TD-LTE Network Deployment Evolution in a Metropolitan Scenario

The wireless network gradually changes from voice service to broadband data access services and faces unprecedented growth in data traffic. The operator needs to prepare network upgrade road map in advance according to their own situation. TD-LTE is considered as providing the evolution path for TD-SCDMA. To reduce network CAPEX and OPEX, TD-LTE network is advisable to re-use TD-SCDMA site and share antennas with TD-SCDMA system, in which 8 element antennas are widely used in Marco Node B for beam forming. The scope of this paper is to demonstrate with simulations how the TD-LTE network configuration is evolving under the increase of traffic. An existing TD-SCDMA site and its base station configurations were used as the staring configuration for the network upgrade. Example results are presented with 2 traffic growth scenarios. The simulation results show that TD-LTE network upgrade configuration is greatly impacted by the traffic growth forecast. It also shows traditional network evolution technique such as spectrum upgrade is an efficient way to increase capacity in roll-out phase of TD-LTE network deployment.