Planning and performance analysis of downlink inter-band carrier aggregation for LTE-Advanced 3GPP Released 13

Carrier Aggregation (CA) is one of the most important techniques that enables LTE-Advanced network access to have faster and more reliable data rate. This technique allows telecommunication operators to use more than one carriers simultaneously and therefore enables higher network capacity. Inter-band CA is one of three CA techniques that is available right now. This type of CA enables user to aggregate different bands of frequency channels simultaneously. Inter-band CA is a valuable technique that may maximize fragmented bands. This paper will discuss the planning process and performance analysis of the LTE-Advanced network access implemented in Bandung City using the inter-band CA technique. This paper will cover the planning, prediction, simulation and analysis of twelve scenarios. The planning process will be divided into two types of planning: capacity and coverage. The output of this planning is the number of sites needed which then will be implemented in the radio software planning for the prediction and simulation process. This paper will analyse the performance of the each of the scenarios designed using three main parameters: throughput, RSRP and CINR coverage.