Deployment of indoor LTE small cells in TV white spaces

Abstract

This work focuses on the deployment of LTE small cells acting as secondary transmitters in TVWS for indoor scenarios making use of measurements stored in a Radio Environment Map (REM) that characterizes the DVB-T reception. Two different approaches for optimizing the positions and transmit powers of a number of small cells are presented. The first approach intends to maximize the total secondary transmit power inside the building, while the second approach maximizes the percentage of positions where the LTE receivers have a Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) above a desired threshold. Approaches are validated by means of simulations supported by real measurements and compared against exhaustive enumeration techniques proving that they provide very accurate results. Results reveal that when considering system capacity or network throughput, the second approach is more efficient and provides better results than the first approach