Throughput-Based Traffic Steering in LTE-Advanced HetNet Deployments

The objective of this paper is to propose traffic steering solutions that aim at optimizing the end- user throughput. Two different implementations of an active mode throughput-based traffic steering algorithm for Heterogeneous Networks (HetNet) are introduced. One that always forces handover of the active users towards the cell offering the highest throughput, and a second scheme that aims at maximizing the systems sum throughput. Results show that the first option brings the best performance at the cost of more than three handovers per user per second for high-load cases. The second option offers slightly lower traffic steering gains at a considerably lower cost in terms of number of handovers. The gain in terms of increased average session throughput for the second option equals 32% at low-load, 18% at medium-load, and 7% at high-load conditions. The gain in the fifth percentile user session throughput is generally higher, reaching values of 36% and 18% for the medium- and high-load conditions.