Increasing throughput in cellular networks with higher-order sectorization

Abstract

We study the impact of higher-order sectorization (up to 12 sectors per cell site) in cellular networks with low angle spread and a high density of users. Under ideal sector patterns (with no intersector interference), the mean throughput per site scales directly with S, the number of sectors per site. Fixing the number of antennas per site to be 12, higher-order sectorization with S = 12 and single-antenna transmission per sector is shown to achieve higher average throughput compared to a conventionally sectorized system with S = 3 and capacity-achieving multiuser MIMO transmission with M = 4 antennas per sector. A circular antenna array architecture is proposed for generating S = 12 sectors using fixed beamforming. Beams generated using an array prototype were measured in an anechoic chamber were shown to achieve a similar response as the one used in simulations, and the wind load improvement is a factor of 8 compared to the S = 3, M = 4 configuration.