Experimental evaluation of RAN modelling in indoor LTE deployment

The operators are deploying heterogeneous networks with LTE base stations covering very small areas in locations with high bandwidth demand to address growing clients´ needs. The femto cells and small cells are often installed indoor, to serve the clients of a single building, such as a shopping mall or an office building. In this paper we provide a practical evaluation of RAN modelling in indoor LTE deployment where we benefit from the full access to the real LTE-A (Rel. 10) deployment and complete building documentation. The measured values of Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) and throughput are compared with the results from the radio signal propagation model, implemented in Python. The obtained values are in consequence used for the transmission power configuration to realize the CCO (Coverage and Capacity Optimization) in LTE networks. The results show very good correlation (above 0.8) between even a simple model based on the building maps and the measurements.