Link level simulator for LTE downlink

Abstract

3GPP LTE is the evolution of UMTS which will make possible to deliver next generation high quality multimedia services according to the users’ expectations. The flexibility of the downlink OFDM radio interface with Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC), MIMO and HARQ plays a crucial role in achieving the low latency and high spectral efficiency promised by the new radio access standard. This paper presents a link level simulator for LTE downlink whose main purpose is to generate suitable look-up tables to interface with a system level simulator. The obtained results include curves of mean link level throughput for different AMC formats and MIMO configurations. The methodology for training the Exponential Effective SINR model is also described with an example.