Mobility Based MIMO Link Adaptation in LTE-Advanced Cellular Networks

As the demand for mobile broadband services are growing, cellular networks are heading towards their fourth generation (4G). Long Term Evolution - Advanced (LTE-A) is emerging as a major candidate for 4G cellular networks. MIMO technology combined with OFDMA is a major technological change in 4G compared to their 3G counterparts. However various MIMO configurations and modulation/coding schemes(MCS) need to be carefully tuned to derive the promised gains of MIMO technology. In this paper we evaluate the performance of different MIMO configurations and MCSs in the downlink of LTE-based cellular networks. We propose a signal-to-noise-ratio(SNR) cum mobility based MIMO/MCS link adaptation to enhance the overall performance of the LTE downlink.