3... 2... 1... Takeoff!

This will be my first try at blogging, so bear with me please.

I've never had a topic I wanted to bother other people about on the internet, but now a course in my master has given me the chance. The course is about Regulations and Standards for wireless communications and it is part of the Broadband Telecommunications Technologies Master at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

It will be a blog about the wireless technique LTE (Long Term Evolution) and more specific, about how LTE handles frequency.

Let's start with some history. As noted, LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, and it is a technique for mobile communication. Everybody is familiar with mobile phones, and most probably also with the newer concept, smartphones. These wonders of technology communicate through wireless techniques. GSM and UMTS are examples of such techniques. GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) is a second generation standard for cellular networks. The successor, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) is a third generation technology. Currently under development is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards, LTE-advanced.

The various generations differ at numerous ways, but main changes can be seen at modulation and frequency utilisation. Hereby I want to explain my interpretation of frequency utilisation with a little example.

When traveling by car, you use roads to go from one place to another. This can be on little country roads which take you home to the place you belong. Or on the highway where Bruce Springsteen is working on. All these roads have in common the rules which apply there. How people use the roads, the way they drive their car from place A to place B, is what I would call road utilisation.

This analogy can be projected on frequency utilisation. Then the roads become the frequency spectrum and the rules to use the roads become the standards in which is organised how the frequency spectrum must be used.

In short, I want to talk about the traffic rules of the new mobile communication network.