Impact of Mobility in Dense LTE-A Networks with Small Cells

In this paper, we investigate the impact of mobility on user performance in the context of dense LTE-A networks. To this end, we propose simple analytical models that capture mobility through the distribution of the mobile users sojourn time, i.e., the time a mobile user is physically present in a given cell. We use these models to derive the throughput of users who remain spatially static during their whole data transmission and the amount of handovers generated by moving users. We analyze the impact on performance of some key parameters such as the size of the small cell, the speed and proportion of mobile users and the distribution of their sojourn time. Numerical evaluation and simulation results are provided to assess the accuracy of the latter model and gain insight into the global system performance.