Sectorization and Intra-Site CoMP: Comparison of Field-Trials and System-Level Simulations

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) is a well-known approach to mitigate interference in cellular systems and, thus, to improve spectral efficiency. On the downside, implementing CoMP comes at a high cost, e.g., regarding backhaul and signal processing. These costs can be reduced when only BSs at the same site cooperate, referred to as intra-site CoMP. However, the capacity gains of intra-site CoMP are also lower, because intra-site clusters cover only a subset of cell edges. In conventional cellular networks, the deployment of 3 non-overlapping sectors is known to be a good compromise between spatial multiplexing and interference. Using intra-site CoMP, earlier simulation-based work has shown that a higher number of sectors that are largely overlapping are beneficial. In this work, we evaluate multi-cell propagation in an urban testbed, where one site is deployed either with 3 non-overlapping or with 6 overlapping sectors. Moreover, we compare measurements from field trials with simulation results for reference.