Performance Evaluation of 3D MIMO LTE-Advanced System

Many researches and simulations have been performed for traditional two dimensional channel propagation systems, where only propagation in the horizontal plane is considered, and the impact of elevation angle is ignored. In order to evaluate the performance of three dimensional multiple input multiple output (3D MIMO) long term evolution-advanced (LTE-Advanced) system, this paper demonstrates a simulation methodology based on a reasonable 3D channel model. System level simulations on various 3D antenna port configurations are performed, and results are compared with those of 2D MIMO system. The evaluation shows that the 3D MU-MIMO system can achieve a significant gain of 274% over a 2D MU-MIMO system with the same number of antenna ports. 3D MIMO can achieve more gain in a MU-MIMO scenario than in a SU-MIMO scenario, with a gain of 129% for average cell users and a gain of 58% for cell edge users.