Erlang Capacity Evaluation Procedure for 4G Cellular Communication Systems under Co-Channel Interference

Abstract

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the standards in 4G cellular technologies which offers different peak
data rates for voice, video, messaging traffic and other services. The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
(OFDMA) is a well applicable multiple access scheme of 4G-LTE cellular technology for supporting variable bit rate
services. OFDMA-based cellular communication network faces challenges in providing excellent Quality of Service
(QoS) to the users. In order to provide good QoS, network operators have to make effective use of their available
resources, which leads to effective network design and planning. Capacity is one of the significant parameters in
determining the performance of any cellular communication system and it is also used for effective network design and
planning. However, the interference limits the capacity of cellular systems. Co-Channel Interference (CCI) is the major
source of interference which is an important limiting factor for estimating the Erlang capacity in cellular systems . In
this paper, an analytical method is proposed to evaluate the Erlang capacity of 4G-LTE cellular systems under CCI.
Here the probability of CCI is considered for capacity determination. Erlang capacity results are evaluated for a
different number of co-channel interferers, various spectral efficiencies, voice activity factors and various data rates.