Inter-band carrier aggregation in heterogeneous networks: Design and assessment

This paper deals with the performance assessment of the Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced Release 12 physical downlink channel, emphasizing on the Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology and its recent advances, such as the challenging interband non-contiguous solution. By processing the LTE-Advanced waveforms in the time domain (instead of the more common baseband), we describe the underlying system model and the associated simulation setup in detail. The error performance of the system is evaluated under different physical layer parameters and CA scenarios, according to the latest updates of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications. Our analysis reveals that the Heterogeneous Band (HetBand) non-contiguous CA technology can be efficiently applied to the design of next generation mobile broadband networks, given that the exploitation of both unlicensed and frequency dispersed bands might be a promising solution against the spectrum scarcity.