LTE Advanced: 3GPP Solution for IMT-Advanced

8.7 Summary

The growth rate of data traffic drives the small cell rollouts because the macro cell capacity will be exhausted even if more spectrum and more advanced features are used in the macro cells. The small base stations are also getting more attractive from the hardware and from the optimization point of view: the base station size gets smaller and the advanced Self-Optimizing Network (SON) algorithms make the configuration and optimization simpler. In short, small cells are now driven by the fast traffic growth and by the new products with easy installation.

An intelligent traffic management between different cell layers brings the best end user performance and maximum capacity. The traffic management needs to consider signal levels, loading, service requirements and mobility.

WiFi offloading is one attractive approach for carrying part of the traffic to save mobile network capacity. The latest WiFi offloading solutions can make WiFi as an integral part of the mobile network with automatic network selection, automatic authentication and integrated to the mobile core network.

A central challenge inherent in the operation of heterogeneous networks is the interference amongst cells. Small cells may be rolled out on different frequency bands than macro cells, or on the same frequency band in the case of a so-called co-channel deployment. The co-channel case provides the highest total capacity but requires more advanced features and algorithms for the mitigation of interference ...