LTE HetNet Mobility Performance through Emulation with Commercial Smartphones

In this paper we introduce a laboratory emulation setup for evaluation of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobility performance in a co-channel heterogeneous network (HetNet). The setup consists of two eNodeB emulators, signal faders and release 9 LTE User Equipment (UE). It is shown how the LTE HetNet mobility performance varies depending on load conditions and the configuration of UE reporting events. Pico cell outbound handover to the macro cell are found to be particular challenging, especially for higher UE speeds. Finally, we discuss the prospects of the emulation setup and how it can be exploited to conduct further experiments towards gaining additional understanding of HetNet mobility performance for LTE UEs.