Upload User Collaboration in the Data Upload for LTE-Advanced Networks

There have been ongoing efforts focused on improving mobile network standards to support the increasing user demands of high data rate services. These efforts are more important for cell-edge users for whom a long distance to the cell’s center, and the higher interference from neighboring cells, degrades their performance. Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A), is a promising standard for the Fourth Generation of Mobile Systems (4G) mobile networks. LTE-A employs a technique called Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) to provide high data rate services for cell-edge users. However, we need methods that are more advanced to improve the performance provided by the current standards. In this way, we can meet requirements of the International Mobile Telecommunication Advanced (IMT-Advanced), and can meet the requirements of future mobile systems, IMT 2020. In this work, we present two novel methods for uploading large files from a User Equipment (UE) to multiple evolved Node Bs (eNBs), namely Shared Segmented Upload (SSU) and Upload User Collaboration (UUC). These methods aid cell-edge UEs with lower data rate to upload their data faster and assist the operators in providing services that are more consistent for their customers throughout the network’s coverage area. In addition, we introduce an improved mechanism for retransmission of erroneous Transport Blocks (TBs) in the LTE-A mobile networks. We also propose a new concept called Super Set (SS) as a solution to the fixed coordination set problem. Finally, we present a method to extend the UUC to support handover for the UEs that need to change their host cell. We used the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism to model a distributed LTE-A mobile network using a non-cooperative algorithm, a CoMP algorithm, and the SSU and UUC algorithms. These DEVS simulations were used to evaluate the effectiveness of SSU and UUC under various scenarios, which included rural and urban area settings. The simulation results showed that SSU and UUC can improve cell-edge users’ upload performance and reduce the latency for a cell-edge UE to upload its data to the network. Moreover, we could see that UUC enhanced the non-cell-edge users upload performance as well.