Performance evaluation of cell selection techniques for picocells in LTE-advanced networks

This survey paper provides a performance evaluation of some cell selection techniques proposed for picocells in the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks. Picocell is the focus of this study because it can be deployed in areas with high volume of traffic (such as hotspots) so as to improve the overall system capacity. A number of techniques are evaluated such as maximum Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP), Cell Range Expansion (CRE) with static offset value and adaptive offset value as well as using Almost Blank Subframes (ABS) ratio. Then a comparison is provided in terms of cell throughput, cell edge throughput and Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) outage rate. The comparison described in this paper can be useful for readers interested to select the most appreciate cell selection technique for their particular goal.