Realistic performance of HSDPA MIMO in macro-cell environment

This paper studies realistic throughput performance of HSDPA+ multi-antenna system on a macro-cell network. A major evolution of HSDPA is the introduction of the multi-antenna scheme D-TxAA (Double Transmit Adaptative Array) in 3GPP standard release 7 and 8, allowing to increase HSDPA peak rate up to 42 Mbps using MIMO/FDD transmission. A simulation method has been developed to combine drive test measurement and link level simulation of different linear receiver to obtain reliable performance estimation. The simulation results shows that the MIMO scheme with linear equalizer gives a significant improvement at the cell edge. However, non linear receivers are needed in the cell center.