Potential of INTRA-LTE, Intra-Frequency Load Balancing

The present study assesses via LTE system level simulations the upper bound of the maximal reachable performance gain of LTE intra carrier load balancing. The investigation focuses on the three load balancing mechanisms: handover parameter adaptation, antenna tilt adaptation and inter cell interference coordination. The simulation results show that these techniques are complementary. Handover parameter variations and antenna tilt adaptation excels for overloaded cells in low and medium load environments, while inter cell interference coordination significantly improves the performance especially in high load environments.