ITU Officially Defines 4G IMT-Advanced

The ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) officially designated two technologies as 4G mobile wireless broadband or IMT-Advanced. These two technologies are "LTE-Advanced" and "WirelessMAN-Advanced". There were six candidate technologies but only these two are officially designated as 4G, having successfully met all of the criteria established by ITU-R for the first release of IMT-Advanced.


"LTE Advanced" is developed by 3GPP as LTE Release 10 and Beyond. "WirelessMAN-Advanced" is developed by the IEEE under 802.16.


"While the goals set for IMT-Advanced were considered by some to be very high, I am very pleased to see that all stakeholders in the mobile wireless industry have risen to meet the challenge," said Valery Timofeev, Director of the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau, in expressing his appreciation for this worldwide effort. "I look forward to the ITU-R Recommendation for IMT-Advanced that will have a profound effect on the development of state-of-the-art technologies for 4G mobile broadband."


Following the success of the ITU-defined IMT-2000 (3G) systems, ITU-R launched the IMT-Advanced (4G) initiative with its strategic IMT future vision in 2002. It subsequently established the services, spectrum and performance requirements for IMT-Advanced as well as a detailed evaluation process. In an on-going partnership with the industry, the six proposals received by ITU in October 2009 were individually subjected to a rigorous assessment, supported by the work of independent external evaluation groups that had been established around the world. Industry consensus and harmonization fostered by ITU-R among these six proposals have resulted in the consolidation of the proposals into the two agreed IMT-Advanced technologies. These technologies will now move into the final stage of the IMT-Advanced process, which provides for the development in early 2012 of an ITU-R Recommendation specifying the in-depth technical standards for these radio technologies.
http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/40.aspx