A Comparative Study of Dual Connectivity in Heterogeneous LTE-Advanced Networks

To accommodate fast growing mobile traffic, many network operators make efforts to increase the number of small cells especially in urban hot spot areas. 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global standard organization for wireless telecommunication, introduced dual connectivity, i.e., inter-eNB (evolved Node B) carrier aggregation for small cell deployment. With dual connectivity, a user equipment (UE) can have two simultaneous connections to macro and small cell eNBs, which leads to improve user data rate and mobility robustness within the small cell cloud. In this paper, we examine the recently developed 3GPP standard on dual connectivity in heterogeneous macro-small cell networks, and present a comparative study of dual connectivity. 562 Wooseong Kim et al.