Physically separated uplink and downlink transmissions in LTE HetNets based on CoMP concepts

In this paper, we present a novel transmission and reception scheme in LTE heterogeneous networks (HetNets) that exploits the concept of Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP). In the proposed scheme, the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) transmissions of a User Equipment (UE) are established with different cells assuming the existence of coordination between the cells. The scheme considers the link quality, cell load and Quality of Service (QoS) when deciding in the UL and DL's transmissions separation. The objectives of this scheme are to improve the performance at the cell edges through cell coordination and to increase the spectrum efficiency. The OPNET Modeler event-driven system level simulator was used to verify the feasibility of the scheme. The results show that the proposed scheme provides a significant improvement in the packet loss and delay.