The impact of antenna patterns in heterogeneous LTE-advanced networks

This paper evaluates the impact of antenna patterns in heterogeneous LTE-Advanced networks. The propagation channel between each BS and UE is modelled as the spatial and polarimetric convolution of the antenna patterns with the spatial and temporal multipath components from a 3D outdoor ray-tracer. An LTE-Advanced physical layer simulator is used to determine the user performance in pico-cells and macro-cells for non-line-of-sight links. The received bit mutual information rate abstraction method is employed to determine the optimal physical layer throughput based on analysis of all available modulation and coding schemes. Packet error rate, throughput, link correlation and channel capacity are studied for pico-cellular and macro-cellular users. Results show that measured antenna patterns along with their orientations strongly influence user performance in an LTE-A network.