MAC Performance of a 3GPP-LTE Multihop Cellular Network

Multihop cellular networks offer increased coverage and capacity compared to singlehop cells of the same size. This is not as huge as using more base stations (BS) instead of wireless relay nodes (RN), but by this way there is no need for a fixed network access to each node. Therefore a cost-efficient deployment is easily achieved (less CAPEX and OPEX). Even when the coverage of a BS is already quite good, relays help to increase the overall system capacity. This paper analyzes numerically with analytic background the multihop operation in the frequency division duplex mode and discusses the MAC-layer protocol performance for the 3GPP- LTE system. OFDMA with centrally controlled resource coordination is assumed here. By following the analytic model we show that for relaying, OFDMA resources are utilized effectively in time and frequency and provide good coverage and capacity results. Parameters like directional relay antennas, space or time division multiple access and relay antenna gain are studied.