Extended Synchronization Signals for eliminating PCI confusion in heterogeneous LTE

Heterogeneous long term evolution (LTE) networks evolve as a possible solution to accommodate the exponential growth of mobile data. However, the heterogeneity introduces several design challenges such as increasing interference and mobility overhead. In this paper, we propose Extended Synchronization Signals (ESS) to eliminate the unavoidable physical cell identity (PCI) confusion problem in dense heterogeneous LTE deployments. The ESS is also designed to reduce signaling overhead and handover delay. Our analysis shows a handover delay reduction of 65% can be realized. Additionally, we show that PCI confusion probability can be practically eliminated in case of centralized planning and a reduction of five order of magnitude in confusion probability can be attained in case of distributed planning.