Network Upgrade with LTE-Advanced Small Cells

Complementing macro-only cellular networks with low-powered base stations is a promising deployment solution to cope with exploding data traffic in the coming years. In Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced, interference mitigation technologies, like the linear interference rejection combining (IRC) receiver and Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC), are introduced to address the co-channel interference between macro and small cells in downlink. These advanced techniques will boost the performance of small cells, and impact the network deployment upgrade. In this paper, LTE-A small cell deployments are evaluated through a network upgrade case study. A network upgrade with small cell deployments is simulated in a realistic metropolitan scenario to satisfy the traffic growth forecast over a period of ten years. A dynamic system level simulator is used to model the network behavior of IRC receiver and eICIC. The deployment time, scale and cost of the small cells improved by interference mitigation solutions are presented. The simulation results show that small cell deployments are the fundamental way to increase the system capacity as well as that eICIC is a promised solution to improve the system capacity. An increase of 56% in system capacity, which corresponds to a ~19 month network upgrade delay and 34% cost savings , can be achieved by eICIC in the case where small cells deployments become very dense.