Dynamic measurement for small cell ON/OFF operation of heterogeneous networks

Assuming a non-co-channel deployment of macro cells and small cells, where the small cells can be turned on or off based on packet arrival or completion, we study the impact of User Equipment (UE) Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) measurement period on inter-layer cell association performance in terms of the average user throughput based on system level simulation results and analysis. In addition, we also evaluate the intra-cell association performance based on long term Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise (SINR) measurement. In both cases we show the benefit of adapting the UE measurement period according to network traffic conditions in order to exploit favorable conditions of a given layer or cell to serve a packet.