Heterogeneous LTE-Advanced Network Expansion for 1000x Capacity

Abstract

This paper studies LTE (Long-Term Evolution)-Advanced heterogeneous network expansion in a dense urban environment for a 1000 times capacity increase and a 10 times increase of the minimum user data rate requirements. The radio network capacity enhancement via outdoor and indoor small cell densification and utilization of the higher frequency bands has been investigated. As the baseline, we assume a full LTE-Advanced network deployment. Rather than looking at peak data rate, we focus on the end-user experience defined as 90% coverage at a minimum user data rate. We conclude that the 1000 times network capacity increase together with the 10 times increase of minimum user data rate can be reached by LTE-Advanced deployment with approximately 10 times more outdoor micro sites and 100 times more indoor femto cells with respect to the number of macro sites. In terms of spectrum requirements, we have increased the total amount of downlink spectrum to a total of 300 MHz by re-farming spectrum and adding new spectrum in 3.5 GHz band. We conclude that new spectrum at 3.5 GHz is essential to reach the set target network capacity.