Performance evaluation on coexistence of LTE with active antenna array systems

Employing active antenna array system (AAS) on 3GPP LTE base station (BS) has some potential impact on existing BS RF requirements. As each active antenna element in the array is connected to a separate transceiver, RF requirements such as in-band blocking should be tested on antenna element place. Furthermore, vertical sectorization brought by AAS in LTE leads to larger inter-system interference due to additional adjacent vertical sector, thus the existing Adjacent Channel Interference Ratio(ACIR) requirement between two LTE systems needs to be reconsidered. In this paper, 3GPP uplink LTE coexistence simulations are conducted to evaluate the above two RF performances. From simulation results, the blocking level on antenna element is higher than the current 3GPP requirement, whereas the ACIR results in vertical sectorization scenario can meet the existing requirement. It is concluded that AAS will have critical impact on current LTE BS blocking requirement and deploying vertical sectorization in LTE is feasible in the aspect of ACIR level.