Energy-throughput simulation approach for heterogeneous LTE scenarios

In order to increase overall LTE system performance femtocells have been proposed, as a user-based solution promising to give much better service to the user specially indoor. Their deployment should improve the total system capacity noticeably and decrease drastically the power consumption. On the other hand these small indoor cells make network planning strategies much more complex given the uncertainty of their position and their load; femtocells are, after all, managed by the users. The goal of this work is to provide a simulation approach to determine the effects of heterogeneous cell deployment on the performance of an LTE network. The simulation framework allows to realistically compare the power consumption and throughput of the overall system. The key components are the combination of indoor and outdoor propagation modeling, and the diversification of femto, micro and macro-cell energy consumption models. The model further contains complex citylike building structures, multiple communication layers (eNodeBs and femtocells) distributed over a three-dimensional map and numerous users moving across different areas while adapting their service requirements. The simulation approach results in relatively computationally inexpensive simulations and allows to model the expected throughput and energy consumption for various heterogeneous LTE scenarios.