A Dynamic Cell Range Expansion for LTE-Advanced Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract

Deploying Pico cell Base Station (PBS) throughout a Macro cell layout is a promising solution to enhance system capacity and users throughput. However, the strong received power from Macro cell Base Station (MBS) makes the Pico cell areas narrow and limits cell splitting gain. Range Expansion (RE) is desirable to balance the network load between MBS and PBS by expanding the coverage, which subsequently increases cell splitting gains. However, more interference may be introduced if the bias value of RE is not set properly. In this paper, we propose a Dynamic Cell Range Expansion (DCRE) strategy that the bias value of RE is set dynamically according to the change of network environment. The proposed scheme aims to fulfill the resources utilization by RE scheme, and meanwhile improve the users performance of cell edge through cell load balancing method. Simulation results show that DCRE scheme can improve the network performance of cell edge, and increase the cell capacity and users throughput compared with the existing methods.