Performance Measurement Results Obtained in a Heterogeneous LTE Field Trial Network

In order to get practical experience with heterogeneous LTE networks Deutsche Telekom and Huawei built up a field trial network consisting of one macro site and eight pico sites which are spatially spread in different environments to cover many pico site deployment scenarios. The main performance results obtained in the field trial are presented for both relevant deployment aspects: Either macro and pico cells are running on the same frequency or the pico cell layer uses an individual carrier frequency. Outdoor as well as indoor conditions are covered in the paper. As the measure for the pico cell size we introduce a coverage radius based on a minimum throughput threshold. For the best performing scenario - outdoor condition and different frequencies for macro and pico cells - the mean throughput ranges between 40-65 Mb/s for most pico cells and the coverage radius exceeds 200m. For the other scenarios the performance measures are partly significantly lower.