Analysis of the Geographical-Information Impact on the Performance of ABS-CRE HetNets

In this paper, we analyze the performance of Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) that are operating under Almost Blank Subframes (ABS) and Cell Range Expansion (CRE) by taking into consideration the effect of geographical information. In order to achieve such analyses, we develope a simulator that incorporates data from a Geographic Information System (GIS); specifically, a set of parameters that define the morphology of buildings and streets in urban areas. We describe the implemented methods to estimate the received power, as well as the average throughput, over an area of interest. Our numerical results clearly demonstrate that the overall network performance significantly depends on geographical information; hence our main contribution consists in developing a simulator that incorporates such information in the analysis and evaluation of ABS-CRE HetNets, which allows proposing design guidelines to improve the performance of these networks in realistic scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this kind of proposal has not been reported in previous works.