Increased Sectorization: Horizontal or Vertical?

In this paper, the results from LTE downlink performance evaluations of higher-order horizontal (six sectors) and vertical sectorization are presented. The study has been focused on interference-limited urban and rural macro scenarios with user equipment (UEs) distributed outdoors according to a spatially uniform distribution. The results for these scenarios show that higher-order horizontal and vertical sectorization give similar performance for small urban macro cells (200 m inter-site distance), but that higher-order horizontal sectorization outperforms vertical sectorization for larger cells. This is due to the very small elevation angle interval occupied by the majority of outdoor UEs in large cells, making it difficult to separate them in different vertical sectors.