Spectral efficiency of LTE with small cells and optimum association threshold

A framework is presented for performance analysis of 3GPP LTE with detailed modeling of PHY, MAC and RLC protocol layers taking decode-and-forward relays and small cells into account. CDFs, expected values and percentiles of resource consumption, error ratio and spectral efficiency on various protocol layers are calculated for any grid point and for cells in a multi-cell scenario, respectively. Association of mobile terminals to a radio access point is controlled by an SINR threshold to find out its optimum w.r.t. cell spectral efficiency and cell edge user spectral efficiency.