-candidates for the International Mobile Telecommunications
competition (IMT) by the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU), it was improved to reach higher peak rates
increasing user density per cell, calling it as LTE-Advance
after release 10.
-At this moment, 4G deployments are planned all over the
world and billions of potential users await to gain access to
high-speed and seamless communications. LTE technology,
with its latest release of LTE Advanced, is the best candidate
to be elected as 4G standard. Core and radio-access network
are based on flat all-ip networking, making interoperability
extremely easy and fast, but increasing the requirements of
higher security capabilities. Being supported by most of the
mobile operators providers and manufacturers, a victory is
envisaged into the ITU competition to choose it as standard
for IMT-Advanced.
-This paper analyses the security aspects of LTE-Advanced
technology, reviewing all the alternative solutions proposed by
the research community and guiding future research. Section
II depicts a brief description of the Evolved Packet System,
protocols and policy used to provide safe communications.
Section III completes the analysis pointing out the identified
threats and weaknesses, linking them with alternative solutions
on the Section IV. Finally, Section V and VI conclude with
a summary and personal opinion, introducing future research
on this matter.