Impact of power control optimization on the system performance of relay based LTE-Advanced heterogeneous networks

Decode-and-forward relaying is a promising enhancement to existing radio access networks and is already standardized in 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) as a part of long term evolution (LTE)-Advanced Release 10. Two inband operation modes of relay nodes are supported, namely type 1 and type 1b. Relay nodes promise to offer considerable gain for system capacity or coverage, depending on the deployment prioritization, in a cost-efficient way. Yet, in order to fully exploit the benefits of relaying, the inter-cell interference which is increased due to the presence of relay nodes should be limited. Moreover, large differences in the received power levels from different users should be avoided. The goal is to keep the receiver dynamic range low in order to retain the orthogonality of the single carrier-frequency division multiple access system. In this paper, an evaluation of the relay based heterogeneous deployment within the LTE-Advanced uplink framework is carried out by applying the standardized LTE Release 8 power control scheme both at evolved node B and relay nodes. In order to enhance the overall system performance, different power control optimization strategies are proposed for 3GPP urban and suburban scenarios. A comparison between type 1 and type 1b relay nodes is as well presented to study the effect of the relaying overhead on the system performance in inband relay deployments. Comprehensive system level simulations show that the power control is a crucial means to increase the cell edge and system capacities, to mitigate inter-cell interference and to adjust the receiver dynamic range for both relay node types.