2011 8th International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems, Aachen

Heterogeneou Networks in LTE-Ad us dvanced

Invited Paper
Stefan Brueck Qualcomm CDMA Tec chnologies GmbH, Nordostpark 89, 90411 Nuremberg Germany g, sbrueck@qualcomm.com Abstract
E) 3GPP Long-term Evolution (LTE allows operators to use new and wider spectrum and complem ments 3G networks with higher data rates, lower latency and a flat, IP-based d architecture. To further improve the broadba user experience and r, in an ubiquitous and cost-effective manner 3GPP has been d. working on various aspects of LTE-Advanced Since radio link ical limits with 3G performance is quickly approaching theoreti enhancements and LTE, the next performan leap will come nce from an evolved network topology. This paper discusses the need r for an alternative deployment model and topology using E-Advanced based heterogeneous networks. The concept of LTE heterogeneous networks is about improving spectral efficiency mto per unit area. Using a mix of macro, pico, fem and relay cells, w-cost deployments heterogeneous networks enable flexible and low ce. and provide a uniform broadband experienc To enhance the performance of these networks, advanced techniques are d described, which are needed to manage and c control interference and deliver the full benefits of such networks These techniques s. r include cell range expansion, adaptive inter cell interference eivers. coordination and interference cancellation rece Keywords Advanced Heterogeneous Networks, LTE-A

ence. However, this deployment maintain uniform user experie process is complex and iterat tive. Moreover, site acquisition for macro base stations with towers becomes more and more difficult in dense urban are eas. Hence, a more flexible ed deployment model is neede for operators to improve broadband user experience in a ubiquitous and cost effective way. Wireless cellular systems have evolved to the point where an e ne isolated system (with just on base station) achieves near optimal performance, as determined by information theoretic limits. Future gains of wirele networks will be obtained ess more from advanced netwo ork topology. Heterogeneous networks, utilizing a diverse set of base stations, can be deployed to improve the spectral efficiency per unit area. A m heterogeneous cellular system is depicted in Figure 1. This egular (planned) placement of cellular system consists of re macro base stations that typica transmit at high power level ally h (~ 5W 100W), overlaid with several pico cells, femto cells mit and relay cells, which transm at substantially lower power levels (~ 100mW 2W).

I.

INTRODUCTION

Data traffic demand in cellular networks to oday is increasing exponentially. To achieve further performan improvements nce in LTE Advanced, 3GPP has been working o various aspects on of LTE including higher order MIMO (m multiple antennas), carrier aggregation (multiple componen carriers), and nt heterogeneous networks (picos, femtos, r relays). However, since improvements in spectral efficiency per link are approaching its theoretical limits in 3G a and LTE, further ng enhancements are only possible by increasin the deployment density of nodes. Current wireless cellular networks are typi ically deployed as -centric planning homogeneous networks using a macroprocess. A homogeneous cellular system is a network of base stations in a planned layout, in which all the base stations have similar transmit power levels, antenna patter receiver noise rns, floors and similar backhaul connectivity to the (packet) data network. Moreover, all base stations offer u unrestricted access tions of the macro to user terminals in the network. The locat base stations are carefully chosen through n network planning, and the base stations are properly configured to maximize the d coverage and control the interference betwe each other. As een the traffic demand grows and the RF environ nment changes, the homogeneous network relies on cell splitt ting or additional carriers to overcome capacity and link budg limitations and get

ork Figure 1: Heterogeneous netwo utilizing a mix of macro, pico, d femto and relay cells

deployed to eliminate coverage The low power cells can be d m holes in the macro-only system and improve capacity in hot s spots. Usually, three types of low power nodes are distinguished: lar Pico nodes are regul base stations with the only difference of having lower transmit power than g traditional macro cells. They are, typically, equipped al with omni-directiona antennas and are deployed indoors and outdoors i a planned manner. in Femto nodes are typically consumer deployed (unplanned) network nodes for indoor application with a backhaul facilitated by the consumer s home digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable modem.

978-1-61284-402-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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nnas are applied. Typically, omni-directional anten base station allow Depending on whether the femto b access to all terminals or to a restricted set of terminals only, femtos are classi ified as open or closed (CSG femto cells). Relay nodes are network nodes without a wired backhaul. The backhaul, whic ch provides the twork, is wireless connection of the relay to the net and uses the air interface resource of the wireless es system. Relays are typically equipped with directional antennas in the back khaul and omnidirectional antennas in the access lin nk.

Due to their lower transmit power and sma aller physical size, pico/femto/relay base stations can off fer flexible site nal flexibility in acquisitions. Relay nodes offer addition backhaul where a wireline backhaul is unavailable or not economical. Deployment options for heterogeneous netw works are discussed in. in detail in [1] and the references therei These options include multicarrier deployment, carrier aggregation and cocussions we focus channel deployments. In the following disc rio, on co-channel deployments. In such a scenar all the network nodes are deployed in the same frequency layer. Co-channel deployments of heterogeneous networks is a very attractive em solution since it is applicable for any syste bandwidth not arge spectrum and necessarily relying on the availability of a la aggregation at the it does not rely on the support of carrier a ference challenges terminal. On the other side, severe interf arise in case of co-channel deployments as it will be seen in rsh the next sections. To overcome these har RF conditions several key design features of heterogeneous networks are discussed in the next sections. II.
EROGENEOUS KEY DESIGN FEATURES OF HETE NETWORKS

The difference between the lo oadings of high and low power base stations can result in an unfair distribution of data rates among the user terminals in the and uneven user experiences a network. Therefore, from th point of view of network he capacity, it is desirable to balan the load between macro and nce pico base stations by expanding the coverage of pico base stations and subsequently incre ease the cell splitting gains. This ell concept is referred to as ce range expansion, which is b). illustrated in Figure 2 (a) and (b In Figure 2 (b) the cell range of the pico cell is expanded to allow more terminals to d associate with the pico cell. Traffic is offloaded from the macro cell and a more balanc load distribution across the ced various nodes are achieved. (a)

(b)

Figure 2: (a) Limited footprint of pico cells due to strong macro signal, (b) Increased footprint of pico cells with range expansion

A. Cell Range Expansion A pico base station is characterized by a substantially lower transmit power as compared to a macro base station. Because of the large disparity between the transmit power levels of coverage of a pico macro and pico base stations, the downlink c macro base station. base station is much smaller than that of a m This is not the case for uplink, where the stre ength of the signal received from a user terminal depends on the terminal transmit e power, which is the same for all uplinks fro the terminal to om different base stations. Hence, the uplink coverage of all the base stations is similar. If serving cell selection is predominantly based on downlink 8, signal strength, as it is the case in LTE Rel-8 the usefulness of pico base stations will be greatly diminished. In such a scenario, the larger coverage of high pow base stations wer limits the benefits of cell splitting by attr racting most user terminals towards macro base stations based on signal strength rces to efficiently without having enough base station resour serve these user terminals. Resources of low power base stations may remain underutilized.

A simple example of two cate egories of macro and pico base stations can be used to demon nstrate potential gains from cell range expansion. Figure 3 shows the statistics of user association with and without cell range expansion for the t mixed macro and pico de eployment for uniform user nd distribution (configuration 1 an 4b in [2]).

on Figure 3: Pico cell user associatio statistics with and without range expa ansion

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The range expansion here is achieved by performing cell y association based on minimum path loss rather than on s maximum downlink signal strength. As it is seen from the ny figure, cell range expansion allows man more users to es associate with the pico cells and enable more equitable distribution of air interface resources to eac user. The effect ch is even more pronounced in hotspots lay youts as given by ustered around the configuration 4b in [2], where users are clu through sharing of pico cells. Capacity gains can be achieved t the resources allocated for low power bas stations, while se er sufficient coverage is provided by high powe vase stations on the resources that are allocated to them. These gains are illustrated in more detail in one of the follow wing sections. B. Interference Management ogeneous network In a co-channel deployment of a hetero pical scenarios are severe interference situations may arise. Typ minals operating in Macro-Pico deployments with term cell range expansion. In this case, the serving cell is not necessarily the strongest and the SINR may d become much less than zero dB. In this case the he macro cell is a strong interferer, th pico cell is the n victim. This situation is illustrated in Figure 2 (b). femto base station Terminals in close proximity to a f but barred from accessing them. In this case the he femto cell is a strong interferer, th macro cell is a n victim. This situation is illustrated in Figure 4.

ation is included in 3GPP LTE through X2 backhaul coordina terference Coordination, eICIC) Rel-10 (enhanced Inter Cell Int [4]. Performance analysis for time domain resource partitioning can be found e.g. in [5] for pico cells and [6] for GPP LTE the granularity of the CSG femto cells. In eICIC 3G negotiated time domain resourc is one subframe, i.e. 1 ms. ces In order to enable time domai interference coordination, so in called almost blank subframes (ABS) have been introduced in frame only Rel-8 cell specific LTE Rel-10. In such a subf ronization signals and broadcast reference signals (RS), synchr messages are transmitted to enable full backward compatibility to legacy termina Figure 5 shows an example als. of a ABS subframe, where only reference signals of two antenna ports are transmitted. It is seen that many resource e elements are left idle that are usually used to transmit the control channels PDCCH, PHI ICH and PCFICH and the data channel PDSCH.

Figure 5: Almost Blank Subframe (Non-MBSFN)

mto Figure 4: Barred terminal in proximity to a fem cell served by a macro base station

Interference coordination betw ween the strong interfering cell and the victim cell is performe by means of a bitmap, where ed each bit in the bitmap is map pped to a single subframe and he indicates an ABS subframe. Th size of the bitmap is 40 bits, inferring that the interference p pattern repeats itself after 40ms. Based on the data traffic dem mand, the pattern can change as often as every 40ms. The com mmunication between the cells is peer to peer, i.e. there is no master slave relationship. However, the cell creating strong interference effectively controls which resources can be used by the victim cell to erence conditions. serve terminals in harsh interfe e Figure 6 shows an example of an X2 backhaul based nario in case of a macro cell interference management scen pico (strong interfering cell) and a p cell (victim cell).

In order to overcome such harsh interferen situations it is nce ion necessary to consider interference coordinati techniques that ent can solve these problems. To enable efficie support of cochannel deployments of heterogeneous networks, an s interference management scheme should be able to adapt to e different traffic loads and different numbers of low power base stations at various geographical areas. As opposed to homogeneous networks, heterogeneous networks necessitate more coordinatio on via resource manage inter cell partitioning across base stations to m interference. Principally, the resource partitioning can be omain, or spatial performed in time domain, frequency do d domain. A spatial domain solution based on coordinated cells e.g. in [3]. In scheduling is investigated for CSG femto c vantage that it can general, time domain partitioning has the adv better adapt to user distribution and traffic lo changes and is oad trained markets. A a very attractive method for spectrum const ource partitioning time domain solution that enables reso

rference management, illustrated on Figure 6: X2 backhaul based inter for macro/pic cells (FDD) co

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In this scenario ABS subframes are statically and semistatically allocated by the dominant macro interferer and indicated over the X2 backhaul to the victim pico cell. The pico cell serves its terminals in the expanded cell range on resources corresponding to a ABS subframe of the macro cell. This requires subframe synchronous operation of the two cells. It is also obvious from Figure 6 that the interference caused by the macro cell can significantly vary from subframe to subframe depending on whether a subframe in the macro cell is a ABS subframe or a regular subframe. In order to ensure measurement accuracy for radio resource management purposes, it is necessary to restrict measurements to a desired set of subframes. Since such a measurement configuration is not intended to change frequently, certain ABS subframes should not change over time to provide static protection from the macro interference (statically assigned ABS). The remaining time resources can change more often (semistatically assigned ABS) to adapt to the changes in the traffic load. The more resources have static interference protection, the more accurate the radio resource measurements. However, the more resources have static protection, the more constraint the adaptive resource partitioning algorithms. Gains of adaptive resource partitioning are shown in a following section. Adapting the resource partition over time requires communication between macro and pico cell over the X2 interface. The required messages of the X2 application protocol have been defined in LTE Rel-10 [7]. The considerations on adaptive resource partitioning hold for macro pico scenarios. The same principle can be applied in case of closed femtos. In this case the femto is the strong interferer and the macro the victim, i.e. the femto cell assigns almost blank subframes. However, for closed femto cells only a static OAM based solution is feasible due to the lack of an X2 interface to macro cells. Resource partitioning can not be adapted to the instantaneous characteristics of the actual data traffic in case of closed femto cells. C. Future Trends: Advanced Terminal Receivers As outlined in the previous section, resource partitioning can effectively mitigate interference from data and control channels. However, synchronization and reference signals are still present in ABS subframes to ensure backward compatibility. These channels and signals create interference to the terminals of the victim cell. Interference mitigation for the synchronization signals in the victim cell is crucial for cell range expansion. It ensures that the terminals are able to detect and acquire a weak cell and measure and feedback the measurement reports to the network, which is a prerequisite for handover and cell range expansion. Interference mitigation for the reference signals has also an important role for system performance. Strong interference from reference signals, even though present only on a small fraction of resource elements, can significantly degrade Turbo code performance. Without such interference mitigation the potential gains of cell range expansion can be severely reduced.

Since there is no solution at network side to mitigate interference for synchronization and reference signals that works equally well in FDD and TDD systems, a solution at terminal side by utilizing advanced receivers provides a feasible and effective approach. The main rationale for a terminal based solution for the synchronization and reference signals interference mitigation is that strong interference from another cell can reliably be estimated and subtracted. An interference cancellation receiver for both types of signals is feasible and applicable. As an example Figure 7 shows the achievable throughput in a ABS subframe w/ and w/o RS interference cancellation (RS IC) in presence of a strong interferer that is 16 dB above background noise. The link throughputs are obtained by running adaptive modulation and coding targeting 10% BLER of the first HARQ transmission and for 6 PRBs randomly selected per subframe. The channel models are ETU3 and EVA3 in the serving and interfering cell, respectively. The transmission mode is open loop spatial multiplexing (TM3) for 2 Tx antennas that allows single and dual layer transmission.
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Figure 7: PDSCH performance with RS IC for non-colliding RS

It is seen that performance w/o CRS IC is degraded significantly although less than 10% of the resource elements in a ABS subframe are interfered by reference signals from the interfering cell (see Figure 5). Further simulation results for various scenarios applying interference cancellation for synchronization signals (PSS/SSS) and the broadcast channel (PBCH) are provided e.g. in [8]. III. SYSTEM PERFORMANCE FOR MACRO PICO DEPLOYMENTS

In this section typical performance gains are illustrated that can be achieved with heterogeneous networks with pico cell deployments in case of cell range expansion/resource partitioning. A hotspot scenario with two pico cells per macro cell randomly placed, and 2/3 of the terminals located within 40m radius of the two pico cells is considered. Interference cancellation for reference signals (RS) is assumed when

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resource partitioning is enabled. Without resource partitioning (i.e. without ABS subframes) RS interference cancellation is less effective since interference from data and control channels of the neighbor cell is more severe. User arrivals are modeled following a Poisson random process. Each user downloads a file of size 1 MByte. In case of resource partitioning a cell range expansion factor of 18 dB has been considered, i.e. a terminal can still be served by a pico cell when the dominant macro interferer is 18 dB stronger than the pico cell. This corresponds to a SIR of -18 dB. In [8] it is shown that operation at such low SIR is feasible if advanced receivers are applied. Without resource partitioning/cell range expansion 0 dB cell range expansion factor is considered. This means that corresponding to the Rel-8 cell selection criterion, a terminal is served by the macro cell instead of by the pico cell as soon as the received power from the macro cell becomes stronger. The additional simulation assumptions correspond to configuration 4b in [2]. Figure 8 compares the performance of the following cases: 1) Macro cells only, no RS IC receiver at terminal side 2) Two additional pico cells per macro cell, no resource partitioning, no RS IC receiver at terminal side, no cell range expansion 3) Two additional pico cells per macro cell, resource partitioning, RS IC receiver at terminal side enabling 18 dB cell range expansion It is seen that two additional pico cells without resource partitioning increase the cell throughput by about 50% due to cell splitting. However, the gains remain limited, since only a relatively low number of users is served by the pico cells. With resource partitioning the gains increase further up to 130% for a resource utilization of about 75% of the macro cell if the terminal supports RS IC.

operator utilizing a byte-based charging policy, the gain in Figure 8 directly translates into increased revenue without degrading user experience. It should be noted that resource partitioning techniques can increase delay and jitter. However, due to the short subframe duration of 1ms there is virtually no impact due to resource partitioning on user perception even for highly delay intolerant traffic classes, such as gaming and VoIP. IV. SUMMARY

It has been shown that heterogeneous networks are a costeffective approach to significantly enhance the capacity of LTE cellular networks. In the deployment strategy of such a network macro cells are used to ensure broad coverage, and low power cells can be deployed in hotspot areas to provide additional capacity. It has been outlined in the paper that three design features are crucial for heterogeneous networks: Interference management as severe interference limits the association of terminals to low power cells. Cell range expansion through adaptive resource partitioning as it enables traffic load balancing between high and low power cells. Interference cancellation receiver in the terminal as it ensures that weak cells can be detected and remaining interference is removed.

All three components together are needed to exploit the full potential of heterogeneous networks. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The author acknowledges the valuable input of Tingfang Ji, Yongbin Wei, M. Awais Amin, Jochen Giese, Aleksandar Damnjanovic, Juan Montojo, Tao Luo, Madhavan Vajapeyam, Taesang Yoo, Osok Song, Alan Barbieri and Durga Malladi. REFERENCES

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A. Damnjanovic, J. Montojo, Y. Wei, T. Ji, T. Luo, M. Vajapeyam, T. Yoo, O. Song, D. Malladi, A Survey on 3GPP Heterogeneous Networks, Invited Paper, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, June 2011 3GPP TR 36.814, Further advancements of E-UTRA physical layer aspects, v9.0.0 March 2010 J. Giese, M. A. Amin, S. Brueck, Application of Coordinated Beam Selection in Heterogeneous LTE-Advanced Networks, IEEE ISWCS, Aachen, Germany, November 2011 3GPP TS 36.300, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (EUTRA) and Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN); Overall Description, v10.4.0, June 2011 M. Vajapeyam, A. Damnjanovic, J. Montojo, T. Ji, Y. Wei, D. Malladi, Downlink FTP Performance of Heterogeneous Networks for LTEAdvanced, IEEE ICC, Kyoto, Japan, June 2011 A. Barbieri, A. Damnjanovic, T. Ji, J. Montojo, Y. Wei, D. Malladi, LTE Femtocells: System Design and Analysis, IEEE VTC, Budapest, Hungary, May 2011 3GPP TS 36.423, X2 application protocol (X2AP), v10.2.0, June 2011 R1-103560, Enabling communication in harsh interference scenarios, Qualcomm Incorporated, TSG-RAN WG1 #61bis, June 2010

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Figure 8: Served cell throughput gains with 2 picos/macro scenario

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[5]

However, these gains are severely reduced, if the receiver does not support RS IC as can be anticipated from the link level results shown in Figure 7. The system level results in Figure 8 show that in order to exploit the full potential gains of the deployment of pico cells, it is necessary to utilize resource partitioning. For a wireless

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[7] [8]

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