Performance Evaluation with Range Expansion for Heterogeneous Networks

Deployment of heterogeneous networks is one of the key technologies in LTE-Advanced. After low-power nodes were introduced to cellular system, great changes have taken place in the structure of traditional networks. Thus, range expansion (RE) scheme is proposed to adapt to these changes in the standardization process of heterogeneous networks. This paper studies the performance of heterogeneous networks with RE scheme introduced. First, we describe heterogeneous deployment scenario and analyze the benefits and disadvantages of introducing RE scheme. Next, physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) and physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) are both modeled with a novel PDCCH distribution strategy design. Finally, numerical simulation results, involving pico UE ratio, PDCCH SINR and outage rate, PDSCH throughput, are provided to comprehensively evaluate the performance of heterogeneous networks.