Three-dimensional beamforming techniques for LTE-A systems

LTE-A 시스템에서 3 차원 빔포밍 기법 연구

LTE-Advanced system has been deployed with 2 and 4 transmission antennas (Tx) while the specification supports up to 8Tx. Due to deployment space, antenna dimension and complexity, the needs of deploying 8Tx system has not been motivated by operators. Recently, three dimensional (3D) beamforming with active antenna has attracted significant attention in the wireless industry. By incorporating 2D active array into LTE-A systems, the system offers freedom in controlling radiation on elevation and horizontal dimension. When the number of antennas increases in the form of 2D arrangement, spatial separation can be realized simultaneously in horizontal and elevation domain and vertical beam-steering can increase SINR of UEs in high floors. In this paper, we study the system operations and implementations for supporting 3D beamforming with 8Tx antennas. In our schemes, by reusing the conventional CSI feedback framework, the system can operate 2D active array without harming the backward compatibility. Evaluation results show that 3D beamforming provides capacity boosting over the conventional 2D beamforming systems while keeping same antenna structure.