LTE MIMO Analysis

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.

Background
MIMO is an important feature in LTE, with DL 2*2 MIMO (Rank2), the peak throughput of LTE 20MHZ network is around
150Mbps, or will be only 75Mhz. MIMO influence network capacity and user experience a lot.

The known reasons which can influence MIMO rank2 ratio are:

(1) Parameters and equipment configuration;

(2) Alarm and RRU channel: antenna issue, RRU Tx channel unbalance, multiband antenna polarization direction wrong
connection etc;
(3) Wireless coverage quality
(4) HUAWEI scheduling algorithm

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Case Description
Telefonica LTE network MIMO rank2 ratio is much lower than other operators, after reviewing the integration solution, it’s clear that
that antenna connection solution used before is not proper which has negative influence to the MIMO rank 2 ratio:

Required
connection Current
connection

LOFD-001001 DL 2x2 MIMO requires that the antennas to which the transmit channels are connected have different polarization directions to prevent downlink
performance deterioration, regardless of whether an integrated antenna system with multiple ports is used or two antennas each with two ports are combined to serve a
cell.
From the solution document of TDP, we can find TDP LTE RRU 2 TX are connected to the same polarization directions antenna, so it result in much lower rank2 ratio

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Case Description
Refer to the graph below, it’s clear than higher MIMO rank2 ratio result in higher user DL throughput.

User DL Throughput VS RANK2 Ratio Percentage of MIMO RANK2 Ratio Range (%)
40.00 100.00%

Percentage of MIMO RANK2 Ratio Range (%)

35.00
80.00%
User DL Throughput (Mbps)

30.00
60.00%
25.00
23.77 30.99%
40.00% 379 cells
20.00
19.29
20.00%
15.00

10.00 0.00%
0 <10 <20 <30 <40 <50 <60 <70 <80 <90 0 <10 <20 <30 <40 <50 <60 <70 <80 <90
RANK2 Ratio Range MIMO RANK2 Ratio Range

Average user DL throughput of cells with MIMO rank2 ratio is in (40%,50%) is 23.23% higher than the cells with MIMO rank2
ratio in (10%,20%).
Now in whole network there are 379 cells MIMO rank2 lower than 20%, around 31% of whole network LTE cell number.

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Case Description
Example of MIMO influence 1:

4GLI6632-ALAMEDADELNORTE
40000 50

35000 45
40
30000
35
25000 30
20000 25

15000 20
15
10000
10
5000 5
0 0

Average of User DL Throughput(Protocol) Average of CQI Avg Average of MIMO RANK2 PRB Ratio

During LTE700 trial, site ALAMEDADELNORTE’s antenna was swapped with new antenna and the right connection way, after that the MIMO rank2 ratio
increased absolutely from 7% to 40%, then user DL throughput improved from 15.26Mbps to 24.62Mbps, improved around 60%,when CQI keep the same:

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Case Description
Example of MIMO influence 2:

Cell 4GLI6613-URA_PUENTE_PIEDRA
40000 70

35000 60
30000
50
25000
40
20000
30
15000
20
10000

5000 10

0 0

Average of User DL Throughput(Protocol) Average of CQI Avg Average of MIMO RANK2 PRB Ratio

During LTE700 trial, site URA_PUENTE_PIEDRA’s antenna was swapped with the right connection way, after that the MIMO rank2 ratio increased absolutely
from 14% to 50%, then user DL throughput improved from 17.37Mbps to 25.95Mbps, improved around 50%,when CQI keep the same,

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Case Description
Example of MIMO influence 3:

Cell CALLE18-3 user DL throughput increased from 17.52Mbps to 23.55Mbps, improved 34% when the MIMO RANK2 ratio increased from 0 to around 60%
after Tx issue is resolved.

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Conclusion and Suggestion

MIMO Rank2 ratio has significant influence to user DL throughput which now customer is focusing on and comparing
between vendors. But now Telefonica MIMO rank2 ratio is much lower compared with other operators (TDP 30%, Entel
50%+)probably because of improper antenna connection solution.

For the cells with MIMO rank2 ratio lower than 20%, it’s better to check the antenna connection on site. If antenna is
not connected in the better way, suggest to correct the connection as it can help much on user DL throughput.

*The case is that HW did the original antenna connection, then customer did antenna swap and re-connection by
themselves, not sure how many sites (Information provide by Jean and Daniel). During this procedure, antenna connection
detail solution was not mentioned. So now need to consider how to handle this case and which part will take the
responsibility of this optimization.

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