Mobility performance and suitability of macro cell power-off in LTE dense small cell HetNets

It is widely accepted that future capacity demands will require the deployment of dense small cell networks most surely co-existing with legacy macro cell deployments forming a so-called heterogeneous network (HetNet). Whereas network capacity can benefit from these dense small cell deployments, mobility management becomes increasingly complex to handle, especially in high mobility outdoor urban environments. This paper addresses the performance evaluation of Long Term Evolution (LTE) handover mechanisms in dense small cell HetNets. We assess the potential challenges and we discuss the suitability of Macro cell power-off in “sufficiently dense” small cell deployments. Extensive numerical results are presented through detailed system level simulations.