• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.245-251
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• 2016

Despite the exponential throughput improvement in mobile communications systems, their ability to satisfy requirements of state-of-the-art and future applications of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is still under investigation. Challenges are mainly due to the inadequacy of third generation partnership project (3GPP) networks to support large amounts of devices simultaneously, while the number of AMI end-devices and the frequency of their data transmission increase with new AMI-based applications. In this introductory survey, innovative and future AMI applications and their communication requirements are first reviewed. Then, we identify challenges of 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) in enabling future AMI applications. More importantly, the latest improvements to LTE-A standard release 12 and 13 are reviewed and analyzed with regards to their potential to improve the quality of LTE-enabled AMI. It is found that 3GPP enhancements on machine type communications (MTC) standards will significantly enhance AMI communications. Beyond MTC specifications, non-MTC-specific enhancements such as carrier aggregation and multi-connectivity for user equipment will also contribute greatly to improving reliability and availability of AMI devices. The paper's focus is towards improved backhaul support for innovative and future AMI applications, beyond traditional automatic meter reading.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.38A no.3
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• pp.277-288
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• 2013

3GPP LTE-Advanced (Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution-Advanced) as a next generation mobile communication standard introduced small base stations such as femto cells or pico cells, and D2D (Device-to-Device) communications between mobiles in the proximity in order to satisfy the needs of rapidly growing wireless data traffic. A diverse range of topics has been studied to solve various interference situations which may occur within a single cell. In particular, an introduction of a small base station along with D2D communication raises important issues of how to increase the channel capacity and frequency efficiency in HetNets (Heterogeneous Networks). To this end, we propose in this paper methods to manage the interference between the macro cell and other small cells in the HetNet to improve the frequency efficiency. The proposed CCN (Cluster Coordinator Node)-assisted ICI (Inter-Cell Interference) avoidance methods exploit the CCN to control the interference in HetNet comprising of an MeNB (Macro enhanced Node-B) and a large number of small cells. A CCN which is located at the center of a number of small cells serves to avoid the interference between macro cell and small cells. We propose methods of resource allocation to avoid ICI for user equipments within the CCN coverage, and evaluate their performance through system-level computer simulations.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.11
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• pp.12-20
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• 2013

Even though extensive research results have been applied to wireless cellular systems to improve their capacity and coverage, severe performance degradation experienced in cell boundary areas still remains as a major limiting factor to prohibit further improvement of user equipment (UE) throughput. In the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) standard of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Some advanced techniques have been introduced to overcome this "cell-edge problem", including coordinated multipoint transmission and reception (CoMP) and inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC). In this paper, we propose yet another strategy to improve the performance of low-tier UEs by using the concept of multiple beam direction patterns (BDPs). Such multiple BDPs can be implemented using multi-layer antenna arrays stacked vertically at base station (BS) sites to transmit signals in different main beam directions. In comparison to conventional three-sector antennas with a fixed beam pattern, the proposed methods makes signal transmission in a rotational fashion to significantly enhance the reception quality of UEs located near sector (or cell) edge areas, preventing the situation where certain UEs are marginally covered by the BS for the whole transmission time. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional three-sector transmission by 171% in low 5% UEs in terms of the UE throughput.