-A standard requires an entirely new set of functionality.

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