sion from neighbouring cell is not interference but rather part of the own signal transmission. In the uplink direction, CoMP could be applied even for Release 8 UEs, as with the uplink CoMP the eNodeB is simply receiving also other UEs than the ones having that eNodeB as their serving cell. Since there are no extra transmissions in the uplink direction for enabling this, there is big gain potential in uplink direction. In downlink direction, the extra transmissions also create more interference, and thus the gain is not SO obvious. The different CoMP methods are illustrated in Figure 2.16, with further details on the achievable CoMP performance gains covered in Chapter 7. 2.4 UE Capability in Releases 8-11 In Releases 8 and 9, there are five UE categories defined that reach in theory up to 300 Mbps with the support of four-stream MIMO operation. Currently, the devices in the field based Table 2.2 UE categories introduced in Releases 8 and 9 UE category Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4 Class 5 Peak rate DL/UL (Mbps) 50/25 100/50 150/50 300/75 RF bandwidth (MHz) Modulation DL 64QAM 64QAM 64QAM 64QAM 64QAM Modulation UL 16QAM 16QAM 16QAM 16QAM 64QAM Rx diversity BTS tx diversity I-4 tx I-4 tx I-4 tx I-4 tx I-4 tx MIMO DL Optional LTE and LTE Advanced in Releases 8-11 Table 2.3 UE categories introduced in Release 10 to enable first phase carrier aggregation UE category Class 6 Class 7 Class 8 Peak rate DL/UL (Mbps) 300/50 300/100 3000/1500 RF bandwidth (MHz) Modulation DL 64QAM 64QAM 64QAM Modulation UL 16QAM 16QAM 64QAM Rx diversity MIMO DL 2x2 (CA) or 4x4 2x2 (CA) or 4x4 MIMO UL on Releases 8 and 9 are based on either categories 3 or 4. The first phase UEs in the market were typically able to reach in-line with category 3 the 100 Mbps downlink peak data rate (with FDD mode) and 50 Mbps uplink peak data rate when the network has 20 MHz spectrum for uplink and downlink carrier available. With category 4, the downlink peak data rate was increased to 150 Mbps. As discussed earlier, the two antenna/stream downlink MIMO 