Multi-Layer Cell Deployment Strategy for Self-
Organizing LTE-Advanced Networks
Mohammadreza Behjati, John Cosmas
WNCC, School of Engineering and Design
Brunel University London
Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK
E-mail: {mohammadreza.behjati, john.cosmas}@brunel.ac.uk
Abstract—The newly released LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) is
currently being introduced as a further step to LTE and as the
real 4G cellular standard on cellular networks evolution.
Alongside with the increasing demands in mobile networks, the
customers’ satisfaction with a ubiquitous heterogeneous network
(HetNet) is going to be the main challenge for the network
operators, and therefore planning a multi-layer network with
different ranges of base stations seems to be an appropriate
solution for this deficiency. Furthermore, the interference
mitigation in such networks plays a critical role towards the
appropriate bandwidth allocation to different categories of the
network users –especially in case of sharing the available
bandwidth– and needs to be highly considered when the network
planning is under considerations. This paper proposes a novel
multi-layer cells deployment with self-organizing approach,
designated for the LTE/LTE-Advanced networks and the new
releases beyond that. The proposed strategy focuses on femto
application and implementation, to exploit the advantages of
femtocell nodes, e.g. coverage enhancements, power consumption
improvements, network satisfaction, etc. This paper presents the
introduction, simulation and evaluation of a novel multi-layer
LTE-A scenario, which allows both macro and femto applications
to share the spectrum, taking into consideration interference
management and network satisfaction.
Keywords—LTE-Advanced; Multi-Layer cell deployment;
Femtocell; Heterogeneous Network(HetNet); Self-Organizing
Network (SON); Interference management
I. INTRODUCTION
LTE-Advanced, which is the continued development of
Long Term Evolution (LTE) telecommunication standard, is
considered as true 4G evolution step, which was recently
standardized in 3GPP Release 10 and approved by ITU and
IMT-Advanced. The significant prospect of this evolution is
reaching to higher data rates specifically in congested areas
whilst having the least possible network interference. For such
telecommunication standards and networks, the main
expectations could be summarized by three parameters: data
rate, delay and capacity. The peak data rate for LTE-Advanced
is expected to be up to 1 Gbit/s, realizing 100 Mbps downlink
rate and 50 Mbps uplink rate by adopting MIMO and OFDM
techniques. Delay also could be assumed as a primary design
target to reduce the latency for a packet sent from a server to
clients. With growing demands, the resultant capacity shortage
would degrade the QoS for the whole network and therefore
978-1-4673-2480-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
proper methods to measure and manage spectral efficiency
needs to be developed. A critical factor, which affects all these
key factors, is interference. On the other hand, self-organizing
has recently been investigated as a reconfigurable networking
technology to improve the spectrum efficiency for the wireless
access technologies, such as LTE and LTE-Advanced, as well
as Radio over Fibre (RoF). A self-organizing strategy is
basically known for its local coordination and interactions
between the components within its different stages, which
makes it self-aware, self-configurable and demand-based with
the capability of adapting itself to obtain more efficient
communication, while taking into account the end-to-end goals.
Since the currently available unlicensed spectrum is
reaching its limits and there are lots of demands for the
wireless access and applications and the intelligent use of
spectrum is urgently required to avoid the latency and
difficulties in broadband communications, which is caused by
the frequency interference through the networks due to huge
number of users and demands. The main aim of this paper is to
investigate and disseminate a novel multi-layer deployment, by
the combination of both available long-coverage macro base
station, as well as newly proposed short-coverage femto nodes,
which would be relevant to the latest and up-coming releases of
LTE. This work explores critical enhancements applied to the
existing LTE networks, which could improve the cellular
interference during the spectrum usage. It proposes new
approaches in the use of self-organizing transceivers and
demonstrates how quality of service improvements can be
provided for mobile users by proposing new enhancements to
the LTE/LTE-A networks that takes interference alleviations
into account as a main evaluation factor in the network.
Self-Organizing Network (SON) is introduced to reduce the
operational expenditure for the network operators. The
interference coordination is an important concept of SON,
since the inter-cell interference is one of the main challenges in
OFDMA-based networks, especially in downlink, where the
broadband services exist. In this context, the coordinated usage
of the network resources in the related cells can be an effective
approach to maximize the efficiency of the bandwidth. The
intra-cell orthogonality between the users in both uplink and
downlink in LTE leads to consider the inter-cell interference as
the main interference source in this network, which also affects
the frequency reuse at the cell edge [1].
820

Figure 1. Multi-layer HetNet architecture in LTE-A networks
Figure 1 depicts a comprehensive HetNet architecture,
including macrocell as the main backbone of the network, as
well as low-power base stations i.e. pico, femto and relay nodes
which are being deployed to eradicate the coverage holes in the
macro-only systems and improve capacity in hot-spots.
An important improvement that is introduced in LTE-
Advanced is the improvement of spectral efficiency per unit
area, by using a mixture of macro, pico, femto and relay base-
stations through a heterogeneous network, which enables
flexible and low-cost deployments and provides the broadband
access for the users within whole of the network. The important
mission is management and control of the interference to
deliver the benefits of such networks. The conventional cellular
network deployment is typically launched as homogeneous
networks, using a macro-centric planning process, in which the
base stations are operating in a planned layout designed to
serve the user terminals. All the base stations have similar
transmit power levels, receiver noise floors, antenna coverage
patterns and also similar backhaul connectivity to the data
network. Furthermore, all base-stations in homogenous
networks offer unrestricted access to the user terminals in the
network and serve roughly the same number of users. Since the
traffic requests on the network are growing and the RF
environment is being changed, additional sub-carriers are
required to overcome the capacity and link budget limitations
[2].
The enhanced channel estimation and allocation schemes
will result in less interference and higher signal to noise ratio
(SNR) values, and therefore there will be a smaller number of
packet drops within the designated network, which results the
higher quality of service (QoS). Furthermore, reduction in
packet drops could also result in obtaining higher data traffic
throughput, as well as higher SNR in transmission, which aims
to obtain a better quality of received signal within the
designated network [3].
Without the indoor deployment of femtocells, the macro
base stations need to boost their transmission power to cover
the indoor users, which may result in a serious inter-cell
interference and degradation in network performance. Using of
femtocells to cover the indoor areas by the end users will
provide higher quality cellular service with increasing the
macrocell capacity and decreasing the operator’s OPEX
(operational expenditure), as well as allow the operators to
offload significant amounts of traffic away from the macrocell
network. It has been estimated that the traffic offload to
821
femtocell can decrease the costs for the network operators by
up to 70% [4].
Apart from the resource allocation strategies on shared or
separated radio channels, advanced interference schemes are
nevertheless required to be designed within the femtocells, to
avoid either the interference among femtocells, or between a
femto and a macro, known as co-channel interference.
Therefore, as the first step towards network optimization,
small-cell deployments should be followed by required
techniques to manage the interference. Before applying the
interference coordination scheme, the power control
interference avoidance techniques which contain a novel
interference management for the macro users in heterogeneous
networks, are applicable to both macro and femto users.
Femtocells are being considered as low-power, user-deployed
base stations, which provide high-quality cellular service in
indoor environments via operating in licensed spectrum. The
trade-off between the improvement of macrocell users’
throughput and the degradation of femtocell user’s throughput
is the key benefit of this scheme compared to the smart power
control [4].
The main focus of this research will be to target the critical
aspects of small-cell implementations, mostly focused on femto
applications, within the current LTE system. This improves the
indoor coverage of small areas by responding to the closed area
users, as well as clear enhancements in outdoor coverage by
offloading a great part of the users from the conventional
macro base stations. This planning could further be followed by
handover plans as well as the interference avoidance and
interference cancellation schemes to result in the maximum
possible spectral efficiency in the network.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II
discusses the related works and investigated topics in this
context. Section III includes the main contribution of this
paper, the multi-layer network deployment and simulation.
Section IV provides the comparison and analysis of the
proposed scenarios. Finally, the conclusion and future works
are presented in Section V.
II. RELATED WORKS
In the recent years, a number of research and investigations
have been published regarding the different aspects of LTE and
its later releases, i.e. LTE-Advanced, in both structural and
technical aspects. Part of this research is focused on the
physical attributes of the network, e.g. antenna transmission
power, modulation and coding scheme, antenna gain, number
of transmit antennas, etc. and some investigations are mostly
centralized on network and MAC layer of LTE systems. The
concept of self-organizing network (SON), as a new feature of
LTE self-configuration, is very recently being investigated and
aims to involve the heterogeneous development of existing
networks. One of the most dominant applications of SON is to
manage the multi-tier/multi-layer structure of the network, via
avoidance/mitigation of cross-channel interference, as well as
increasing the quality of service within the proposed systems.
Thus, the SON concept needs to be worked out more in
cooperation with the other existing networks.
 In [5] the investigations on sharing the spectrum among
newly developed femto base stations and the legacy GSM
network is conducted by considering a scenario with the same
transmission frequency for both the applications. The
performance of the system is evaluated mathematically based
on the average SINR. The numerical results also confirm that
the availability of the spectrum in such systems depends on the
number and the position of the femtocells in each GSM cell.
In HetNet basis, research [6] aims to develop a heterogeneous
network that includes macro and femto base stations, by
randomly applying femtocells on a macro network according
to the two models of dual-strip and N×N. Since the femtocells
are modeled as closed subscriber groups (CSGs), a non-
member user experiences a dominant interference if it is
located in the proximity of these groups. To reduce the outage
probability of these users, an autonomous power control
method is presented, as well as a method for evaluating of a
resource partitioning between macro and femto to improve the
performance of the macro users.
In case of frequency channel allocation to the users, the
authors in [7] propose the Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR)
method to manage the interference between femto and macro
nodes. In this proposed strategy, the macrocells first allocate
the frequency bands, and then the femtocells choose the sub-
bands which are not being used by the macrocells, to avoid
interference. The proposed strategy enhances the throughput,
as well as reduces the outage probability of the system,
especially for the users in the cell edges.
Based on findings from [8], in dynamic HeNB networks,
choosing of the component carriers (CCs) by HeNBs depends
on the offered traffic and interference relations. However, it
will sometimes prevent a certain cell to select feasible CC.
This work present the performance of background interference
matrix (BIM) based on autonomous component carrier
selection (ACCS) scheme, which are sensitive to predefined
BIM threshold. It first introduces an adaptive binary criterion
to determine if two HeNBs can use the same CC. Then, it
proposes a cooperative component carrier (re-) selection
(CCCS) algorithm based on the backup CC list, to control the
inter-cell interference and successful carrier selection. The
results confirm that CCCS can enhance the system
performance of both the average user throughput, as well as
the user outage rate.
Research [9] presents a modified handover procedure between
macro and femto by using Double Threshold Algorithm
(DTA) and Call Access Control (CAC), to reduce the un-
necessary handovers through the different stations of the
network. Further to this, [10] has developed a dynamic system
level simulator for LTE networks to evaluate and investigate
the effects and specifications of the interference of femtocells
within the macro network. It simulates a multi-cell, multi-user
and multi-carrier system in downlink for single input single
output (SISO) and multi input multi output (MIMO) antenna
configurations.
822
In work [11], the Hybrid Division Cooperative Transmission
(HDCT) is introduced, which results in the enhancement of
throughput within femtocell systems. This scheme applies a
cooperative transmission (CT) for the users at the edge of the
femtocells base stations; otherwise the conventional method is
applied. Applying CT to a user makes that user capable to
receive the desired signal from the femto base station, as well
as from an adjacent femto base station. Therefore the signal to
interference plus noise ratio (SINR) of the user would be
improved by using two-times synchronization signal from two
adjacent femto base stations. This performance is evaluated in
terms of call level QoS and packet level QoS.
III. MULTI-LAYER NETWORK DEPLOYMENT AND
SIMULATION
A. System Architecture
As the main improvements to the mentioned related works,
the proposed multi-layer heterogeneous LTE system contains
different layers of stations and applications. Based on the main
focus of our research, the femtocells are planned to be self-
organizing stations, which means they have specific built-in
functionalities and abilities to collect accurate statistics and
measurements within the network site, followed by planning
and amending their functions to get more network
optimization, but with no external supervision of course.
HSS: High-Speed Serial
MME: Mobility Management Entity
SAE: System Architecture Evolotion
GW: Gateway
HeNB
EPC: Evolved Packet Core
UE
UE
UE Uu
Iuh
Safety GW
Uu
X2 eNB
eNB
HNB-GW
S6
S1
HSS
S1 IuCS/IuPS
S6
MME/SAE MME/SAE
GW
GW
EPC
Figure 2. LTE-A macro and femto interfaces
B. The Simulaion Model
The proposed simulation plan of the HetNet LTE-A
contains two main scenarios. Firstly, the conventional macro-
cell only network is initially proposed and simulated aiming to
express the difficulties and shortcomings of this sort of
architecture, in which a single macro base-station has the duty
of serving all the users. In this scenario, to model and assess the
worst case of the network capacity, the macro users suddenly
start running away from their serving fixed-node macro station.
As the second scenario, the multi-layer macro+femto HetNet
architecture is demonstrated to evaluate the effects of the
femtocell indoor application as a great enhancement to the
existing macro networks within the system. The presented
multilayer configuration could be assumed as the main phase to
employ a ubiquitous LTE-A network, which supports the affected by the users’ movement towards the cell boundaries.
increasingly higher demand within urban and sub-urban access It can be clearly observed from the signal to noise ratio (SNR)
networks. In both the simulation scenarios in this paper, as for this scenario on Figure 4.
have been previously mentioned, the UE trajectories are
defined to perform as the most negative case, when all the users
move away from their serving macro station. The simulations
are planned and executed on OPNET modeler software and the
relevant results and analysis are accomplished as follows.
1) Macro-only Network: As described earlier, a LTE
network with macro applications is simulated. The main aim
of this simulation is to estimate the network functionality in
the absence of short-range, low-power stations. In this single-
cell scenario, the number of 50 LTE UEs are configured with (a) (b)
the pre-defined trajectories towards the different borders of the Figure 4. Macro-only evaluations for SNR in (a) Downlink and (b) Uplink
cell and are allocated to one eNodeB station as macrocell. The
macro-only system charastristics are brought on Table 1. The value of SNR contains the interference noise (Pi), as
well as the background noise (Pb) and the received power (Pr)
for packet transmissions through the physical layer. This value
is measured from the user point of view, which generates the
FTP, voice and video conferencing traffics, based on Equation
1[13].

Furthermore, the block error rate (BLER) is also negatively

affected as shown on Figure 5.
Table 1. The Macro-only simulation charastristics

In case of the users, the LTE mobile users are modified with
ITU pedestrian B multipath channel with OFDMA for
downlink and SCFDMA for uplink transmissions and
maximum transmission power of 11.818 dBm.
The simplified network scenario structure for the macro-only
strategy is depicted on Figure 3.

(a) (b)
Figure 5. Macro-only evaluations for BLER in (a) Downlink and (b) Uplink

In these figures, the values of BLER is calculated according to

the Equation 2 for both downlink and uplink transmissions.

In both the cases of SNR and BLER, the macrocell has an

Figure 3. The Macro-only simulation strategy
The UEs are planned to move away from the central eNodeB
station in different directions, while they are still under the
reception and transmission with the same macro station. The
simulation results evaluations are initiated based on three
applications of file transfer protocol (FTP), voice and video
conference packets, generated by the mobile LTE users. Based
on the applications’ functionalities within the simulated
scenario, as well as the defined trajectory and path loss
parameters, the object statistics of the network are highly
insufficient range of transmission which causes it to face a
decreasing quality of service on the network. This shortage of
the macro-based networks convinces the network designers to
add at least one more supportive network layer, even with
smaller transmission power to the platform. In addition to the
quality of signal, the quality of each application is also
affected separately which could be targeted separately.
2) Macro-femto Network: As explained in the
introduction part, to ovecome the shortage of the spectrum and
coverage difficulties of the networks, especially at the cell
boundaries, supportive femto applications could be
implemented as the second layer of the LTE network in

823
addition to the fundamental macro layer and in cooperation
with it. There are three basic options for the mobile operators
to allocate the available frequencies in femtocell deployments.
On the first solution, femto and macro deployments must work
on separate radio channels. The advantage of this
implementation is that it minimizes interference between the
two networks and simplifies the initial deployment of the
femto application through the network. This is more suitable
in rural areas and more feasible in CDMA2000 systems which
have got narrower bandwidth and therefore the radio channels
are more numerous.
If we temporarily skip the second solution, on the third
solution, all the available radio channels are shared between Figure 6. The Macro-femto simulation strategy
the macro and femto networks. The advantage of this strategy
is to providing more freedom to manage interference among The new values BLER for this macro-femto strategy is
the femtocellls, especially in dense urban deployments, but it shown in Figure 7.
requires the greatest degree of the interference management to
minimize the co-channel interference with macrocells.
However in the second available solution in this case, as a
compromise between the scenarios one and three, some of the
available radio channels are shared between the macro and
femto networks, and the other available radio channels are
fully reserved for the macro. In this SON scenario, the
macrocell can redirect the mobile devices which are being
served on the shared radio channel, to a dedicated macrocell (a) (b)
radio channel, when they approach a femtocell. One example
of deploying this strategy is using of a shared radio channel Figure 7. Macro-femto evaluations for SNR in (a) Downlink and (b) Uplink
for macrocell data services (HSxPA) and for femtocell voice
Considering the SNR values, the corresponding downlink
and data services, and leaving the dedicated radio channels for
and uplink BLER for this scenario are also shown on Figure 8.
macrocell voice services as a separated application [12].
Assuming this strategy for this scenario, we deploy femtocells
in OPNET modeler to cooperate with the current macro cell.
The simulation values of the macro-femto network is depicted
on Table 2.

(a) (b)

Figure 8. Macro-femto evaluations for BLER in (a) Downlink and (b)

Uplink

Table 2 The Macro-femto simulation charastristics
The simplified network architecture for macro-femto
HetNet scenario is also represented on Figure 6 to compare to
the first macro-cell only strategy. This contains four additional
femto base-stations with indoor application and limited
coverage up to 30 meters, because of their amplified
transmission power.
The coverage area of the LTE network is now being extended
by the supporting femto base stations, which work at the same
frequency channels as the macro base stations.
The enhancements of these values could clearly be observed on
the second scenario with the supporting indoor applications of
femtocells, which are described in detail on the next section.
IV. COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS
Comparing the two simulated scenarios for LTE network in
the presence and absence of the femto indoor application
layer, it can be clearly realized that for the duration of 20
minutes –apart from the first seconds of the scenario, which
the built-in buffer in physical transmitter jumps the
transmission signal to compensate the transmission delay– the
value of SNR improves when the femto base stations are
added to the macro-only system to support the signal shortage

824
for longer distances from the cell’s centre. The comparisons
for the downlink SNR and BLER values for these two
scenarios are depicted on Figures 9 and 10 respectively.
Figure 9. The SNR comparison for the simulated scenarios
Figure 10. The BLER comparison for the simulated scenarios
On Figure 9, it can be observed that the signal coverage of the
four added femtocell routes on the macro-femto scenario
improve the value of SNR by about 20%, which is due to the
signal strength of the network, as well as the increased power
to overcome the interference and background noises when the
frequency channel is same. On the other hand, from Figure 10
it could be easily realized that the BLER value for the macro-
femto scenario starts with a higher value due to the higher
number of blocks in error generated with femto routers, but by
approaching closer to the femto nodes, the UEs automatically
go under the coverage of the femto base stations, and therefore
the trend of BLER is more gentle compared to the first
scenario with macro-only policy. This value starts from
around 0.12 and goes up to 0.14 for the simulation period,
where as in the macro-scenario the BLER goes up to around
0.16 at this period, which means there is about 12.5%
improvement on this simulation.
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
A. Conclusion
The paper discusses the implementation of two-layer HetNet
network towards the self organizing approach for LTE-A
networks, by comparison of two simulated scenarios by
OPNET modeler software, the macro only scenario and the
macro-femto scenario with four supporting femto base stations
to cover the signal shortage in case of user movements. The
simulation results for 20 minutes of simulation confirmed the
improvements of about 20% and 12.5% for SNR and BLER
825
values respectively, which are acceptable and satisfactory
improvements for self organising approach through the
heterogeneous LTE-A network planning.
B. Future Work
The multi-layer network design could be considered as a
preliminary step to model a HetNet network with SON
capabilities. In one aspect, the strength of the signal, network
coverage, quality of service (QoS), total data rate and so the
clients’ satisfaction are improved, but in another aspect, the
interference occurs, as expected, due to using the same
frequency channel for the two layers of the LTE network. As
the evaluation of newly proposed LTE-A, this two-layer
network strategy is basically built up to analyze and improve
the interference issue as a further step. Therefore, definitions
like power control, inter-cell interference coordination and
handover strategies could be targeted as the further works
towards the HetNet LTE-A implementation within the SON
framework.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the members of
WNCC group at Brunel University, and Dr. Rajagopal
Nilavalan for their continuous help and support.
REFERENCES
[1] P. Vlacheas, E. Thomatos, K. Tsagkaris and P. Demestichas,
“Autonomic Downlink Inter-Cell Interference Coordination in LTE Self-
Organizing Networks”, University of Piraeus, Greece.
[2] A. Khandekar, N. Bhushan, J. Tingfang and V. Vanghi, “LTE-
Advanced: Heterogeneous Networks,” 2010 Eropean Wireless
Conference, IEEE, 2010.
[3] M. Behjati, J. Cosmas, “Cognitive Spectrum Allocation and Interference
Mitigation in 4G LTE-Advanced Networks”, 5th Annual Research
Student Conference (ResCon’12), London, UK, June 2012.
[4] Z. Wang, W. Xiong, C. Dong, J. Wang, S. Li, “A Novel Downlink
Power Control Scheme in LTE Heterogeneous Network,” ICCP2011
Proceedings, IEEE, China, 2011.
[5] K. W. Sung, L. Shi and J. Zander, “Coexistance of LTE Femtocells with
GSM Cellular Network”, 21st Annual IEEE International Sumposium on
Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, 2010.
[6] A. Barbieri, A. Damnjanovic, T. Ji, J. Montojo, Y. Wei and D. Malladi,
“LTE Femtocells: Syatem Design and Performance Analysis”, IEEE,
2011.
[7] P. Lee, T. Lee, J. Jeong and J. Shin, “Interference Management in LTE
Femtocell Systems Using Fractional Frequency Reuse”, ISBN 978-89-
5519-146-2, ICACT, 2010.
[8] S. Wang, J. Wang, J. Xu, Y. Teng and K. Horneman, “Cooperative
Component Carrier (Re-)Selection for LTE-Advanced Femtocell”, IEEE
WCNC 2011-Network, 2011.
[9] G. Yang, X. Wang and X. Chen, “Handover Control for LTE Femtocell
Networks”, IEEE, 2011.
[10] M. Simsek, T. Akbudak, B. Zhao, A. Czylwik, “An LTE-Femtocell
Dynamic System Level Simulator”, 2010 International ITG Workshop
on Smart Antennas (WSA 2010), 2010.
[11] S. Y. Kim, S. Ryu, C. H. Cho and H. W. Lee, “Hybrid Division
Cooperative Transmission Scheme for LTE Enterprise Femtocell
Networks”, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking
Conference: Mobile and Wireless Networks, 2012.
[12] Airvana Mobile Broadband, “Femtocell Technology,” USA, 2010.
[13] Advanced Modeler Lecture, OPNET Training, Slough, UK, 2012.