Real Life LTE In-Building Deployment Demonstrating Multi-Cell Capacity

Abstract

In Building Solutions (IBS) are a well-established approach to providing indoor cellular coverage. The increasing wireless mobile broadband traffic and the fact that most broadband data is consumed indoors increases the interest to understand the IBS capacity potential. For a given available spectrum, a straightforward capacity solution is cell-splitting. In this paper, measurement results from a full-scale real life deployment with a Long Term Evolution (LTE) IBS solution are presented. Two cell-splitting scenarios in a three floor, 7500 m2 office building have been tested, both by collecting traffic and radio statistics from actual users, as well as performing controlled walk-tests in the building. It is found that cell splitting is an excellent way to enable increased indoor capacity. The isolation between floors as well as within a floor is higher than in a typical macro scenario. High throughput and fraction of spatial multiplexing is maintained even with artificially generated 100% activity. The capacity is assessed to around 2 kbps/m2/MHz with a 6 cell solution.