Coexistence of 3G repeaters with LTE base stations.
Repeaters have been an attractive solution for mobile operators to upgrade their wireless networks at low cost and to extend network coverage effectively. Since the first LTE commercial deployment in 2009, many mobile operators have launched LTE networks by upgrading their 3G and legacy networks. Because all 3G frequency bands are shared with the frequency bands for LTE deployment and 3G mobile operators have an enormous number of repeaters, reusing 3G repeaters in LTE networks is definitely a practical and cost-efficient solution. However, 3G repeaters usually do not support spatial multiplexing with multiple antennas, and thus it is difficult to reuse them directly in LTE networks. In order to support spatial multiplexing of LTE, the role of 3G repeaters should be replaced with small LTE base stations or MIMO-capable repeaters. In this paper, a repeater network is proposed to reuse 3G repeaters in LTE deployment while still supporting multilayer transmission of LTE. Interestingly, the proposed network has a higher cluster throughput than an LTE network with MIMO-capable repeaters.
Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Sejong University, 98 Gunja-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 143-747, Republic of Korea.
Woon-Young
WY
Yeo
Network Technology R&D Center, SK Telecom, 9-1 Sunae-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam 463-838, Republic of Korea.
Sang-Min
SM
Lee
Department of Computer Engineering, Hanbat National University, San 16-1 Dukmyung-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-719, Republic of Korea.
Gyung-Ho
GH
Hwang
Department of Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea.
Jae-Hoon
JH
Kim
D004867:Equipment Design; D059015:Wireless Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*