A Multi-cell Testbed for Distributed Cooperation in Mobile Radio Networks

Abstract

An LTE-Advanced Testbed has been set up in a typical European metropolitan deployment in the center of Berlin. It serves for the early evaluation of LTE-Advanced concepts in a realistic cellular environment and for the demonstration of key technology features to increase spectrum efficiency, range, throughput and quality of service.

Challenges

• Reducing inter-cell interference is the next challenge for further performance enhancements in mobile networks
• Cooperation between adjacent base stations promises a higher performance in the cellular network
• Distributed cooperative signal processing is required to make these so called 'Coordinated Multi Point' (CoMP) techniques less complex and scalable

Technology features

• Inter-cell interference coordination
• Synchronized base stations 
• Multi-cell channel estimation 
• Interference-aware scheduling 
• Interference cancellation 
• High-speed low-latency backbone network 
• Distributed cooperation between base stations
• Exchange of data and channel knowledge

The testbed has been used for several single-cell measurements. The algorithms are evaluated under real conditions in a multi-cell testbed set up in cooperation together with Deutsche Telekom AG.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Federal Ministry of Educational and Research (BMBF) in the project EASY-C.

References

• V. Jungnickel, S. Jaeckel, L. Thiele, L. Jiang, U. Krüger, A. Brylka, and C. v. Helmolt, "Capacity Measurements in a Cooperative MIMO Network", IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technologies, 2008, to appear.
• S. Jaeckel, L. Thiele, A. Brylka, L. Jiang, V. Jungnickel, "Intercell Interference Measured in Urban Areas", C. Jura, and J. Heft, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Dresden, Germany, June 2009.
• S. Jaeckel, L. Jiang, V. Jungnickel, L. Thiele, C. Jandura, G. Sommerkorn, and C. Schneider, "Correlation properties of large and small-scale parameters from multicell channel measurements", European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2009), Berlin, Germany, 2009, invited.