Performance Evaluation of LTE-Advanced Heterogeneous Network Deployment Using Carrier Aggregation between Macro and Small Cells

Abstract

This paper evaluates the downlink performance of an LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) heterogeneous network that uses carrier aggregation (CA) between macro and small cells. The concept of utilizing the CA functionalities in LTE-A is effective in increasing the network capacity in a congested area through raising of the base station density using small cells overlaid onto an existing macro cell network. This concept is also effective in maintaining the mobility performance of user equipment (UE) because handover operation is not applied when entering/leaving a small cell, but component carrier addition/removal is only performed through CA while maintaining the connection to a macro cell. In order to present comprehensive performance evaluations in an LTE-A heterogeneous network with CA, this paper evaluates various performance criteria, e.g., downlink cell throughput and downlink user throughput. According to the obtained simulation results, the total downlink cell throughput achieved in an LTE-A heterogeneous network deployment with CA (four small cells overlaid onto a macro cell sector) exhibits a 3.9-fold improvement compared to a conventional-macro-cell-only network deployment using two frequency bands.