Pushing the Limits of LTE: A Survey on Research Enhancing the Standard

Abstract

Cellular networks are an essential part of todays communication infrastructure. The ever-increasing demand for higher data-rates calls for a close cooperation between researchers and industry/standardization experts which hardly exists in practice. In this article we give an overview about our efforts in trying to bridge this gap. Our research group provides a standard-compliant open-source simulation platform for 3GPP LTE that enables reproducible research in a well-defined environment. We demonstrate that much innovative research under the confined framework of a real-world standard is still possible, sometimes even encouraged. With examplary samples of our research work we investigate on the potential of several important research areas under typical practical conditions.Comment: The final version of the manuscript is available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6514821&isnumber=633654

Graph-Based Multicell Scheduling in OFDMA-Based Small Cell Networks

“…In our implementation, we use the most fractional branching where we choose variable with fractional value closest to 0.5 (ties are broken by choosing the edge having maximum cost). 1 …”

“…The latter can be further classified based on the level of coordination and the degree of centralization, i.e. Centralized, Semi-centralized and Decentralized schemes [1]. From a different perspective ICIC schemes can also be categorized as Static, Semistatic and Dynamic [5].…”

“…The concept of Heterogeneous Networks (Het-Nets) [1] can be seen as a key deployment strategy to meet these growing capacity demands. A Het-Net is a hierarchical multi-level network that consists of a mixture of relays and small-cell deployments (picocells and femtocells) underneath the traditional macro-cell architecture.…”

3GPP 3D MIMO channel model: a holistic implementation guideline for open source simulation tools

“…The target is to compute a N Rx × N Tx MIMOchannel matrix H(t,f ) for each sampling point on the time-frequency grid, where N Tx and N Rx refer to the number of transmit-and receive antenna ports, respectively. On link level, channel realizations are typically calculated per OFDM symbol and LTE-A subcarrier [21]. On system level, they are commonly generated per physical resource block (RB) and transmission time interval (TTI) [22].…”

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“…The global mobile traffic will grow 13-fold from 2012 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 66% [1]. At the same time, wireless communications change in a fast pace from the network operators' and service providers' perspective [2], [3]. However not only the networks but also the business models of the communication services over these networks change.…”