Load-shared redundant interface for LTE access network

NNAMANI, CHRISTANTUS OBINNA;Anioke, Chidera L.;Ani, Cosmas I.;Anedda, Matteo;Murroni, Maurizio

2017-01-01

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Abstract

Technological and industrial revolution has led to rapid increase in the request for various services in Long Term Evolution (LTE). These requests characterize different network traffic and are handled adequately in order to maintain a defined level of quality of service (QoS). The number and type of services requested are probabilistic and complex to handle. Conventionally, sustained increase in network traffic is handled by cell splitting techniques with proper network management schemes and/or increase in resources allocated to a cell. However, cell splitting is constrained by the availability of site location, energy consumption, frequent handoff, equipment cost etc., and the increase in resources is inconceivable due limited available communication resources. To solve these challenges, this work proposed a solution that leads the installation and activation of a load-shared redundant network interface as a complement to LTE base station. The interface was managed by load balancing technique, frequency reuse and carrier diversification. The work was simulated with Network Simulator 3 (ns-3.24) and tested with video traffic. The results obtained showed that the proposed scenario conserved 15.2% energy while achieving similar performance in terms of delay, throughput and loss ratio with the cell division technique.