Simulating LTE Cellular Systems: An Open-Source Framework

TLDR

LTE is an emerging broadband technology, yet no freely available open‑source simulator exists, hindering comparative research across groups. This work introduces LTE‑Sim, an open‑source framework for comprehensive performance verification of LTE networks. LTE‑Sim models uplink and downlink scheduling in multicell/multiuser scenarios, incorporating user mobility, radio‑resource optimization, frequency reuse, adaptive modulation and coding, and other industry‑relevant features. Its effectiveness was validated through scalability tests on memory and runtime, and by evaluating realistic LTE networks to compare established scheduling strategies.

Abstract

Long-term evolution (LTE) represents an emerging and promising technology for providing broadband ubiquitous Internet access. For this reason, several research groups are trying to optimize its performance. Unfortunately, at present, to the best of our knowledge, no open-source simulation platforms, which the scientific community can use to evaluate the performance of the entire LTE system, are freely available. The lack of a common reference simulator does not help the work of researchers and poses limitations on the comparison of results claimed by different research groups. To bridge this gap, herein, the open-source framework LTE-Sim is presented to provide a complete performance verification of LTE networks. LTE-Sim has been conceived to simulate uplink and downlink scheduling strategies in multicell/multiuser environments, taking into account user mobility, radio resource optimization, frequency reuse techniques, the adaptive modulation and coding module, and other aspects that are very relevant to the industrial and scientific communities. The effectiveness of the proposed simulator has been tested and verified considering 1) the software scalability test, which analyzes both memory and simulation time requirements; and 2) the performance evaluation of a realistic LTE network providing a comparison among well-known scheduling strategies.