Link-level performance of an LTE UE receiver in synchronous and asynchronous networks

The downlink link-level performance assessment, through simulations, is given in this paper for an LTE (and LTE-A) UE receiver, in interference-limited scenarios, and in the presence of RF impairments for both synchronous and asynchronous networks. The data channel (PDSCH) receiver is based on the linear MMSE filter adapted accordingly to the interference environment through the covariance estimation and its inclusion into the filter calculation. A suboptimum MMSE-based receiver is also derived for the transmit-diversity scheme in presence of interference, showing excellent performance. In the baseband simulator, we have modelled typical RF impairments, AGC/ADC, as well as signal-related estimations, such as UE speed, SINR, channel, covariance, time/frequency offsets. The simulation results show excellent performance for the discussed receiver in the presence of strong other-cell interference and impairments.