Performance Enhancement in LTE-Advanced Relay Networks via Relay Site Planning

Relaying is considered a promising cost-efficient solution in 3GPP LTE-Advanced for coverage extension and throughput enhancement. Due to compact physical characteristics and low power requirements of the relay nodes, the relay deployment has a high degree of freedom. In this paper, the impact of site planning on the backhaul performance of relay networks within the LTE-Advanced framework is investigated. The site planning strategies are formulated in terms of SNR and SINR based selection criteria. 3GPP compliant simulations are performed comparing relay site planning strategies. It is shown that proper site planning yields significant SINR gain on the eNB-RN link along with a clear reduction in the shadowing standard deviation compared to random deployment.