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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Heterogeneous networks (hetnets)


The following is a summary of an article in ericsson review  December 28, 2011

In locations where the number of users are high a densified infrastructure can provide the increase in NW capacity that is needed. This can be achieved with a layered cell structure meaning that multiple and equally available cells have overlapping coverage areas.  Typically, the traditional macro cell transmitting with high power over a large coverage area is complemented with pico cells transmitting with low power over a smaller coverage area that is geographically covering a part of the coverage area of the macro cell. In addition to simply selecting the cell with the strongest signal, the cell selection algorithm should in this case  also incorporate cell congestion and backhaul capacity. Heterogeneous network deployment can be achieved with two different approaches, resource partitioning and soft-cell  schemes:

·         Resource partitioning can be achieved in either the frequency or the time domain which in reality creates separate cells with individual system information and synchronization signals transmissions.
·         In shared cell or soft cell schemes, the low power pico cells are part of the macro cell but with a Cell Specific Reference signal (CRS) which determines which part of the System Information that is relevant. Also, a Demodulation specific Reference Signal (DM-RS) is used to determine which transmission point (macro or pico cell) the terminal should use.

Heteroge­neous deployments that use soft cells can provide greater mobility robust­ness than deployments with separate cells. This is important, especially when moving from a low-power node to the macro. In separate cell deployment, a handover procedure is required to switch serving cells. If, during the time it takes to perform the handover procedure, the terminal has moved too far into the macro area, it may drop the downlink connection from the low-power node before handover is complete – leading to a radio-link failure. In soft-cell deployment, the transmission point that should be used for downlink trans­mission can be changed rapidly without a handover procedure – thus reducing the probability of dropped connections.


the article in its entirety can be found at
heterogeneous_network_deployments_lte

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