Network-assisted Inter-Frequency Pico Cell Discovery in LTE Heterogeneous Networks

In this paper, the problem of pico cell discovery in long term evolution (LTE) heterogeneous networks (HetNets) was investigated with the objective of minimizing UE power consumption without deteriorating pico cell discovery efficiency and mobility performance significantly. Firstly, the motivations and the major scenarios of pico cell discovery in LTE HetNet systems was described, and then the potential factors of impacting UE power consumption and pico cell discovery efficiency was analyzed. Secondly, a network-assisted solution was proposed for inter-frequency pico cell discovery considering the impacts of some important factors for different scenarios. Finally, the performance of the proposed solutions was evaluated by system level simulations. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed solution can obtain better tradeoff between the UE power consumption and the pico cell discovery efficiency with minor impact on basic mobility performances such as RLF rate, HOF rate and Ping-pong rate.