TD‐LTE Enhancements for Small Cells

One of the most important characteristics of small cell deployments is the highly dynamic nature of traffic coupled with asymmetry between uplink and downlink traffic. This chapter presents ongoing discussions in LTE Release 12 for TD‐LTE enhancements to accommodate this traffic asymmetry. Key deployment scenarios for dynamic reconfiguration of TDD UL/DL subframe ratio are discussed along with potential interference management schemes for handling interference due to different TDD configurations in neighboring cells. This chapter also presents the interworking mechanism between FDD and TDD networks that allows a UE to connect to multiple frequency bands with different duplex modes simultaneously, in order to further enhance its throughput performance.