Globecom 2014 Workshop - Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Networks

Effect of 3-Dimensional Beamforming

on Full Dimension MIMO in LTE-Advanced
Hyoungju Ji, Younsun Kim, Youngwoo Kwak, and Juho Lee
Samsung Electronics DMC R&D Center
Suwon, Republic of Korea
Email: {hyoungju.ji, younsun, yw.kwak, juho95.lee}@samsung.com
AbstractLarge-scale antenna system has attracted significant
attention in the wireless industry and academia area in the past
few years as a candidate technology for the next evolution towards
beyond 4th generation cellular systems. It can utilize a large
number of antennas placed in a two-dimensional (2-D) antenna
array panel for realizing spatially separated transmission links
to a large number of mobile stations (MSs). The arrangement of
these antennas on a 2-dimensional active antenna array allows
the extension of spatial separation to the vertical domain as
well as the traditional horizontal domain with the user-specific
3-dimensional beamforming. Utilizing such spatial separation
capability, a base station (BS) can realize spatial multiplexing
to a large number of MSs under 3-dimensionally spread channel
environment. In this paper, we study the effect of user-specifica
beamforming using both veritcal and horizontal direction on the
large-scale antenna evolution of LTE system: Full Dimension
MIMO. Evaluation results with various antenna configurations
show while FD-MIMO provides significant improvement over
conventional LTE systems, the size and spacing of active array
within 2-D antenna structure need to be carefully selected to maximize FD-MIMOs full potentials in different cell deployments.
Keywords3-D channel model; Full dimension MIMO; LTEAdvanced; 2-dimensional active antenna array; multi-user MIMO;

I.

I NTRODUCTION

In recent years, the industry has seen a drastic increase

of wireless data traffic on a global scale [1]. Such increase is
fueled by the development of new mobile devices and user
applications which consume significantly larger volume of
data compared to traditional voice calls. In response to the
increase in wireless data traffic, 3rd Generation Partnership
Project (3GPP) has focused much of its standardization effort
in providing cutting-edge techniques to improve spectral efficiency and user experience on top of LTE systems. Among
such techniques are heterogeneous network with dense small
cells (HetNet), coordinated multi-point transmission/reception
(CoMP), and carrier aggregation (CA) [11]-[13]. Although
each of these techniques represents a major step forward in
improving system performance, further developments of new
technologies are required to meet an exponentially growing
demand for wireless data traffic.
Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) [9-10] is one of the
key technologies currently studied in the 3GPP for the next
generation long-term-evolution advanced (LTE-A) systems
based on the large-scale antenna system. As a first step, a
study item [8] has been initiated to study a new channel model
and a new user deployment under which future evaluation of
the antenna technologies will be performed. Follow-up 3GPP

978-1-4799-7470-2/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

821

study and work items on FD-MIMO are expected in 3rd quarter

of 2014. The focus of the study and work items will be to
identify key areas in the LTE-Advanced standards that need to
be enhanced in supporting up to 64 antennas placed in a twodimensional (2-D) array structure. By incorporating FD-MIMO
into LTE systems, it is expected that system throughput will be
drastically improved beyond what is possible in conventional
LTE systems.
FD-MIMO utilizes multiple antennas placed in a 2-D antenna array panel to realize high order multi-user MIMO (MUMIMO) transmissions. High order MU-MIMO refers to the use
of a large number of antennas at the base station to transmit or
receive spatially multiplexed signals to or from a large number
of terminals by 3-dimensional user-specific beamforming in
both horizontal and vertical direction. A conceptual diagram
of an enhanced Node-B (eNB: 3GPP terminology for base station) with FD-MIMO capability transmitting simultaneous to
multiple user equipments (UE: 3GPP terminology for mobile
station) is shown in Figure 1.
Compared to legacy MIMO that is supported in LTEAdvanced, FD-MIMO has two important differentiating factors. Firstly, the number of antennas has been increased
beyond what is currently supported to allow more flexible
and efficient spatial multiplexing. Downlink MIMO in LTEAdvanced supports only up to 8 transmit antennas with the
number of co-scheduled UEs for MU-MIMO limited to no
more than 4. Secondly, the antennas are no longer passive

Fig. 1. FD-MIMO concept realizing MU-MIMO in vertical (v ) and

horizontal direction (H ) by utilizing 2-D active antenna array.

Globecom 2014 Workshop - Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Networks

devices placed in a linear array but active devices placed in a

2-D planar array. To verify the potential benefits of FD-MIMO
system with such characteristics, a system level evaluation
needs to be under taken considering the 3-D channel properties
under which FD-MIMO will operate. Furthermore, deployment
scenarios of FD-MIMO system has to be considered with UE
locations on different vertical locations (e.g. in building) to
model urban macro/micro cell environments and more practical
channel propagation between 2-D antenna array at the eNB
and a UEs receiver. Results provided in this paper show
that FD-MIMO can significantly improve system performance
but requires careful consideration on the configuration of 2-D
antenna array.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II discusses the
concept of FD-MIMO system with the 3-dimensional deployment scenarios and channel model that take into account the
channel propagation model effects in the zenith and azimuth
domain. Section III discusses the system models and scheduling methods that takes into account inter-user interference
effects in order to realize 3D user-specific beamforming along
with the results and the relevant analysis. Finally, conclusions
are drawn in Section IV.
II.

C ONCEPT OF F ULL D IMENSION MIMO

A. Theorertical Performance
The key source of performance enhancement by utilizing
FD-MIMO is its ability to handle high order MU-MIMO.
Compared to LTE-Advanced systems where the maximum
number of MU-MIMO co-scheduled UEs is limited to four,
FD-MIMO is capable of supporting a significantly larger number of MU-MIMO UEs with the larger number of antennas.
Consider a FD-MIMO system with NT transmit antennas at
eNB, K co-scheduled UEs, and downlink transmission power
of P . With channel conjugate precoding, the received signal
for the k th UE can be derived as
r

r
X
P
P
yk=
hk hk xk+
hk hl xl + nk . (1)
NT K
NT K
l6=k

where xk is the transmitted signals for the k th UE, hk is

the downlink channel for the k th UE and nk is the Gaussian
noise at the k th receiver. Theoretically, as the number of
antennas increase, the cross correlation of two random channel
realizations converges to zero as shown in [2]
hk hl
= kl .
NT NT
lim

(2)

As a result, with a large NT , the average signal to interference

plus noise ratio (SINR) for each UE can be determined as
k =

P
NT K
P
NT K

|hk hk |

2
l6=k |hk hl |

n2

NT
.
K 1

(3)

Although the simple analysis above is based on an ideal signal

model, important insights can be obtained. From equation (3),
it can be observed that the SINR at each UE linearly increases
as a function of the number of antennas. Additionally, if the
number of antennas increases at the same rate as the number
of co-scheduled UEs, the same SINR can be maintained. In
other words, if the number of transmit antennas increases by a

822

factor of G, the number of UEs that can be co-scheduled using

the same wireless resource can also increase by a factor of G
without any sacrifice on SINR. For example, if the number
of antennas increases from 10 to 100 while the number of
UEs increases from 2 to 20, a ten-fold system capacity can be
achieved.
B. Architecture with 2-Dimensional antenna array
FD-MIMO system can be organized in three major units:
Transceiver unit, Radio distribution network unit and the 2-D
antenna array unit [13]. FD-MIMO system can have the array
of transceiver unit which can be considered logical antenna
ports employing beamforming gains for UEs. Radio distribution network unit can deliver each or subgroup of transceiver
signal to one or group of antenna elements depending on 2-D
antenna array structure. All or subgroups of transceivers can
be configured with required amplitude and phase weights such
that one or more users are multiplexed from the 2-D antenna
array. In order to realize the benefit of FD-MIMO, an efficient
implementation of a 2-D antenna array is a key requirement
to provide efficient adaptive precoding in both azimuth and
zenith domains [5]. In doing so, the 2-D array should have
a form factor that is adequate for actual deployment while
providing sufficiently efficient radio frequency characteristics.
One design requirement would be to implement each antenna
element with an active antenna element. Compared to a passive
antenna element, an active antenna element has a dedicated
and integrated power amplifier. Since the power amplifier is
integrated to an RF antenna, much of the cable loss resulting
between conventional passive antennas and power amplifiers
can be avoided. Additionally, with active antenna elements,
it is possible to perform dynamic and adaptive precoding
jointly across all antenna elements. Such precoding would
allow higher degree of precoding optimization and spatial
separation. The antenna elements can be placed with a spacing
of half considering the relatively large angle of interest in
both the azimuth and zenith direction due to UE location
in building. However, each transiver can be connected to
multiple of antenna elements with implementation of the radio
distribution network, such that the effective antenna spacing for
precoding can be placed with multiple of . Evaluation results
are presented in Section III to demonstrate the performance
impact due to the different antenna number on 2D structure
and the effective antenna spacing on the vertical axis.
C. Deployment Scenarios
Typically, conventional communication systems and
MIMO technologies were optimized and evaluated for scenarios where all the UEs were on ground level. However, in
urban deployments, it is a well-known fact that most of the UEs
are located indoors on different floors of a building resulting
in UEs with different vertical locations. Considering such UE
locations, having the capability to control the beam direction in
the vertical domain as well as the horizontal domain presents
a new opportunity for FD-MIMO. Two main scenarios where
FD-MIMO are likely to be deployed are depicted in Figure 2.
The first scenario is the 3D urban macro scenario (3D UMa)
where the 2-D antenna array is positioned higher than the
average height of buildings. A 2-D antenna array positioned
higher than the average height of buildings would allow more

Globecom 2014 Workshop - Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Networks

directed transmissions to line of sight (LOS) UEs in buildings

or non-line of sight (NLOS) UEs obstructed by a building.
Another scenario is the 3D urban micro scenario (3D UMi)
where the 2-D antenna array is assumed to be 10m from
the ground with building height reaching higher than this
height. Due to the height of buildings, an eNBs 2-D antenna
array in 3D UMi case has a relatively wider zenith angle
(vertical angle from the zenith in eNB perspective) of interest.
Transmissions to UEs located on different floors can therefore
be better separated using UE-specific beamforming on the
vertical direction in each scenario.
D. 3-Dimensional Channel Model
Geometry-based stochastic channel models have been developed and refined over years by a number of research
groups such as 3GPP, 3GPP2, ITU and the WINNER initiative [3][4]. Spatial channel model (SCM), an example of
geometry based stochastic channel model, is widely used in the
3GPP community to evaluate performance of different wireless
technologies. Traditional SCM used in the 3GPP community
is a 2-D channel model, where an elevation angle of each
signal path is always assumed to be zero. While such an
approach is acceptable for evaluating performance of systems
with horizontally placed linear antenna arrays, modeling of
elevation angles is necessary when evaluating a FD-MIMO
technology utilizing a 2-D antenna array.

In recent technical report from 3GPP [6], the new propagation effects of a wireless channel is modeled with a largescale propagation combined with a small scale fading based
on new measurement campaigns. For large-scale parameters,
the height-dependent pathloss model, the probability of LOS
and the mean value of zenith angular spread is defined as a
function of UE height. In addition, the large-scale correlation
matrix is updated with two additional parameters; zenith angle
of departure and zenith angle of arrival. For small-scale fading
model, the height-dependent zenith departure and arrival angle
is modeled for paths of clusters as a function of UE height and
distance from the eNB. Based on measurement in zenith angle
spread, the distribution of angle spread is limited to 1-5 degree
such that allows large possibility of multi user transmission in
vertical space.
III.

A. System Model
In order to verify the performance benefits of FD-MIMO,
system level simulation was performed for a multi-cell system

The large-scale propagation model predicts long term, slow

changing characteristics of the wireless channel, such as path
loss and shadowing. The small-scale fading model provides
rapid fluctuations behavior of the wireless channel due to
multipath and Doppler spread. For a wireless channel with
multiple antennas (MIMO channel), static beamforming gain
such as the sectorization beam pattern also contributes to the
long term propagation characteristic of the wireless channel
and can be modeled as part of the large-scale propagation
model. As for the small-scale fading model of a MIMO
channel, the correlation of signals between antenna elements
also needs to be taken into account and it can be modeled by
a spatial channel model (SCM).

3D UMa (Urban Macro)

E VALUATIONS FOR FD-MIMO SYSTEM

(a)

3D UMi (Urban Micro)

(b)

Illustration of 3D UMa, 3D UMi scenarios and comparison

of 3D UE dropping in each scenario for FD-MIMO evaluation.

Fig. 2.

823

Fig. 3. 2-Dimensional antenna configurations: case A (top) and case

B (bottom).

Globecom 2014 Workshop - Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Networks

environment. A homogeneous cellular network consisting of

57 cells in a 2-tier deployment with a minimum inter-site
distance of 500m and 200m was assumed for 3D UMa and
3D UMi, respectively. Table I shows the summary of the evaluation parameters used in the system level simulation. Other
assumptions and parameters that are used in the simulation can
be found in [6][7].
Since FD-MIMO relies on MU-MIMO for performance
enhancement, it is critical how different UEs are selected and
spatially multiplexed. For transmission strategy and scheduling, we consider channel conjugate beamforming for each UE
based on channel measurement using different antenna configurations for each evaluation cases. Additionally, we consider
two simple scheduling methods that can be readily implemented for LTE systems. First scheduling method (SCH1) is
full UE scheduling that simultaneously transmits data to all
UEs in a cell in every TTI (Transmission time interval). The
other scheduling method (SCH2) is sub-optimal PF (Proportional fair) scheduling where the scheduler chooses one highest
PF matric user first and adds co-scheduled UEs considering
inter-user interference between selected users maximizing sum
of PF metric. Such scheduling operation is performed for each
frequency resource.
For 2-Dimensional antenna array, we consider two different
cases of 2D antenna array structure to perform FD-MIMO using active array as shown in Figure ??figure3. First case (case
I) is to see the potential benefit of FD-MIMO in proportional
of the total number of antennas with 2D structure. In total 8 to
64 antenna elements, we consider different number of antenna
elements on the horizontal and vertical axis of the 2-D antenna
array. In this case, we assume that each antenna element is
configured as one transiver for applying designated precoding.
The second case (case II) is to see the effect of antenna
spacing in vertical domain. With the same number of antenna
elements, we decrease the number of transiver that used for
vertical beamforming. Resultingly, the effective spacing of
antenna in vertical direction is increased and one transiver can
be configured as subgroup of consecutive antenna elements
placed vertically. Different subgrouping can have different
beam pattern for reference signal for UEs channel estimation.
For example, 3dB beam width is reduced and maximum beam
gain is increased with 1 transiver to 4 element subgrouping
than 1 to 1 configuration. In each entry in Figure ??figure
3, the antenna port to element mapping is illustrated on the
right-top of configuration and (H, V) denotes the configuration
of for the number of antenna port in horizontal and veritcal
with considering subgrouping. Due to the vertical size of 2D
antenna structure, it is noted that pilot for coverage beam can
be generated with using only one element (one port) in case I
and all element in one column in case II. Accordingly, UE can
connnect a cell having maximum received power of different
coverage beam in each case of antenna configuration.
B. Performance results for FD-MIMO
Evaluation was performed for two performance metrics:
Cell average throughput which represents the overall system
capacity of the evaluated system and 5%-tile user throughput
which represents the worst case UE performance or minimum
level of user experience for the evaluated system. The unit of
both performance metrics is bps/Hz. All the evaluation results

824

TABLE I.

S IMULATION PARAMETERS AND ASSUMPTIONS .

Parameter

Value

Multi-cell layout

19 cells each with 3 sectors in hexagon layout

Inter-eNB site distance

500 m (3D UMa) and 200m (3D UMi)

TX power

43 dBm (3D UMa), 41dBm (3D UMi)

Carrier frequency
bandwidth

and

2 GHz, 10 MHz

Number of UEs per cell

10 UEs per cell

HARQ scheme

IR asynchronous retransmission

Link adaptation

LTE MCS selection with 10% initial BLER

CSI feedback

ideal subband CQI feedback

Channel estimation

Ideal without error

Active antenna element

configuration

60 deg 3dB beamwidth with half spacing in both

vertical and horizontal

UE mobility and distribution

3 km/h with 3D distribution defined in [6]

were obtained taking into account the 3-dimensional wireless

channel environment as described in [6].
1) Antenna Configuration Case I: Figures 4 and 5 show
the FD-MIMO system performance for the case of SCH1 and
SCH2, respectively. The antenna port spacing of half is
assumed both vertical and horizontal active antenna elements.
System simulation results are shown for the cases of NT = 8,
NT = 16, NT = 32, and NT = 64 antenna elements. For
each case, results are provided for different number of antennas
on the horizontal and vertical axis of the 2-D antenna array.
An antenna array configuration of NH NV corresponds to
the placement of NV antennas in the vertical axis in Figures
4 and 5. From the results in Figures 4 and 5, it can be
observed that larger antenna system can provide significant
system performance gain over the legacy antenna system which
uses an antenna array configuration of 18. For example,
the system performance of FD-MIMO with antenna array
configuration of 88 provides about 300% gain and 200%
gain over that of an 18 MIMO system with SCH1 and
SCH2, respectively. The gain comes mostly from the larger
number of antennas and the corresponding ability to transmit
simultaneously to more UEs. However, it should be noted that
for the case where the number of antennas is large, system
performance is at its lowest when the number of antennas on
the horizontal and vertical axis are about the same. For such
antenna configurations, it is challengeable to spatially separate
beams for different UEs in both azimuth and zenith direction.
Figure 6 shows the system performance of FD-MIMO for
different antenna configurations and different scenarios when
proposed scheduling methods (denoted SCH1 and SCH2) are
used. With a linear antenna array of 18, conventional MIMO
system achieves cell average performance of 2.8-4.2bps/Hz and
cell edge performance of 0.02-0.15bps/Hz for 10 UEs per cell
with different scheduling schemes. Comparing with antenna
array configuration of 88, 2-4 times of cell average performance and 3.5-25 times of cell edge performance gain can be
achieved. Other than using SCH2 scheduling instead of SCH1
scheduling, the other evaluation parameters are identical. Since
SCH2 is used, not all the UEs are co-scheduled. Instead, the
PF scheduler chooses a subset of the UEs that maximizes
the proportional fairness metric. Theoretically, PF scheduling
should always be able to outperform full scheduling since PF

Globecom 2014 Workshop - Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Networks

TABLE II.
TX
14
NH=64

12

Spectral efficiency (bps/Hz)

NT=64, 3D UMa
NT=32, 3D UMa
NT=16, 3D UMa
NT=8, 3D UMa

NT=64, 3D UMi
NT=32, 3D UMi
NT=16, 3D UMi
NT=8, 3D UMi

10

8 elements

16 elements

32 elements

8TX

-2.66%

-1.23%

- 0.007%

0%

16TX

19.4%

23.2%

32.2%

32TX

48.7%

57.3%

64TX

78.6%

TABLE III.

NT=32

NH=16

TX

NT=16

64 elements

NT=64

NH=32

C ELL AVERAGE THROUGHPUT GAIN (C ASE II).

NH=8

NT=8

5%- TILE USER THROUGHPUT GAIN (C ASE II).

8 elements

16 elements

32 elements

64 elements

8TX

-22.3%

-14.8%

- 3.4%

0%

16TX

16.7%

43.8%

47.8%

32TX

77.8%

105.5%

64TX

148.2%

0
1

4
8
16
32
The Number of vertical antenna ports (NV)

64

Fig. 4. FD-MIMO system cell average performance with scheduling

method 1 (SCH1) in case of NT = 8, 16, 32, 64 .

14

NT=64, 3D UMa
NT=32, 3D UMa
NT=16, 3D UMa
NT=8, 3D UMa

Spectral efficiency (bps/Hz)

12

NT=64, 3D UMi
NT=32, 3D UMi
NT=16, 3D UMi
NT=8, 3D UMi

NH=64

10

NT=64

NH=32

NH=16

NT=32

NH=8

NT=16

NT=8

2
0

4
8
16
32
The Number of vertical antenna ports (NV)

64

Fig. 5. FD-MIMO system cell average performance with scheduling

number
method 2 (SCH2) The
in case
of of
Nvertical
16, 32,ports
64 .(N V)
T = 8,antenna
14

Cell throuput (bps/Hz)

12

(1,64)

NT=64

(2,32)

10

(4,16)
(8,8)

NT=32

(8,8)

NT=16

(1,32)
(8,4) (4,8)
SCH#1,
SCH#1,
SCH#1,
SCH#1,
SCH#1,
SCH#1,
SCH#1,
SCH#1,

4
NT=8

2
0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

(2,16)

NT=64, UM a
NT=32, UM a
NT=16, UM a
NT=8, UMa
NT=64, UM i
NT=32, UM i
NT=16, UM i
NT=8. UMi

0.4

SCH#2.
SCH#2,
SCH#2,
SCH#2,
SCH#2,
SCH#2,
SCH#2,
SCH#2,

0.5

NT=64, UM a
NT=32, UM a
NT=16, UM a
NT=8, UMa
NT=64, UM i
NT=32, UM i
NT=16, UM i
NT=8, UMi

0.6

0.7

5%-tile user throughput (bps/Hz)

Fig. 6. Edge user throughput vesus cell average throughput for NT =

8, 16, 32, 64.

825

scheduling relies on the channel status information to choose a

set of co-scheduled UE that balances performance and fairness.
Contrary to SCH2, there is no consideration for channel status
information in the full scheduling since all the UE in each cell
are co-scheduled. In general, similar observation can be made
for both 3D UMa and 3D UMi scenario.
By comparing results of SCH1 with SCH2, an interesting
observation can be made on the impact of scheduling and
performance of FD-MIMO. For some antenna configurations
(e.g. NT = 32, NT = 64), relatively higher performance can
be achieved with full scheduling than with PF scheduling.
One possible reason for this performance attribute is the
fluctuation of MU-MIMO interference between the spatially
multiplexed streams for different UEs in the case of SCH2.
In SCH1 scheduling method, the scheduler has no control
on the selection of co-scheduled UEs but in return the MUMIMO interference observed by each UE is quite stable
since all the UEs in a cell are scheduled on all time and
frequency resources. Stable MU-MIMO interference allows the
outer loop for individual UEs to self-correct any mismatch in
link adaptation. On the other hand, in SCH2 scheduling, the
scheduler tries to optimize the set of co-scheduled UEs. As a
result of the optimization, the set of co-scheduled UEs changes
in both time and frequency domains causing a fluctuation
in MU-MIMO interference observed by each UE. With such
fluctuation in MU-MIMO interference, it becomes difficult for
the outer loop to correct the mismatch in link adaptation. The
performance degradation due to mismatch in link adaptation
is aggravated by the fact that in LTE there is no support for
handling MU-MIMO interference in channel status reports. In
other words, SCH2 is done based on UEs channel status reports
which are optimized not for MU-MIMO but for SU-MIMO.
The evaluation results in Figure 6 suggest that in order to
utilize PF scheduling, specification support for channel status
information that takes into account MU-MIMO is necessary.
2) Antenna Configuration Case II: Table II and III shows
the system performance of different vertical antenna port
spacing with same size of antenna elements as shown in Figure
3. It can be observed that FD-MIMO system can achieve
system performance gain over the legacy LTE system which
uses an antenna array configuration of 64 elements with 8 TX
(8 transiver). For example, the system performance of FDMIMO with antenna array configuration of 88 provides about

Globecom 2014 Workshop - Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Networks

78.6% cell average throughput gain and 148.2% edge-UE

throughput gain over that of an 8 antenna MIMO system with
64 elements, respectively. It should be noted that for the cases
where the number of vertical antenna port is doubled, larger
system performance gain can be observed when the system
enhance from 8 port to 16 port system. Even with two antenna
port in vertical, 4 elements can be sub-grouped for generating
each antenna ports, channel estimation performance can be
increase with narrow beam-width with large gain. Additionally,
the subgrouping of elements can have benefit for hardware
cost reduction and complexity of FD-MIMO system. Based
on results, we can achieve 50% and 30% of 8x8 FD-MIMO
system gain and edge UE throughput gain, respectively, with
16 antenna ports. The evaluation results in Table II and III
suggest that in order to utilize benefit of 2-dimensional antenna
array the size of antenna spacing and the number of elements
for subgroup that takes into account for deployment FD-MIMO
system is necessary for system complexity and cost of system.
IV.

C ONCLUSIONS

This paper discusses the FD-MIMO, one of the key technologies under discussion for the practical evolution of the
large-scale antenna LTE-A systems, in terms of system characteristics, deployment scenarios, and possible 2-dimensional
antenna array impact to LTE-A. Furthermore, the paper studies
the performance of FD-MIMO under a 3-D UE dropping and
3-D channel model that takes into account channel properties
in both the azimuth and zenith domain. Evaluation results
show that FD-MIMO can provide significant improvement
over conventional LTE networks placing antenna ports for UE
separation in vertical domain. It was observed that an 88 FDMIMO system can improve the cell average throughput and
the 5%-tile user throughput by a factor of 5-6 depending on
the scheduling methods over 88 system. Additionally, it was
observed that depending on the antenna array configuration
(e.g. spacing and subgrouping), the performance of FD-MIMO
can change significantly.
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