The ITU has coined the term IMT Advanced to identify mobile systems whose capabilities go beyond those of IMT 2000. In order to meet this new challenge, 3GPPs Organizational Partners have agreed to widen 3GPP’s scope to include systems beyond 3G. See blog on Advance LTE Requirements

In 2008 3GPP held two workshops on IMT Advanced, where the “Requirements for Further Advancements for E-UTRA” were gathered. The resulting Technical Report 36.913 is now published (June 08) and a liaison was sent to ITU-R covering the work in 3GPP RAN on LTE-Advanced towards IMT-Advanced.

Why “Advanced”?

The ITU has coined the term IMT Advanced to identify mobile systems whose capabilities go beyond those of IMT 2000. In order to meet this new challenge, 3GPPs Organizational Partners have agreed to widen 3GPP’s scope to include the development of systems beyond 3G.
Some of the key features of IMT-Advanced will be;

• Worldwide functionality & roaming
• Compatibility of services
• Interworking with other radio access systems
• Enhanced peak data rates to support advanced services and applications (100 Mbit/s for high and 1 Gbit/s for low mobility)

For further reading refer to the 3GPP RAN Chairmans’ presentation to the ITU-R WP 5D Third Workshop on IMT-Advanced.